The McCarthy Issue

Sir:

I was shocked to see Senator McCarthy's face on the cover of the March 8 issue. This man is not news! . . . Let this blatherskite of an Irishman sputter and fume himself into oblivion . . .

AGNES KENNEDY Chicago

Sir:

. . . The article on McCarthy and R. M. Chapin Jr.'s drawing were a tremendous effort to show McCarthy for what he truly is . . . I am becoming more & more convinced that somebody should toss fair play out the window and use McCarthy's own methods against him . . .

TOM BALOW New York City

Sir:

Your derogatory cover story does the courageous Senator . . . an injustice. He has his faults like everyone else, but basically he's just an arrogant, ambitious, insincere, four-flushing phony.

W. B. MCNUTT Philadelphia

Sir:

I was very disappointed to see that TIME had at last gone over to favoring McCarthy. After months of indicting him for the shameless deceiver that he is, you credit him (March 1) with real achievements . . .

DAVID H. BARNHOUSE New York City

Sir:

Your March 1 article . . . was excellent. However, I feel you leaned over backwards in his favor. I find McCarthy to be highly excitable, truculent and apprehensive when working under pressure . . . His manner is blunt, brusque and certainly inconsiderate . . . Surely there is some way to get this man on the right track and let him fight Communism to the fullest and still keep him from undermining our Government, which at this time needs all the help it can get . . .

EDWARD G. FLAIG Arkadelphia, Ark.

Sir:

. . . I was appalled to find two full pages of TIME [March 1] devoted to McCarthy's bulldozing . . . How about ignoring him for a few editions, and maybe, like a bad dream, he'll go away.

RICHARD F. MCLOUGHLIN Tokyo, Japan

Sir:

There are no words to describe the pathos of the American position in the world today. We stand with arms folded across a powerful chest while cries for help keep coming from the enslaved, the beaten and the dying . . . We look in vain for leaders with guts. That is why millions salute McCarthy. Not because he is doing any good. But because he is out there fighting, FIGHTING! . . .

F. HAAS Hollywood, Calif.

Sir:

Do you think Mr. Eisenhower has ever caught a blowfish? If you tickle its stomach, it swells hugely. McCarthy has very nearly reached the popping point. What a shame that our President missed his chance to administer the pin. The Senator needs it, and so does the country.

KATHERINE H. HARVEY Lexington, Mass.

Significant Form

Sir:

Writing of Grant Wood's painting Midnight Ride of Paul Revere in your March 1 issue, you say ". . . it lacks every grace save precision and is as meticulous in execution as a Flemish altarpiece." Perhaps, but no horse . . . ever galloped with his two front legs stretched out in front and his two hind legs extending to the rear.

For more than a century horses were painted that way because some artist . . . got the idea from Japanese prints introduced to Europe for the first time . . . But the Japanese did not originate this unnatural galloping horse; they got it from the Chinese who got it from the Tartars who got it from the Persians, and so it has been traced back 3,000 years.

Senator Leland Stanford of California [1824-93], a racing man, exploded this "hobbyhorse" pose long before the days of the movies. Wanting to know how a horse moved his legs, so they could be made to move faster, he hired a photographer [Eadweard Muybridge] to set up a series of cameras along the race track with threads stretched across the track and attached to the camera shutters so that as the horse ran past he took his own picture at intervals. When the plates were developed, the horse appeared in postures no artist had imagined . . . Frederic Remington was bold enough to draw horses as revealed by the camera.

CLARENCE STEARNS Alpine, Calif.

P: Galloping horses confused artists long before the Persians. To compare one prehistoric cave dweller's version (circa 20,000 B.C.) with Remington's realistic cow ponies, see cuts.--ED.

Veritas & Consequences

Sir:

Thanks for the Harvard-Pusey story [TIME, March 1]. Brilliant in treatment, the content goes to the heart of the values in a free university and a free nation. Teachers in all colleges owe Harvard deepest gratitude . . .

CHARLES W. HUNT Oneonta, N.Y.

Sir:

. . . May I say how well-balanced and thoughtful the article on Harvard and President Pusey seemed to me to be? [It was] interesting without being brash, and useful to the country without being propaganda.

HOWARD MUMFORD JONES Cambridge, Mass.

Sir:

. . . The article . . . was no less than magnificent. Most timely, too, and very original . . . to use the frontier analogy.

SAMUEL ELIOT MORISON Boston

Sir:

. . . An explanation of liberal learning such as yours would always be good reading, but this graduate is particularly proud today of his association with America's "most diversified, individualistic and nonconformist university."

HAMILTON FISH JR. ('47) New York City

Sir:

Your article was excellent but . . . a puzzle to those even the least bit interested in the higher-schooling business. It never told why President Pusey is more widely known and higher paid than the basketball and football coaches. The same were even ignored in the list of Harvard's twelve scholars. Alumni by the dozens were named, but no triple-threats . . . You neglected to tell if the old Crimson had ever cleaned up on a bowl or so, or even had worked out a little deal to stage a few athletic extravaganzas with some other muscle factory . . . Why, you didn't even tell if Harvard's coaches display their leadership by crying and pouting to the press or if the alumni really hustle to keep the varsity strong . . . Ninety percent of our universities and colleges today would unhesitatingly tell Mr. Christopher Fry that our big affairs are attendance-size, not "soul-size." . . .

PAUL B. BEERS Milton, Fla.

Bad Neighbors

Sir:

The riot in Chicago's Trumbull Park [TIME, March 1] was completely nauseating. For every American soldier who died in the fight for freedom, the people of Trumbull Park, by their display of mob hysteria, have made that soldier's fight a lie.

These weasel-minded people might better spend their time teaching their children tolerance and studying the American Constitution. It is time all intelligent people took a positive stand against such race discrimination . . .

MRS. F. E. HANDEL Prince Albert, Sask.

Sir:

I have just . . . spent two years in central Africa, and, after reading your story . . . I am ashamed of my American passport . . . I was earnestly questioned by Africans and Europeans about race problems in America . . . I unwittingly painted the picture much brighter than it evidently is. Possibly I have been away from America too long to remember the sordid details of what still goes on there . . .

SCHUYLER JONES Paris

Sir:

. . . The picture of the three pointing women makes it look as if women, and not men, provoke racial hostility . . .

(PFC.) MALCOLM H. MEYER U.S.A. Augsburg, Germany

Sir:

. . . This age-old drama, whites v. Negroes, is again becoming the disgrace of the nation. All Americans are taught (or are they?) that "all men are created equal." Well, we sure are making fools of ourselves . . .

CHARLES W. AUVIL JR. Pensacola, Fla.

Sir:

. . . That such things still happen in a country that takes pride in being free and democratic is unexcusable . . .

JACQ M. COPPENS Antwerp, Belgium

Fairy Godmother

Sir:

Re your March 1 article "New Republic Windfall": . . . To hundreds of people my grandmother, Mrs. Emmons Elaine, was like a fairy godmother . . . Among her charitable ventures are millions of dollars spent for the "Lab" School at the University of Chicago and the Francis W. Parker School on the north side. These schools pioneered in "progressive" education before the term was even known. She maintained a research library on the history of the farm implement industry which has been given to the University of Wisconsin . . . When the Chinese were fighting . . . against the Japanese . . . she gave $100,000 to benefit the Chinese people. She put countless hours and dollars into first the League of Nations and . . . the U.N. . . .

Less publicized . . . have been her countless generous gifts to people in all walks of life . . .

NANCY BLAINE HARRISON Chicago

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