Letters, May 3, 1943

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Mr. Culbertson's Vacuum

Sirs:

In TIME, April 12 you report on Mr. Culbertson's latest "system," The World Federation Plan.

Like Clarence Streit and many others, Mr. Culbertson is apparently . . . unable to see that it was American society with its inherent, dynamic qualities that created and preserved our constitutional system, with its facilities for equally dynamic change, and not our constitutional system that preserved American society for over 150 years.

From the history of the creation of Europe's great national states during the 15th, 1 6th and 17th Centuries, and from our own Revolution we must learn this one lesson. It is always a society which creates a government as a means of self-preservation, and the nature of this government is determined by the complex pattern of the economic interests, social traditions and system of ethics of the society which creates it.

Thus, I fear, Mr. Culbertson is creating his world federation in a near-vacuum. . . .

Mr. Culbertson and I agree on the need for a world government to insure a permanent peace. However, . . . I suggest that we follow Mr. Willkie's advice Tin his book] One World . . . and first . . . find a firm social basis upon which this new government can be founded, grow, and become the bulwark of a permanent peace. . . .

PRIVATE KONRAD C. MUELLER Camp Shelby, Miss.

Fed Up

Sirs:

. . . I am fed up with the windbag politicians who run our Selective Service lottery. I am in class 3-A. One day I am told to get into essential war work or be drafted. The next day I am told that drafting of married fathers would wreak an intolerable hardship. Again I am informed that unless I go into essential war work I am unpatriotic. I am getting to feel like a God damn draft dodger. . . .

I am 30 years old, college graduate, and in perfect physical health. If the Army wants me, why in hell don't they take me? . . .

I suppose no father really wishes to be drafted, but I will be damned if I will take an "essential" job as an out. I wasn't in defense work at the start of this war and for me to go in now would be proof, to me at least, that the change was made only to escape induction. . . .

C. DONALD BROWN New York City

Free Speech v. Free Speech

Sirs:

I notice you print a letter from a sergeant in North Africa (TIME, April 12). At last the carefully nurtured myth of a conflict of interest between our soldiers and our workers is beginning to bear fruit. . . . If the fruit of the myth ever fully ripens, it will mean the destruction of democracy in this country. . . . It is thus that the abuse of free speech to enlarge discord will destroy free speech. . . .

NELSON N. FOOTE

Takoma Park, Md.

Concern for the Not-So-Common Man

Sirs:

I have just finished reading your interesting and informative article entitled "The Pub and the People" (TiME, April 12). . . .