Crabbed Youth & Age

Sir:

The first glance at your Nov. 5 cover with its "Younger Generation" banner and its picture of Winston Churchill was, to say the least, rather striking.

MAURICE LAGACE St. Louis

Sir:

I nominate Winston Churchill as Man of the Second Half-Century.

GARDNER F. WATTS Monsey, N.Y.

Man of the Year?

Sir:

I would like to recommend Mr. John Foster Dulles for TIME'S 1951 Man of the Year. I think he is due this honor for the marvelous job he did on the Japanese peace treaty. M. B. PILCHER

Nashville

Sir:

. . . General Matthew Ridgway . . . For in this twelvemonth, no man, by sheer force of character or professional skill, has more conspicuously served his country, and the hopes of all mankind, than our U.N. Commander in the Far East . . .

ALBIN BEARING

Cecilton, Md.

How Wrong Can You Be?

Sir:

This is to congratulate both Senator H. Alexander Smith for his deciding to vote against the appointment of Philip Jessup, and TIME magazine for its journalistic judgment and discernment in publicizing the incident .. .

While I deplore McCarthyism, we must give him credit for giving the Jessups, Lattimores and Achesons the limelight and an opportunity of exposing themselves, perhaps not as Communists, but for certain as mere second-guessers in a game that may well be the life and death of the whole free world.

How wrong can you be and still hold your job or seek one as an "expert"?

PETER PELLEGRINO

Drexel Hill, Pa.

Footnote to the Affair

Sir:

Congratulations on TIME'S Oct. 29 cover, and on the excellent article dealing with Graham Greene, his life, his thinking and his writing.

It is indeed encouraging to find a magazine of your standing devoting such thorough coverage to the work of a man who merits serious consideration in a world that often forgets it has a soul.

Your decision to feature Greene so fully was remarkably in contrast to the wholly inadequate and unrealistic job done by some of the New York dailies. You were right.

DESMOND SLATTERY New York City

Sir:

Your cover caption was distasteful. Adultery does not lead to sainthood; adultery leads to "hellhood." Why advertise a wrong implication? It seems to me that the character in Novelist Greene's book [The End of the Affair] achieved sainthood in spite of, rather than because of, adultery.

ALLEN O. JERNIGAN Baton Rouge, La. P:And so it seemed to TIME too.--ED.

Sir:

There is much to be commended in your treatment of Graham Greene, but there are two things that I definitely object to: the caption under the cover portrait . . . and the mention of Greene's remark that he had been up all night drinking with his priest.

LEON GILBERT JR. Washington, B.C.

Drunkards, Lampposts, Tories

Sir:

The young English Tory, David Eccles, may, as TIME [Oct. 22] says, have "a gift for the happy phrase," but the particular phrase* you quote shows not a gift but a tendency to borrow.

It was coined by the scholar and poet A. E. Housman in 1903 when, in the preface to his edition of the [Roman poet and] astronomer Manilius, he described critics of a certain type, as ". . . gentlemen who use manuscripts as drunkards use lampposts--not to light them on their way but to dissimulate their instability."

You will notice how much pithier and indeed how much more apt Housman's original is than Mr. Eccles' imitation.

GILBERT HIGHET

Columbia University New York City

Deadly Bore?

Sir:

Tut! Tut! and shame for Collier's for its frightening, war-scary article, "Preview of the War We Do Not Want" [TIME, Oct. 29]

. . . These jittery publications have no business in scaring our bewildered teen-agers and the rest of us.

H. M. MUNGER II Dallas

Sir:

What in the name of God has happened to the intelligence of men in this country who have been known in many circles as having much intelligence? After reading Collier's preview of World War III, I could have vomited at the lack of taste, the presence of fear, the idiocy of fantastic imaginations of men who, up to now, had rated considerably higher in my esteem . . .

R. SWAIN Los Angeles

Sir:

"Many a reader was sure to feel that Collier's pat, 'inevitable' outcome of the war made 'Eggnog' somewhat hard to swallow."

And many a reader was sure to feel that the whole thing was a deadly bore and impossible to read or swallow. I yawned . . .

O. W. RAVENSCROFT Sherman Oaks, Calif.

First in Asia

Sir:

Your Oct. 15 statement that the American Academy of Asian Studies in San Francisco was "the first graduate school in the U.S. devoted solely to the study of the Orient" is very far from the fact. The Asia Institute's School of Asian Studies, opened nearly 15 years ago, is devoted solely to Asian subjects. It is a degree-granting institution for graduate study, has three times as many on its teaching staff, offers four times as many courses, and has back of it 21 years of internationally recognized achievement . . .

C. SUYDAM CUTTING Chairman of the Board of Trustees The Asia Institute New York City

Roach at the Reins

Sir:

I read with disgust Hal Roach Jr.'s assessment of American intelligence. He makes a bald statement that the average televiewer has an even lower I.Q. than the moviegoer [TIME, Oct. 29]. It seems to me that he indicts himself and his staff. I take it Mr. Roach and his kind will continue to press the national I.Q. still lower, to satisfy a sponsor's demand.

When will these men realize that they hold the reins on our small fry's intelligence for a good two to three hours each day with the palaver they grind out? . . .

Russ LOWRY

Chicago

Envoy to the Vatican

Sir:

I have to congratulate TIME, Oct. 29 on its unpretentiously unbiased handling of the "Undiolomatic Appointment." Nevertheless, I am stunned at the relative stupidity of many high Protestants today. It would appear they think that if the U.S. were to send an ambassador to the Vatican, we must end our "separation of church and state." I suppose that, in line with this thinking, the King of England is going to turn over the British Isles and the Church of England, of which he is the head, to the Vatican, since England has a minister there. Or, perhaps, all the mosques in Egypt will be converted to Catholic churches since Egypt has a minister at the Vatican . . .

FRANK M. COVEY JR. Chicago

Sir:

There is already far too much bigotry and bitterness on both sides between Protestants and Roman Catholics in the U.S., and President Truman has therefore done his country a grave disservice in aggravating and intensifying that bigotry, and in giving powerful new stimulus to the bitterness, by his appointment of an ambassador to the Pope . . .

WILLIAM B. LIPPHARD Yonkers, N.Y.

Sir:

As a Roman Catholic I should rather regret the appointment of an ambassador to the Holy See, in view of the bitterness that would be engendered in many quarters . . . As an American, however, I feel that a representative at this center of world influence would be a great advantage to my country, and I am sure that the President had nothing else in mind when suggesting it ...

C. P. KNIGHTS San Francisco

Sir:

. . . [It's] a cheap political trick to garner the Catholic vote . . .

WALTER B. ALFORD Darby, Pa.

Sir:

President Truman's pastor opposed the appointment of General Clark because it violated the principle of separation of church and state. He went on to say he advised the President against the move, both as a friend and as his pastor. Does not that advice, as a pastor, constitute a real violation of the separation of church and state? Or are only the Baptists allowed to run the state?

R. C. HAUCK

Harnsburg, Pa.

Light & Fast

Sir: '

Speaking as a lay enthusiast, the "big, blue-and-gold racer owned by Murrell Belanger" [TIME, Oct. 29] was really one of the lightest cars in the U.S. "big car" season. It was referred to as "little" by Lee Wallard after he had won the Indianapolis race in it, and if a couple of men (larger than average) wished to crowd their forms into its single seat, they would have to shove, rather.

In other words, compared, say, to a Chevrolet roadster, the current Indianapolis or Grand Prix Formula I racing cars are "little" automobiles . . . But the "big" racing car romantic legend dies hard.

WILDER HOBSON New York City

The McCarthy Story (Cont'd)

Sir:

Please accept my sincere congratulation on your splendid article on Joe McCarthy in TIME, Oct. 22.

Why can't people see that McCarthyism can snowball until Joe becomes Adolf and our right to dissent is lost?

The great Justice Oliver Wendell Holmes wrote: "Adulteration of intellectual material is as harmful socially as adulteration of food is physiologically."

(REV.) H. RICHARD RASMUSSON University Presbyterian Church West Lafayette, Ind.

Sir:

I believe all your readers would like to know, as I would, what the score is on your correspondence on the McCarthy article.

FRANKLIN FISHER

Auburn, Me.

P:Of 386 letters received on the McCarthy story, 177 disliked Senator McCarthy, 146 liked him. The 63 others commented generally on the story and McCarthyism, without taking sides.--ED.

*Said Eccles: "I have been against the wage freeze. Bad chancellors resort to it as drunkards cling to lampposts, not to light themselves on their way but to conceal their own instability."

This file is automatically generated by a robot program, so reader's discretion is required.