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... I feel I must offer you very belated congratulations on the article "As England Feels," which appeared in your issue of April 13. That issue has only just reached me. It seems to me to be a first-rate piece of reporting, accurate in fact and psychologically sensitive. Whoever wrote it really did understand what English people were thinking at the time, and he has expressed it admirably. His description of the difficulties of life in England now is absolutely accurate; he has neither exaggerated nor depreciated them. He is quite right about our admiration for Russia, our former lack of interest in the Empire, and the feelings with which we entered this war. His criticism and his praise of us are both fair and well judged. I only wish that an English correspondent would do as good a job in explaining you to us. ...
JANE MEIKLEJOHN, Ph.D. Harpenden, Herts., England
Maddening Inertia
Sirs:
J. Horace McFarland's letter [TIME, July 20] regarding difficulties encountered by U.S. ships at our Navy yards certainly strikes a familiar chord.
During the time that I served in the Navy I had occasion to visit most of the yards on the East Coast, and anyone who supposes that the statement of conditions is an exaggeration has no idea at all of the restraint that must have been observed in making that masterpiece of understatement. The inertia of the yard "monkeys" is maddening. . . .
______________* Washington, D.C.
Sirs:
. . . Such conditions as the author describes may be peculiar to one yard and, I suspect, may have been magnified out of proportion by an uninformed and mechanically unintelligible "greenhorn.". . .
As a Navy yard worker I find situations that, at times, irk me but a little thinking on the subject usually eases my conscience and clarifies the case at hand. ... If the riveters are on board waiting for the carpenters, the carpenters are on board, etc., then the maximum effort can be delivered at an instant's notice, whereas if each had to be located somewhere else, their-tools brought to the ship, and time lost in getting ready for work it would still require at least four other men to keep one working. . . .
. . . Though I sometimes have to wait around for a ship fitter or rigger, I know that I'm there when occasion demands and when I'm welding or tacking that someone else is waiting for me to finish, since we both learned a long time ago that "two bodies cannot occupy the same space at the same time.". . .
GEORGE G. CROSS JR. Salmon Falls, N.H.
Sirs:
. . . My experience parallels in many respects that of the disgusted officer. Hired as a -Name withheld by request. fireman to safeguard the ship against welders' sparks, I consider myself valuable for about 20% of the working day. . . . Workmen string out the hours exchanging stories, sneaking smokes, sizing up jobs and bumping noggins. A passing boat or plane apparently justifies time off to estimate cargo, judge tonnage and type, etc., etc. . . . Recently, having sighted no sparks from welding operations atop a gun platform, I investigated to find a six-man crap game in hot progress. Most explanations revert to a common basis: "We gotta wait for the other guy."