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> For 20 years, U. S. politicians and publicists have agitated the question of War Guilt. Who is "to blame" for taking "us" to war? No more than anyone else does TIME know the "true" answer to such a loaded question. But to TIME the following is the beginning of sense: the U. S. people went to war because, after more than two years of intense public discussion, the U. S. Government, duly and recently elected by the U. S. people, decided to declare war. Many and complex were the causes leading to this decision made by the President and Congress. To hang any large part of the "blame" on J. P. Morgan & Co. seems to TIME to be first-class politics and third-rate history. TIME, Aug. 14, made a point of the fact that before the U. S. entered the War the House of Morgan was sentimentally and financially interested in helping the Allies to obtain loans and buy war supplies in the U. S. This is the gist of what the Nye committee established. But between this fact and the conclusion that the House of Morgan got Woodrow Wilson and Congress to declare war, there is a big hiatus of logic and of evidence.—ED.
Persecution in Mexico
Sirs: As one of the mentioned "Prelates in Mufti" (TIME, Aug. 14, p. 60) you will per mit me to make some observations on your story. I liked your appropriation of Mr.
Lunn's "selective indignation" phrase to de scribe the attitude of many people towards the persecution of religion in Mexico. Religion continues to be persecuted most cruelly by the Mexican Government and a few "licensed" churches do not disprove this assertion. The official educational policy of Mexico is as atheistic as Soviet Russia's. It is a positive anti-God policy, not merely anti-Catholic. . . .
The persecution against the Catholic Church is as relentless and vicious as any persecution in history. But the Marxist liberals have sold Mexico to the world as a great democracy. Has it not a Constitution and dont the people vote? Democracies do not persecute religion or the Church Therefore, everything must be fine in Mexico for it's a democracy—like Russia!
I wish particularly to suggest a revision of certain statements in your article You write that "the U. S. prelates found the seminary [Las Vegas, N. Mex.] with its 66 students going well enough." The seminary has nearly 500 students representing every state of Mexico.
And this correction. There is no 500 peso fine for wearing clerical garb in the U. S., thank God! The gracious and pious Mr. Daniels, Ambassador of the U. S. in Mexico, honored and received us at the Embassy as churchmen, i.e., sans mufti!
MICHAEL J. READY General Secretary
National Catholic Welfare Conference Washington, D. C.
Senatorial Ornithology
Sirs:
At the top of p. 12, TIME, Aug. 14, there appears this simile:
"Around his desk, like hawks hovering over a sidehill cornfield, were some 30 Senators. . . ."
Your reporter is evidently not a close student of ornithology. Whoever heard of a flock of 30 hawks over a cornfield? Does the reporter think that the solitary, carnivorous hawk travels in flocks and feeds on corn? Did he not have crows in mind instead of hawks? W. C. COTHRAN Greenville, S. C.