Porent Posters
Sirs :
. . . I have been on duty with the Army Recruiting Service for over two years recruiting aviation cadets for the Army Air Forces, and we have never had a poster that compares with James Montgomery Flagg's excellent "I Want You"—until last January when Mr. Stan Ekman of Chicago designed an Army aviation cadet poster, a picture of which I enclose [see cut]. . .
Mr. Ekman's poster does everything you say a good war poster should do. "It tells its story simply, at a glance and for keeps—to plain citizens and highbrows alike."
This poster is good enough to have helped the Sixth Service Command recruit more aviation cadets during the month of July than any other Service Command in the U.S.; is good enough to be reproduced by the War Department as a standard Army Air Force recruiting poster, and is good enough to have made TIME Magazine with Jimmy Doolittle, carrying the heading "Fly to Tokyo—All Expenses Paid" (p. 17, TIME, June 1).
The original of Mr. Ekman's poster was presented to Lieut. General Arnold by the commanding general, Sixth Service Command.
THOMAS W. DE MINT
Captain, Infantry
Services of Supply
Office of the Commanding General
Chicago
Anti-Panties
Sirs:
Sad indeed will be any civilian exposed to mustard gas while wearing a pair of rubber panties for a gas mask [TIME, Sept. 7]. The average rubber pant is of similar thickness to a surgeon's rubber glove; it is well known that these gloves become dangerous to wear after 15 minutes' exposure to mustard-gas vapor. This particular grade of rubber is not only an inadequate protection but even accentuates mustard-gas burns as well as permanently contaminating the rubber itself. Mustard gas is soluble in rubber and a droplet that would produce only a small blister on bare skin may spread through the entire rubber surface, in time, and burn the whole enclosed area. . . .
True, the activated charcoal-soda lime will stop the vapors of all war gases . . . from going through the orifice of the tin can, but it will not stop damage to the skin, eyes, lungs by the mustard-gas vapor that goes through the rubber. The fact that rubberized fabric is used in military gas masks has probably served for the foundation of the A.W.V.S. fallacy. But the gas mask is of an entirely different grade of rubber and is quite thick in comparison to rubber underwear.