Letters, Mar. 30, 1942

Prophecy

Sirs:

TIME'S account of the fall of Singapore, especially the paragraphs headed "Whose fault?" certainly makes Hendrik Willem van Loon out to be a prophet.

In his Van Loon's Geography, published in 1932, he closes chapter XXXVI as follows:

"It [Singapore] is as strongly fortified as Gibraltar. . . . It will play a great role when the inevitable clash between the East and the West finally takes place. In anticipation of that event, it maintains a set of barrooms, the splendor of which is famous all over the Orient. . . ."

ROBERT FRENCH WILSON

Washington, D.C.

"Ugly Rumor"

Sirs:

In the article entitled "The Stranger...

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