Mud Month

Sir:

The month of October is always the month when we show our ignorance to the world. The political mudslinging did neither party any good, and anyone who paid any attention to it should have his head examined by a nonpartisan psychiatrist.

PHILIP YARNELL

Baltimore

Sir:

After reading your whitewashing of Ike, I want to cancel my subscription. When I subscribe to a magazine, I want news--not love notes about that golf-playing idiot in Washington.

GORDON H. MARTIN San Francisco

The Eugerons

Sir:

We were delighted to see our own Amos Alonzo Stagg on your Oct. 20 cover. Mr. Stagg is a vital part of the life of our association. He is idolized by the youngsters, and has become an example of the highest qualities of Christian character--which we have encouraged our older boys and young men to follow.

CARL I. MELANDER Y.M.C.A. Stockton, Calif.

Sir:

You included the butcher, the baker, the candlestick maker, but nary a diplomat. I therefore nominate Robert Peet Skinner, a career Foreign Service great. As keen as mustard, Mr. Skinner at 92 is fighting for the return of an honest U.S. dollar.

JAMES B. STEWART U.S. Ambassador (ret.) Denver

Sir:

Or Pediatrician Dr. Sydney V. Haas of New York. He is 85 plus.

MARGOT SEITELMAN Brooklyn

Sir:

Seeing Eisenstaedt's gallery of U.S. elders is inspiring. What a privilege it would be to meet the owners of those faces. One would like to know about their errors and omissions, foibles, loves and hates, and whether they were child delinquents or loved by their parents and happy in their youth.

MRS. R. G. MESNEY Curac,ao, N.A.

Sir:

Oho ! So TIME has interest only in men! ADELINE DE WALT REYNOLDS

Hollywood

P:Oh, no! For an Eisenstaedt study of "Grandma" Reynolds, 97, who became a movie actress after 75, see cut.--ED.

Sir:

How could you possibly have omitted Bishop Herbert Welch, the remarkable senior bishop of the Methodist Church, who is 96 ?

HOWARD E. STRAUCH Delaware, Ohio

Sir:

Growing old usefully--excellent! Thank you for your kind reference. It accords well with "eugeron" [a well old man].

C. WARD CRAMPTON, M.D. Miami

The Pleasure of His Company

Sir:

Plenty of men and women come to Broadway bearing checkbooks. Bumptious or diffident, they hover on the fringe for a season or two. They go over the bumps and to the cleaners and back to their natural habitat, taking with them some deductible losses and dinner conversation. Roger Stevens

I Oct. 20] came with a checkbook, but he made it. He is in the theater. And his contribution is unique. You described him the opening night of a hit. Closing night of a flop tells a lot more. He blew in from somewhere (London? Washington? Detroit?) to catch the author. "I'm glad we did it."

MRS. ELIA KAZAN New York City

Sir:

I have done five plays with Mr. Roger L. Stevens. Unlike most producers, he brings idealism, love and a fine mind to our theater, and I, for one, am grateful for it.

KIM STANLEY New York City

Sir:

Mr. Stevens became a member of this company in 1951 only because the then writing members of it--Maxwell Anderson, Robert Sherwood and Elmer Rice--had desperate need of the business ability and organizing acumen to accelerate production of plays by other authors which Roger Stevens, a successful businessman, was eminently able to provide. That Mr. Stevens also happened to have some ready cash was deplored by none of us.

WILLIAM FIELDS The Playwrights' Company-New York City

Our Man on PP. 39-41

Sir, I am puzzled by the reference in your kindly review of Our Man in Havana to my slipping in a cruel] pointless carica ture of a dumb U.S. businessman." I can't remember any such character.

I grow old ... I grow old . . .

GRAHAM GREENE New York City

P: See pp. 39-41 of Our Man in Havana.--ED.

Buckley's Elite

Sir:

Your Oct. 20 Milestone implied that William Frank Buckley founded a school in order to produce an "intellectual elite" from his grandchildren. My father's grandchildren are an intellectual elite by heritage. The school he founded will give them the education befitting such an elite.

ALOISE BUCKLEY HEATH West Hartford, Conn.

The Pope

Sir:

I am not a Catholic, but I was extremely glad to see the tasteful way in which TIME, Oct. 20 reported the Pope's demise. I think it was disgusting the way others reported it--as if it were a football game or some other play-by-play contest.

BERNARD K. STUART Morristown, N.J.

Sir:

You say that Pius XII "was able to make a tormented world feel the attraction of Christian goodness." Protestants in Spain, Colombia and Italy never felt this Christian goodness at the hands of the Roman Catholic Church during his reign.

CALVIN V. SMALHEER Gates Mills, Ohio

Sir:

I have just read your story. A good many of us wish you would work and write for the reading public instead of the Roman Catholic Church.

CLIFFORD WORTHING

Cincinnati

Talking Women

Sir:

I am shocked to hear the news of a woman's being considered for ordination in the Lutheran Church. Britta Olen says she's going to Africa to preach the word of God [Oct. 13]; yet she is doing exactly what the Bible forbids--how is she going to explain this to the natives?

FREDERICK PORTER Long Beach, Calif.

Sir:

"Let your women keep silence in the churches" does not refer to women as preachers but to their tendency for gossiping.

ELIZABETH ASKUE Cleveland

Arp's Art

Sir:

Congratulations on your Oct. 13 review of the sculpture of Jean Arp. His work is not only modern but eternal as well. His is definitely some of the freest, loveliest art I've ever seen.

How about a picture of this remarkable creator?

R. G. HALEVY

Santa Barbara, Calif.

Mutual Misunderstanding

Sir:

Perhaps Mr. Richard M. Alpher, who wrote [Oct. 6] about making "your stupid Southerners stupider," should come South to school to learn the proper use of the comparative form of the word "stupid." How can we come to mutual understanding when we have such people, who are blatant, ungracious, prejudiced and ignorant?

LEON W. GILLASPIE Birmingham

Sir:

Re our school-less winter [Oct. 13!: We Virginians have a past to be proud of, the present to be ashamed of, and a future ol rehabilitation.

GLENN N. WILL Broadway, Va.

Inside & Outside China

Sir:

Never have I read a horror story as frightening as ''The People's Communes" [Oct. 20]. One really wonders if this isn't the end of civilization. Red China is heading fast to the day when "privacy" is a dirty word, as "individual" is already. Living in barracks! Women "released" to dig ditches rather than make homes for their families! Even small vegetable plots outlawed!

JEAN BERRY Altadena, Calif.

Sir:

"Ants" or not, the Chinese people are probably happier and more prosperous today than they ever were under Chiang's corrupt regime. You Yanks might do well to clean up your own backyard before casting disparaging remarks at the efforts of others.

GORDON E. WRIGHT Stanbridge East, Quebec

Sir:

Last month my husband and I visited Red China as tourists. Not for a minute would we underestimate the value of their primitive blast furnaces or their national scrap-metal drives. China's population is organized to lift this country into the 20th century, and when you refer to her 500 million peasants as "ants" it is worth remembering that quotation from Proverbs: "Go to the ant, thou sluggard; consider her ways, and be wise; etc."

PRUDENCE MYER Melbourne, Australia

Moon Probe

Sir:

Re the Pioneer moon rocket [Oct. 20]: Can the educators in the U.S. claim any credit for the partial success of the moon rocket, or are they credited only with the failures?

CARL CAMPBELL

Shippensburg, Pa.

Sir:

You say "in three minutes [the Pioneer moon rocket] was gone from sight, truly free, reaching up to where no man-made thing had ever touched." On Oct. 16, 1957 some of my colleagues and I launched artificial meteors from an Aerobee rocket at Holloman Air Force Base at about 300,000-ft. height and with speeds up to 50,000 ft. per second. At least one of these pellets has now made the tour around the sun.

F. ZWICKY Professor of Astrophysics California Institute of Technology Pasadena, Calif.

Sir:

It looks as if the rocket boys have their hand deep in the till and are freely indulging their very human desire to play with fireworks. It is time for someone who still retains a spark of sanity to tell us the truth: that we are spending billions--with little or no chance of realizing any practical return--at a time when we desperately need to balance the budget and check inflation. As for going to the moon, an astronomer, once asked at a lecture whether anything would be gained by sending a man to the moon, said: "Yes, we would be rid of another moron."

FLOYD YOUNG Carlsbad, Calif.

Sir:

Fortunately for him, TIME, Oct. 20 does not identify the "Air Force colonel" whose estimate of the firing of the moon-probe rocket was expressed in such foulmouthed banality. If this represents the mental and moral level of those who are playing with the terrible new weapons of destruction, God have pity on us.

(THE REV.) ALBERT P. STAUDERMAN The Lutheran Philadelphia

Sir:

Enjoyed reading your article, in particular the attitude of Louis Dunn and his men, who devoted long hours of overtime, sans compensation, to accomplish this feat. This is like a breath of fresh air in contrast to the prevalent attitude of conditioning workers not to raise their heads from the pillow unless they receive a guaranteed-annual-get-up-fringe-benefit.

JOSCELYN SURTA Chicago

Other Voices, Other Rooms

Sir:

Why, oh why with its scientists and engineers designing Sputniks, mooniks and mis-sileniks, hasn't the world been able to produce one simple toilet tank that will not run, leak, stick, snort, rattle or roar, dribble, burble and gurgle?

FRANK KLOCK

Pasadena, Calif.

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