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We should be embarrassed to have other nations hear that our food rationing is over. I know I speak for thousands of fellow Americans, and I hope for millions, when I say that I am ashamed of the stacks of food at the corner grocery, and feel guilty to be able to buy freely of them.
We can spare much, much more. . . .
There is a larger issue at stake—if anything can be a larger issue than saving the lives of human beings. If a world organization of nations, with mutual trust and cooperation, is ever to become a reality, the U.S. must lead the way. . . .
MARY IDA BURNITE
Pittsburgh
Food—a Weapon?
Sirs:
I was appalled by the announcement that food rationing is to be abandoned in the U.S. and that current stocks will allow three pounds of meat to each person per week. This is even harder for a friend of Americans to explain than the dollar diplomacy of Lend-Lease, and gives cause for suspicion in some quarters that food—or the lack of it—is being used as a weapon in the American bid for world supremacy in everything.
Remembering the generosity of the States ... I can only surmise that they don't know what's going on in Europe. If they did, their vast meals would choke them.
Thirty cents' worth of meat and endless queueing in Britain is bad enough, but conditions here are luscious compared to those on the Continent.
(SIGNALMAN) D. JOHNSON
Royal Signals London
Force
Sirs:
Hats off to Simone Weil for writing and to TIME'S editors for the insight which led them to reprint at length [TIME, Dec. 17] her remarkable essay on force. . . .
The force that does not kill but deadens is the essential subject matter of The Education of Henry Adams; the force which redeems is as vividly symbolized—as Alexey Fyodorovitch Karamazov—in The Brothers Karamazov as it is in the Bible.
In connection with The Brothers Karamazov, it should be remembered that Dostoevski placed in inspired contrast the spirits of totalitarianism and Christianity. . . . Ivan would save the world—as his fascinating fable told to wide-eyed Alexey in a tavern shows—by renouncing Christ and thoroughgoing ministration to man's physical-material wants, with liberal portions of spirit-crushing opiates thrown in. Alexey did save his immediate world with love and suffering.
SYLVESTER PETRO Chicago
Sirs:
Thanks for discovering and transmitting that truly rare bit of writing, The Iliad, or The Poem of Force, by Simone Weil. Though dead, Simone Weil calls in clarion tones to every Christian's soul to ". . . recover that simplicity that renders so poignant every sentence in the story of the Passion."
LOUIE D. NEWTON Atlanta
Who Is Guiltless?
Sirs:
Having spent a year in various P.O.W. camps in Germany, including two months in the civil prison in Budapest, I think I know as much about war crimes as most Americans.
They aren't particularly pleasant, particularly when you are on the receiving end of a beating, which hurts your dignity a good deal more than it does your body, regardless of how severe it may be.