What For?
Sirs:
In your issue of TIME, Dec. 31, you mentioned G.I. Joe as an unwilling hero "not knowing what he was fighting for." What crass ignorance that exemplifies!
Perhaps it was the fact that G.I. Joe knew what he was fighting for which made for so much bitterness in the foxholes and in the tents. For three years we have been associated with nothing but G.I. Joes, and it seems to be common knowledge to even those of us who have been assigned as permanent latrine orderly in the officers' area because of a "lack of capabilities in any other field" that we have been fighting, much against our will, for the damnable status quo. . . .
DELBERT KNUPPEL
BLAIR MCCLENACHAN
Iwo Jima
Sirs:
. . . You write [TIME, Feb. 4] that a lot of G.I.s were wondering why they ever had to fight the war, that 19% believed Germany was justified in starting the war. . . .
I lost more than half of my friends while fighting this war as a Naval pilot, and know such talk should not be tolerated without a thorough investigation. I would suggest that these young and spoiled G.I.s be shown a few horrors of war such as the concentration camp at Dachau—that they be shown the atrocity films that we have locked up for posterity, together with other scenes of a like nature which should stand witness to the ghastliness of what some of our G.I.s call a justified war.
DONALD R. PACKARD
Lee, Mass.
Dictator Carías
Sirs:
In TIME, Feb. 4 . . . an insult [is offered] to the President of the Republic of Honduras.
. . . Allow me to state . . . that the President of Honduras, General Tiburcio Carías Andino, whom the writer calls a "dictator," was elected by popular vote and that his continuing in power is due solely to the decision of the National Assembly of Honduras, the members of which, in their turn, are elected by vote. Therefore, to remain in power, it has not been, and is not, necessary for General Carías, backed as he has always been by the great masses of the Honduran people, to resort to the methods of a dictator, such as the exercise of arbitrary force in any form or shape or the perpetration of any persecution whatsoever. . . .
The briefest visit to Honduras will convince even the most prejudiced mind that the slur "dictator" applied to President Carías is no more than the sour grapes of his political opponents. . . .
Every Honduran citizen out of loyalty to his country and pride in his national heritage is as one in rejecting this insult so strange to the language of inter-American fellowship.
JULIÁN R. CÁCERES Ambassador of Honduras
Washington
¶ TIME, too, is a firm believer in inter-American friendship—also in truth. Let loyal Honduran Cáceres recall: 1) that Dictator Carías sidestepped the constitutional ban against presidential reelection in traditional dictator style by having his term extended twice without popular election; 2) that Dictator Carías' army and police in July 1944 mowed down 60 unarmed anti-Carías demonstrators in Tegucigalpa.—ED.
Re: War Dead
Sirs:
More & more frequently in the press occur letters regarding the final resting place of men & women in the U.S. forces who have perished overseas.