Letters, May 26, 1941

Rambunctious Candidate

Sirs:

Your May 5 story on the Texas Senatorial campaign detoured the most rambunctious and possibly the most deserving candidate.

He is “Commodore” Basil Muse Hatfield, “Admiral of the Trinity River” and “King Castor.”Somewhere in his mid-70’S, the Commodore has a rural folklore attached to him that is almost as long as his beloved Trinity valley. According to Gulf Coast legend, he was decorated by the British Government for services during the Boer War, has made and lost two oil fortunes, galloped through a handful of Mexican revolutions and was one of the dupes in the Dr. Cook oil scandal. For the past decade, he has ambled the 500 miles of the Trinity River valley in east Texas preaching agricultural betterment to the families of the Big Thicket. In 1933 he put on a personal promotion campaign for canalization of the Trinity by piloting a skiff from Dallas to the Chicago World’s Fair. The skiff tied into a Mississippi tow going north from New Orleans. Three or four days out, according to river bargemen, the cook complained to the captain that the Commodore ate too much. The captain ordered the Commodore listed as “four guests” for the rest of the trip.

I developed a healthy respect for him last summer during a week’s visit to the Chemurgic Institute which he preached mid-Trinity farmers into founding at Romayor. Last week he wrote me that he is entering the Senatorial campaign himself on the platform of: Chemurgy (i.e., industrial rather than food crops from the farm); a five-ocean Navy; “all-out aid for America”; a national lottery to help pay for it.

Personally, I hope he wins.

ROBERT WEST HOWARD Associate Editor

Farm Journal and Farmer’s Wife Philadelphia, Pa.

>Observers concede colorful Candidate Hatfield little chance of a Senatorial nomination, but in a State which elects a song-&-biscuit man as Governor anything can happen. Says Candidate Hatfield of Governor O’Daniel (who may decide he wants the Senatorial nomination): “I think he’s about out of biscuits.”; Of Martin Dies (who definitely wants it): “Dies makes a fine speech but it’s always the same one.” “Commodore”; Hatfield’s unvarying costume is a blue denim shirt, khaki pants, a three-gallon hat braided with bear grass.—ED.

No War Spirit

Sirs:

Many of us Texans despise Colonel Lindbergh for the ass he has made of himself in his relationships to the American public during the last decade. But we still are realists and as such must concede that the unpopular Colonel is right in most of his conclusions.

There is little war spirit here in northwest Texas. When in a nearby town recently, a prominent Red Cross leader said to me: “Well, we just can’t seem to stir up any war spirit among our women. The younger women, under 30, simply won’t come and work for Britain. And those who do are past 45. . . .”

THOMAS HUDSON McKEE Vernon, Tex.

Sirs:

… I say: Let us go to war, since it is necessary, but let us first tell England that the price of our aid is the beginning of a truly better world. We must think about that now. . . .

Here is my price: a Federal Union of the former democracies and defeated Germany.

DAVID E. HAFT Syracuse, N.Y.

Sirs:

We’re darn lucky to have something for which to fight.

MARY L. WHITE
Roswell, N. Mex.

Sirs:

During the Civil War, did the North protest against the renowned patrol work of the Alabama, in the lend-lease arrangement between the South and the British? If so, was Lincoln a Copperhead too?

A. J. BROWNMILLER
Pittsburgh, Pa.

Sirs:

Tonight at our weekly union meeting a motion was made commending Senator B. K. Wheeler for his stand on convoys and the drift toward war. It was passed by a large majority. The men who passed it are Americans born, or naturalized. Not Reds, Blacks, or Browns, just plain workingmen. . .

HAROLD SLYE
Anaconda, Mont.

Sirs:
I have just come from a meeting of the “America First (?)”; group addressed by Senator Wheeler. First thing I did was to take a good, healthy bath. . . .

Of course nobody wants war; no mother wants to lose her son in any war. . . . But if that’s what’s necessary to gain the ends we desire—peace, freedom, security—then let’s have the intestinal fortitude to do what we must while we can! . . .

WM. MCBURNIE
Buffalo, N.Y.

Sirs:
Can an America of cocktails, cigarets, wisecracks and sex—so well typified by your magazine and its advertisements—stop the Hitler military machine? . . .

HOWARD W. ANDERSON
Grand Rapids, Minn

>The A.E.F., which fought very creditably in World War I, liked cocktails, cigarets, wisecracks and sex.—ED.

Sirs:
If we give Britain the sort of all out aid we sent to Greece, she is going to be all in before receiving it. …
WINNIE BYRON
Montezuma, Colo.

> Reader Byron’s crack is rather unfair. The U.S. had no time to send any substantial aid to Greece.—ED.

Sirs:
. . I talk to many people each day, and the answer is simple: we are in the war. In it in a slow, plodding sort of way. No flags flying and bands playing. . . . We are not shouting our courage or flaunting the cause of democracy. Our generation is too close to the last war for all of these. . . .

GEORGE N. O’BRIAN
Lansing, Mich.

Sirs:
Although I should like to congratulate you on reaching a new low in prejudiced reporting in your anti-Tobey article [New Hampshire’s Senator Charles Tobey is hotly anti-convoy —TIME, April 28], I am effectively restrained by the unhappy memory of a succession of your articles, each of which reached at a particular time a “new low.” . . .

MARGARET RISK TATUM
University, La.

Sirs:

It may be just my mood this week, but it seems to me that TIME, April 28, is, in its National Affairs section at least, indicative of a definite editorial policy leaning toward the anti-convoy idea. . . .

DOUGLAS E. ADAMS
River Falls, Wis.

Sirs:

Your treatment of the Lindbergh-New Deal unaccord was a fine job of middle-of-the-path reporting. . . .

Many of us do not agree with Lindbergh’s reasoning but we do not doubt his sincerity. Any man that can, in the face of known opposition, repeatedly stick to his contentions may be wrong, but never insincere. . . .

ROBERT F. GEORGE
Wichita, Kans.

TIME BY AIR
Sirs:

Many wild orchids from Colombia for the Air Express edition of TIME !
I have been gathering crude rubber in the Amazon, eating beefsteaks in the Argentine, climbing the Andes, and picking coffee in Colombia during the past four months—writing a get-acquainted series of articles for our Midwestern farmers on how our Latin American neighbors live, what they grow, and how they grow it.
That has brought me up to date south of the border, but behind the times back home. That is, until I got the Air Express edition of TIME which enabled me to sit down and read a May 5 issue published in the U.S. down here in Colombia on May 2. TIME is certainly doing something to time.

JOHN STROHM Correspondent for The Prairie Farmerv Cali, Colombia

Sirs:

… As a Chilean I appreciate greatly your excellent coverage of Latin-American news and I hope that now that you have issued your Air Express edition TIME will become ever more liked south of the Rio Grande. . . .
ENRIQUE WARD GONZALEZ
Instructor of Spanish
Belmont Abbey College Belmont, N.C.

Silent Marchers
Sirs:
There was once a tribe of Indians who showed their respects to the departed by marching around the body voicing all the good things they could think of about the member who passed on. Finally, a very bad brave with no redeeming features died, and all the members of the tribe marched around his body to show their respects in the customary manner. They marched and marched, with no word from anyone, until finally one Indian spoke up and said, “He was a good smoker.”

I was reminded of this story when I read your account of Senator Barkley’s speech at the unveiling of Huey Long’s statue [TIME, May 5].

PHIL MILLER
Cleveland Heights, Ohio

Decoration & Character
Sirs:
You must have had many letters of praise for the series of masterly covers Ernest Hamlin Baker has made for TIME. Here is one more. What particularly gives me pleasure about them is the way Mr. Baker manages to combine pure decoration and first-class characterization. . . . .

MARCHETTE CHUTE
San Clemente, Calif.