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Much of the issue of TIME for April 28 is devoted to questions of national morale. Is there any way to make our political leaders
(so far so deficient in the real qualities of leadership) realize that the morale of the people always has been and always will be a function of the morale of their leaders? . . .
The people of this country say this to the President, "Give us a logical, coherent, consistent and courageous course to follow—be it 'interventionist' or be it 'isolationist' and we'll follow you through hell and high water, but the present vacillating and unreasoning policies and practices engender in us nothing but the 'defeatist' and 'apathetic' attitudes which your followers in Washington publicly deplore. We'll follow—will you lead?" ROBERT LEIGHTON, M.D.
Evansville, Minn.
Sirs:
TIME, in the issue of April 28, says: "Last week St. Elizabeth's Hospital, Washington's famed insane asylum, was officially made a defense agency."
And why not? It is a fine idea if you will only use it.
I cannot think of any better place for the defense enthusiasts who are clamoring to defend everything and everybody in the wide, wide world, excepting the U.S.
GEORGE T. FRY New York City
Sirs:
An American entry now into the war against Germany would win the fight Britain is losing. Britain is fighting the Nazis for the freedom and dignity of man.
Under the democracy that a British and American victory would establish, individuals and States of individuals could strive of their own will toward the highest good, the betterment of mankind, the ideal of brotherly love which is democratic as much as Christian. . . .
MARY T. LITTLEJOHN Chapel Hill, N.C.
Sirs:
I am becoming increasingly vexed at some of the letters that you publish every week which refer to World War II and the United States' part in it. For they would imply that the United States, by stopping some of its worldwide commerce, protecting its own boundaries, and, becoming, in a word, isolationist, can preserve Democracy. Bunk! Who wants "preserved" Democracy? The United States cannot become a museum for Democracy!
JAMES O. LIDE Camden, Ark.
Diagnosis
Sirs:
The American people, according to Gallup, believe that the country should risk waging war but that it should not actually wage it.
We are not at war with Germany but Germany is our enemy.
We will use the Navy for "patrolling" but not for "convoying."
We whoop it up to the tune of 20 or 30 billions of dollars for the good-neighbor policy and hemisphere defense, but refuse to buy a little beef from the Argentine. . . .
There is terrible danger of the Germans winning but Lindbergh is a traitor for saying so.
The President murmurs, "Let's do it and say we didn't."
In other words, the country is again in the throes of that easily recognizable mass schizophrenia or infantilism or call it what psychosis you will, which always takes possession of us when we find ourselves all alone in the great big, terrifying, dangerous, adult world. Remember last time, when we passed the strictest prohibition laws we could think up, put poison in the liquor, and then drank ourselves blind for 14 years?