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c/o Postmaster, New York City
> Needed: a name for soldiers who also serve—behind the front.—ED.
Bartholomew on Miller
Sirs:
Your article captioned issue of "Sousa with a Floy Floy" in the Sept. 6 issue of TIME has been bothering me ever since I read it, and my distress was fortified by the letters commenting on the article which you published in TIME'S Sept. 27 issue. I decided (in the interests of Lux et Veritas) to do a bit of personal investigation. . . . Circumstances favored me in this quest because:
1) Captain Glenn Miller's 418th Army Air Forces Band marches directly under my window twice every day. . . .
2) I have been an ardent student of music for almost 50 years, have had a particular passion for military bands ever since I was a kid and my experience in this field ranges from the gutter band of six dilapidated instrumentalists who used to collect pennies on summer evenings in my home town to the best military and concert bands of three continents.
3) I have heard every military march composed by John Philip Sousa . . . and most of the operettas he wrote in the days of his great popularity. . . .
I am well aware that much could be done to improve the status of military-band music in the U.S. but the trouble lies in Washington, not in New Haven. My hat is off to young men like Captain Glenn Miller who can put aside the glamor and the big money of top-flight professional careers and enter upon the unexciting routine of an army band on army pay and throw into this new task such energy, enthusiasm and skill as to quicken the pulse and lighten the heart of everyone within hearing distance.
Let John Philip Sousa rest in peace; his marches are not being played in "jive tempo" and his scores are not being touched up with "hot licks and modern dance-hall harmonies." And let Bandmaster Edwin Franko Goldman forget his rage. He was misinformed.
MARSHALL BARTHOLOMEW
Yale University
>; TIME'S thanks to Marshall Bartholomew, famed conductor of the Yale Glee Club since 1922, for an informed judgment on a debatable subject.—ED.
Man of the Year
Sirs:
Man of the year: MacArthur. . . .
ALEXANDER McKAY PARKER SR.
Tucson, Ariz.
Sirs:
... I wish to nominate General Josip Brozovich, leader of the Partisan Yugoslavs whom the Spaniards in their revolution named "Tito."
. . . When the last shot is fired in this World War II, historians as well as his own Slavic people will claim him as their George Washington, Simon Bolivar, Benito Juarez and Bernardo O'Higgins. . . .
(Corp.) NICHOLAS C. RAGUS
Camp Stewart, Ga.
Sirs:
I take off my $1.98 chapeau to Chicago's elite milliner, Mr. Ben Greenfield (TIME, Oct. 4), and suggest he toss one of his "$37.75 and up" specials into the ring. He is my candidate for man of the year.
LUCILLE E. BLOCK
Washington
Sirs:
. . . For Men of the Year—having proved themselves better than Axis supermen: Ivan, Tommy and Yank.
(Serviceman's Name Withheld)
Barksdale Field, La.
Important Information
Sirs:
Congratulations on carrying the item about Zeniths new hearing aid, in your issue of Oct. 4!