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For those who have interest in Mr. Santayana the last letter I received from him [was] dated Dec. 4, 1941. "The longer I live," he wrote, "the more I lean on nature at large and the less on the conceit of human beings."
As to the war itself ... "I think (and hope) that the consequences [of this war] may be far more important and lasting: a really new era in human history, but not all that people on either side think they are fighting for. Words and things were never farther apart than in our uneducated times," to which he adds a footnote: "By uneducated times ... I mean that we are overeducated verbally and without roots in Mother Earth." . . .
VICTOR WOLFGANG VON HAGEN
Santa Monica, Calif.
Sub Hunters
Sirs: That the Army's 480th Anti-Submarine Group did a commendable job [TIME, Dec. 20] we in the Navy's antisub squadrons readily admit. But to say that the Army "was on the job when the going was hottest" and that the Navy took over after Admiral Doenitz' protégés had been thwarted, is a very untrue implication. . . .
One of the more important reasons why the Army operated anti-U-boat groups was the Navy's lack of extremely long-range air craft suitable for low level attack bombing required in anti-submarine tactics. To the Army went all the Liberators being delivered — and to the Army went the task of long-range patrols beyond the reach of the Navy's patrol planes. When we began to receive the needed bombers we took over. . . .
(SERVICEMAN'S NAME WITHHELD)
New York City
> All honor to Navy's sub hunters. But honor, too, to Army men foresighted enough to have the very-long-range equipment ready when the going was hottest. Navy's land-based, long-range planes were taken over from Army's prescient purchases.—ED.
Cats, Terns, Eggs, Boobies
Sirs:
In the story of the tern colony called Wideawake Fair on Ascension Island (TIME, Jan. 3), the heading "Boobies on the Runway" is misleading. One of my naturalist colleagues who has recently returned from Ascension reports that he never saw a booby on the airfield or anywhere else in the interior of the island, although many of them live around the shores.
The cats have certainly not been imported by the American armed forces. Cats have been present for a long while. . . . Thousands of the eggs have been eaten annually by the human population. If these eggs are collected while fresh they are replaced by the breeding birds, so if our soldiers eat a few more it is unlikely to cause any great damage in such a vast colony of terns.
ROBERT CUSHMAN MURPHY
American Museum of Natural History
New York City
Intuition
Sirs:
Please tell the writer of "Problems of Plenty" (TiME, Jan. 10) that I have fried chicken, gravy and hot biscuits waiting for him at any time.
I knew all the time that [the] U.S. was equal to greater emergencies than even this war — my intuition told me so. But since Hitler's intuition had fallen into such dis respect I didn't like to mention my source of information.