(5 of 6)
Mr. Nichols is entitled to read thereupon a "general nobility of character and god-like quality"; it is within his province to declare that Mr. Garner's face 'symbolizes all the nobility of the American eagle.' But when he adds, 'that gentle unpredatory bird,' Mr. Dudley Nichols is nuts. The American eagle is no such thing. I don't know about Mr. Garner.
DONALD HOUGH
Hollywood, Calif.
Sirs:
In reference to Mr. Dudley Nichols' letter, I wonder if it could be pointed out to him that, in spite of his faith in the art of foretelling the success of a presidential candidate by his physiognomy (as he did Garner), the great American voting public rallying to the polls in 1932 and 1936 elected a face? We have had enough of faces! We want a president !
JAMES M. REYNOLDS Chicago, Ill.
Sirs:
Was Dudley Nichols writing in irony . . . ?
FRANK T. CARTWRIGHT Maplewood, N. J.
> Undoubtedly.—ED.
Sirs:
. . . [Garner] certainly has as much right to seek the Presidency of the United States as Dudley Nichols had to seek the Presidency of the Screen Writers' Guild; and if, as Dudley suggests, Garner is a bird of prey because he looks like an eagle, it might be well for Dudley to be told that a lot of people think he looks like a sparrow. . . .
TOM LENNON Los Angeles, Calif.
Cambronne
Sirs:
The other day, while reading Albert Jay Nock's Thoughts on Utopia, I came to the following paragraph:
"I handed the article back to my acquaintance and said nothing; there was really nothing to say. The best I could do was to recall the story of the unhappy Frenchman who had to listen to some such outpouring of peculiarly odious nonsense. He must say something; he must also be polite; he was in an impasse. 'Monsieur,' he said, austerely, 'Je me permets d'invoquer I'auguste ombre du général Cambronne.' "
To give this blasting judgment a wider application (to which I am sure Mr. Nock would agree), for "article" read "world of 1939," and for "my acquaintance," read "those who like it." In these days there must be many a silent, fervent
CALL FOR GENERAL CAMBRONNE
Shocked, appalled, and needing vent
For feelings long and hardly pent,
A friend we have, a fearless one:
Pierre-Jacques-Étienne Cambronne. . .
If saints are proxies, bearing sins,
Who save our souls if not our skins,
Then why is he not canonized?
The calendar should be revised.
To those who sanctity have won
Append the name, St. Pierre Cambronne.
Eloquent, outspoken Shade,
Viewing the world some men have made
And now perfect with all their art,
Nobly take the others' part.
Must they endure and still endure
In silence? General: Au secours!
All thoughtful men who see what the world of our time might so easily have been, granted international decency and good will, and seeing what it is, must call upon General Cambronne to express adequately for them their sense of profound disillusionment.
But we Americans have never been afraid of honest vulgarity when it best could serve the purpose. Then let us out with the good old Anglo-Saxon word, which is also one of four letters. . . .