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... It is with steadily increasing concern that I note the continuance of abysmal ignorance concerning "what the war is all about" among my fellow members of the Army. This lack of understanding may not hinder our winning of the war, but it will most certainly put the skids under our winning of the peace if we don't look out. If, as seems to be the case, 99% of our soldiers have nothing better in mind than to "get the hell home as fast as possible" after the war, and forget the rest of the world forever, we will have a recurrence of the very situation which led to this war. . . .
(CORP.) C. STANLEY OGILVY, U.S.A.A.F.
Yuma Army Air Field Yuma, Ariz.
Old Army Game
Sirs:
The following excerpt (from a letter written to my great uncle) may prove of interest as an "echo" from another war:
"Calle del Matamoras,
Toluca, Mexico May 20, 1848 "Dear Cousin,
... I should have written you before but that I have had so much writing to do since I joined the Army that I am almost ashamed to look upon pen and paper. ... I have long wondered how so many clerks could be employed in the different departments at Washington, but now the matter is explained —about one half of them are employed in forming troublesome reports to be rendered by the really working part, for we have to render accounts and duplicates of every man in the service in as many different forms as one can possibly imagine, [signed] Jos. Vogdes, Sergt. Major Voltigeurs, Mexico City"
AND THAT BEFORE THE DAY OF TYPEWRITERS AND CARBON PAPERS !
ELIZABETH MAY ROBERTS Glen Olden, Pa.
Shakespeare on Security
Sirs:
Regarding Prime Minister Churchill's warning to the Allied peoples (TIME, July 12), he might have quoted a fellow countryman as well as St. Paul. Remarked Boss Witch Hecate in Shakespeare's Macbeth:
And you all know security
Is mortals' chiefest enemy.
WALLACE E. DACE Bloomington, Ill.
Singing POWs
Sirs:
You mentioned (TIME, June 21) that the Germans sing a lot; marching to the soccer field, they thunder out Today we have Germany, tomorrow the world.
In World War I, 850 officer POWs in the American camp at Richelieu (France) did not sing once during a whole year. But when they marched to the station September 1919, to return to Germany, a minority started a favorite song "Siegreich wollen wir Frankreich schlagen" ("Victorious we will beat the French"). . . .
LEOPOLD R. HIRSCH New Orleans
Correspondent Informed
Sirs:
Just a note of appreciation for your very generous write-up about me in the May 31 issue. Naturally I was pleased. . . .
When we're at the front I suppose we know less of what's going on in the war world—even at points only a few miles away—than anyone else in the warring countries. Getting hold of TIME gives us an informed feeling. Since Tunisia, back at the rear, I manage to snag onto someone's airmail edition quite regularly. . . .
ERNIE PYLE c/o Postmaster New York City
Bedlam (?)
Sirs:
Bedlam? Yes, but from causes of an entirely different nature than your publication visualizes (TIME, June 28).