Suspicion
Sirs:
Your report on "Babes in the Sea" in the Sept. 30 issue strikes me as a considerable departure from your usual editorial objectivity. Apparently you have accepted the British story whole cloth, without any examination of the details.
First an explosion "threw the vessel violently on its beams"—something like a car being tipped over on its sides; your nautical editor take note—"next minute a second torpedo crashed into the engine room." Whence the torpedoes, TIME? Did anyone see them? Or are they just part of the British report?
They will bear looking into. First, it was a dark night, which makes torpedoing a very hard job, even assuming that by pure chance the vessel should have been discerned—she was showing no lights, I presume. More important, it was an exceedingly stormy night: high wind, mountainous waves, rain and spray. Ask a naval expert about this—he will probably tell you that effective submarine operations under such conditions are all but impossible. Secondly, two torpedoes were reported, which is strange, considering the relative unimportance of a passenger vessel. . . .
Perhaps you will agree with me that the story has its dubious side. A more logical conclusion is that the "torpedoed" vessel in convoy met with an accident of a quite different nature. Possibly an internal explosion—sabotage, if you will—such as a boiler explosion; the power is sufficient. Or perhaps a collision with another ship: in the darkness somebody zigged when he should have zagged. In either case an alert British propagandist could make excellent capital of the mishap—with a rigid and sympathetic censorship holding up the news until the collective stories should hang together fairly well. . . .
MERLE B. McKAIG
Yeadon, Pa.
>Reader McKaig is too suspicious because: 1) Other ships have been torpedoed at night. 2) Modern submarines can fire torpedoes in high seas. 3) It would be normal to fire at least two torpedoes, since high seas lessen accuracy. 4) The City of Benares (11,801 tons) was a catch worth two torpedoes. 5) A boiler or other internal explosion would blow up through the decks, tend to produce a slow sinking (The City of Benares sank within half an hour). 6) That week (Sept. 15-22) Germany claimed the sinking of 201,862 tons of shipping and the British acknowledged a loss of 131,857 tons—their highest week's shipping losses of the war.—ED.
Willing, Not Anxious
Sirs:
In your issue of Sept. 30 on p. 17, you credit me with having been in jail as a conscientious objector in the first World War. I hope I should be willing, though, of course, not anxious, to go to jail in support of my deepest convictions, but I have been so fortunate that such has never been my fate, either in the World War or at any other time. I have been arrested on occasion but not during the World War, in connection with free speech and similar fights, in all of which I have been able so far to emerge victorious. . . .
NORMAN THOMAS
New York City
> TIME erred but still gives Reader Thomas credit for being willing to go to jail for his convictions.—ED.
No Cacti, No Reptiles
Sirs: