Milwaukee's Fair Lady

Sir:

There ought to be more Harry J. Grants and Milwaukee Journals around the country [TIME, Feb. 1]. The decline of some of the finest cities in the nation can be directly attributed to newspapers that have slipped to fat and voiceless advertising sheets. Community leadership among them is so weak that even groups of women have-been able to raise louder voices of protest.

JOSEPH A. PARKER Troy, N.Y.

Sir:

Your article on the Milwaukee Journal boils down to this: 1) it is a rich paper and can afford to offend anyone, thus it is not fearless; 2) it is successful because it has no competition; 3) it fights McCarthy who fights Communism, but could not defeat McCarthy or Ike. We buy it because it prints Pogo.

K. L. WILCOX Waukesha, Wis.

Sir:

To the Milwaukee Journal, from Lima, Peru, where all newspapers are too timid to print stories about important scandals (such as graft and briberies), smirches and vices (such as horse betting and lotteries), please give my most sincere congratulations.

CARMEN ROGGERO Lima, Peru

Sir:

Before you again attempt an article on a newspaper ... it would be advisable to contact more of the people who read the paper, and also read it yourself. You have given the impression that the Journal is an honest, upright paper, which alone has made Milwaukee, and which stands for all that is right and just, regardless of the storm raging about it. No one will deny that the Journal puts out a very pleasant-appearing paper and that the people who put it together are expert technicians. The society pages and the section devoted to news of local interest are very good . . . The Journal is heartily disliked by almost all "thinking persons" in Milwaukee, but is read by most because it is the only afternoon paper.

KENNETH J. MERKEL Milwaukee, Wis.

The 21

Sir:

I am a Korean veteran and ... I have read your article concerning Corporal Edward Dickenson and the 21 American soldiers who have refused to come back to the United States [TIME, Feb. 1]. I personally can't see why the American Government and populace are so concerned . . .

If the Army court-martials Corporal Dickenson, I don't blame the 21 soldiers for refusing to come back. Here we are coaxing and practically begging them to come back; and if they did come back we would probably court-martial them and send them to prison. Is that justice?

ANTHONY A. GUARNA Lancaster, Pa.

Sir:

. . . They never had it so good [as] when they were in the United States. I can't see how they figure that their voices would be silenced if they returned. After all, this is not Russia, and we do have freedom of speech. Maybe they forgot about the Bill of Rights, or wanted to forget about it ... DONALD J. VANDERGRIFT Sergeant U.S.M.C. Camp Lejeune, N.C.

Sir:

After hearing that Corporal Dickenson was welcomed home with a court-martial, I am fighting mad.

If life in a prison camp was a day-to-day struggle for existence, then each man had to decide whether he considered his own well-being or that of his fellow prisoners more important. If he decided in favor of himself, we may not approve of it, but it is a moral offense, not a legal one . . .

MRS. FLORENCE BARTON Pullman, Wash.

Kuddly Kinsey

Sir:

How in the world does Dr. Alfred Kinsey imagine that sex education could or should be administered to a three-or four-month-old baby [TIME, Feb 8] ? Between feeding, burping, bathing and diaper-changing, one's hands are full. How should it be done, anyway . . .?

MRS. MARTHA SCHULZE Chicago

Sir:

As the parents of a ten-month-old girl, my husband and I are very proud that we have attended to our baby's sex education as prescribed by Kuddly Kinsey. She has responded beautifully--she hugs everybody and everything--men, women, dogs, books and blankets . . .

JOAN MCINTYRE

Brooklyn, N.Y.

Packed House?

Sir:

The idea that a priest will elicit from workers a true opinion of their company and union is fatuous and naive in the extreme

[TIME, Feb. 1]. Nobody gets lied to more often than priests. It's traditional.

The conclusions Father Theodore Purcell drew after 44 months at the packinghouses could have been deduced by anyone above the level of a moron, by simple application of everyday logic. His discovery of the "dual allegiance" is nothing more than a digging up, from the graveyard of the obvious, a concept fossilized into a platitude . . .

RICHARD J. CALLAHAN Oak Park, Ill.

Louisiana Tiger?

Sir:

TIME, Feb. 8, states that "Tiger was folded into Air Force slang by U.S. pilots in Korea; in Asia, the tiger is an age-old symbol of ferocity."

It is also an age-old Americanism. The word folded into Air Force slang in Korea from General Claire Chennault's Flying Tigers. General Chennault . . . got his first military training at Louisiana State University where the students are known as Louisiana

Tigers; a name carried down from the days when all male students were military students and all students were male. The name derived from the Louisiana Tigers of the Civil War, with which Colonel David French Boyd, the second president of the university, had been affiliated during the war. The name started with Wheat's Tigers,* who had fought themselves to extinction by 1862, but it became the legacy of all the Louisiana fighting men.

But the name goes still farther back . . . When in preparation for the War with Mexico, four Louisiana volunteer regiments were raised; in each of these regiments was a company of "Tigers." One of these became the famous Washington Artillery of New Orleans, which also used the Tiger-head insignia all through the War of 1861.

Wheat's Tigers decorated their campaign hats with pictures of tigers in action and appropriate motto, such as "Tiger Ready for the Kill," "Old Man Tiger," "Tiger on the Leap." In action they screamed and roared, and their specialty was creeping silent as cats undercover until they were on the enemy, then charging with wild leaps and wilder yells and long, sharp knives . . .

A. MOORE Baton Rouge, La.

TV Payoff (Contd.)

SIR:

I HAVE JUST READ THE SPLENDID STORY ON PAY-AS-YOU-SEE TV [TIME, FEB. l]. IT IS THE FINEST AND MOST COMPREHENSIVE SUMMARY

OF THIS COMPLICATED SUBJECT THAT WE HAVE SEEN . . .

WE BELIEVE THAT PAY-AS-YOU-SEE WILL BECOME A PART-TIME SERVICE ON ALL CHANNELS, WITH STANDARD TV STATIONS DEVOTING A PORTION OF THEIR BROADCAST TIME TO SUBSCRIPTION PROGRAMS FOR WHICH THE VIEWER WILL PAY A DIRECT FEE, AND THE REMAINDER OF THEIR BROADCAST SCHEDULE TO PROGRAMS SPONSORED BY ADVERTISERS. THIS TYPE OF OPERATION WOULD GIVE STATIONS A DUAL SOURCE OF INCOME ... IT WOULD ALSO PERMIT PROFITABLE OPERATION OF TV STATIONS IN MARKETS TOO SMALL FOR USE BY NATIONAL ADVERTISERS . . .

E. F. MCDONALD JR.

PRESIDENT ZENITH RADIO CORP. CHICAGO

Cadillacs & Education

Sir:

... I take exception to Author Oliver La Farge's blast against our public schools [TIME, Feb. 8]. Let's not look upon acquiring an education in the same way we look upon acquiring a Cadillac! There certainly is room for improvement in our educational system, but more private schools are not the answer.

JAYNE MARKEL San Francisco

Sir:

I cannot too strongly second La Farge's condemnation of the products of public education in the U.S. In the college classroom one finds not only a resistance to erudition, but a ... deeply inculcated antipathy to it.

. . . The college students today have for twelve years been exposed, for the most part, to teachers who themselves have been taught that education is a process of "social growth," of "learning to get along with people," of almost everything except acquiring knowledge. The "educators of educators" themselves, in their unguarded moments, will sometimes admit that colleges of education do not attract superior students. They ascribe this to poor pay scales in the public schools, but never to the fact that their own curriculum provides absolutely no interest or challenge to intelligent people . . .

OLIVER F. SIGWORTH

University of Arizona Tucson, Ariz.

Hit, Run, Error

Sir:

In "Three for Cooperstown" [TIME, Feb.1], you mention that Bill Terry holds the fourth highest batting average in modern baseball [after Hornsby, Heilmann, and Ruth]. Just how does Ty Cobb forfeit his modern-day baseball slot? . . .

ROBERT W. BILLIG

Omaha

The Hartley Case (Contd.)

Sir:

Were I to become as coldblooded as the two female critics of Dr. Vance Chattin [TiME, Feb. 1, I would wish the doctors at their respective births had also been less "heroic" and more "humanitarian." . . .

God allows the human body to be born disfigured, twisted and crippled, and to become palsied, leprous and maimed before reaching the grave--but He also gives each man a perfect soul at birth, the final appearance of which is man's work alone. The smug physical perfections of this world would do well to concern themselves more with the condition of their own souls . . .

MARY ANTIL LEDERMAN

Teaneck, NJ.

-Named for Major Chatham Roberdeau Wheat, who. after a rousing military career in various Latin American and Italian wars, returned home at the outbreak of the Civil War, recruited a 5OO-man cavalry battalion called the "Louisiana Tigers," which made a brilliant showing from the first Battle of Bull Run until Wheat's death at the battle of Gaines's Mill in 1862. He fell with a bullet through his head, crying: "Bury me on the field, boys!"--ED.

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