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Having served as a captain in the 358th Infantry goth Division, World War I with Major General (then Major) Terry Allen, I was deeply interested and very proud of your splendid article about him (TIME, Aug. 9). I have noted, however, that . . . [you failed to] mention the very interesting fact that when General Allen (then in command of the 2nd Battalion of the 358th Infantry) got the machine-gun bullet through his jaws and mouth at Aincreville during the St. Mihiel offensive, he was more infuriated than hurt and, in his very characteristic style, insisted that he wanted to get to a German soldier with his bare hands. It was not surprising, therefore, that Terry charged a machine-gun nest (something that he properly should have left to his men to do and which they were doing all around him) and after shooting one gunner, jumped into the emplacement and hit another one with his fist, knocking out the Boche by hand and splintering his own hand or wrist, incapacitating himself more thereby than the machine-gun bullet previously had. . . .
Yes, Terry Allen was a fighter . . . and best of all, he was a leader, organizer and inspirer who will honor his ist Division and I am sure his Army Corps later, as they will in turn honor him.
Many are the tales we who served with him in 1918 could tell you but you have told his story as a whole magnificently.
H. PAYNE BREAZALE
Baton Rouge, La.
Tassel Girls
Sirs:
War has mixed the sexes a good deal in industry and the armed services; but don't you go a little far when you extend the confusion to the crop plants? Tassel girls (TIME, Aug. 9) remove the tassels all rightthose sprangly structures at the tops of corn stalksbut if these bore the female flowers, then the grains would have to grow up there, and there would be nothing left for the cobs to do.
A. FRANKLIN SHULL
Ann Arbor, Mich.
Sirs:
. . . I'd been thinking all along that even in hybrid corn the babes were wrapped in silk.
WALLACE E. HOWELL
Captain, Air Corps
Asheville, N.C.
Sirs:
. . . The tassels are the male flowers which produce the pollen, which drops on the silks, which are the stigmas of the female flowers, and thus pollinate and fertilize the female flowers inside the seed of corn on the cob inside the husks. Is this clear now?
MARJORIE MECKSTROTH
Orlando, Fla.
> To TIME'S Corn Editor, a six-month sentence to study sexin corn.ED.
Pie in the Sky
Sirs:
Ted Friend, the B'way editor who bought a country weekly and twelve hammocks (TIME, Aug. 9), must be a B'way sucker for the greatest of journalistic mythsthat publishing a country weekly is like eating pie in the sky when you die.
Take it from us, Friend, it ain't.
To publish a worthwhile weekly today, a man must be an all-around reporter (no wire services to rely on, you've got to dig for all your news), an editor, an ad legman, a linotype relief man, a hand compositor, a subscription solicitor, a head-writer, a typographical specialist, and a little crazy upstairs.
We work an 80-hour week.
We have no hammocks.
Louis STARR
MARY BELLE BANCROFT
The Gallatin Examiner
Gallatin, Tenn.
"Jack Knife"
Sirs:
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