The Uncommon Market

Sir:

Re your Feb. 8 cover portrait: the hat may be that of Napoleon, the bust that of Louis XIV, but the words coming from le grand Charles's mouth can only be those of that witty but cynical monarch Louis XV: "Apres moi, le deluge."*

RICHARD J. HEMAN

Cardinal Glennon College

St. Louis

Sir:

Though I hold no brief for General de Gaulle, and wish he'd retire tomorrow, I don't hold him entirely responsible for the mess we are in today.

Britain had the opportunity to join the Common Market when it was first formed, and probably would have, had it not been for the cry-baby attitude of such countries as Australia, New Zealand, and my own Canada, who by now should surely be old enough to stand on their own feet, rather than continue to cling to Mamma's skirts.

Britain is no longer the great nation she was, and it is time she started thinking of herself, rather than of her children.

C.P.HOWELL

Vancouver, B.C.

Sir:

Thank you, Charles de Gaulle, for forcing Britain and the U.S. to do what they should have done 100 years ago: form an English-speaking Common Market (Britain, U.S., Canada, Australia, New Zealand, and India).

HAROLD R. NISSLEY

Cleveland Heights, Ohio

Sir:

We British and our EFTA friends must form a united Europe with the Common Market countries eventually. You Americans, like many of us, are impatient for free world union. Do not forget, however, that Europe is led mainly by men in their late 60s, 70s and 80s, some of whom have been in power 10, 20 and even 30 years. For the present, therefore, free world progress, security and accord must still give way to self-pride and personal whims and ambitions, while those that obstinately refuse to stand down to younger men futilely strive to retain or regain past national glories.

IAN G. BEGG

Seoul, Korea

Sir:

As a political science student, I would like to thank TIME and particularly Writer McLaughlin for the De Gaulle cover story. It cleared up any doubts, or rather misunderstandings, I have had concerning the entire Common Market question. I feel that these things will eventually clear themselves up, as they have in previous clashes on Anglo-French policy.

THOMAS P. MCLAUGHLIN*

Lake Forest College

Lake Forest, Ill.

Taxed

Sir:

In your excellent article on Mortimer Caplin and our federal tax mess [Feb. 1], you stated: "Caplin has proposed regulations that all T. & E. [travel and entertainment] deductions be itemized if they amount to more than $25. At first he put the figure at $10 . . ."

The $10 figure you referred to, which was changed to $25, has nothing to do with itemization. It has to do with receipts to back up the itemization. The important point is that you must keep proper records to prove the time, place and business purpose of all expenditures, regardless of amount.

JOSEPH M. SEGEL

Philadelphia

Chosen People

Sir:

Orchids to you for your excellent presentation of the history and efforts of the Anti-Defamation League of B'nai B'rith [Feb. 8].

However, in a footnote you refer to the fact that "the Jews claim that they are God's chosen people." A large segment of your readers might misunderstand the expression "chosen people." The very widely used High Holiday Prayer Book that was compiled and arranged by Rabbi Morris Silverman says:

"No concept of Judaism has been more persistently misunderstood than that of the Chosen People. It has been confused with false pride and national chauvinism. It has been mistakenly identified with the pernicious doctrine of racial superiority. For the Jew, the concept of the 'chosen' people meant that more was expected of him than of others and that his actions would be judged by higher standards. It was a form of noblesse oblige, imposing upon him moral responsibilities, the need of stressing holiness, righteousness, and other spiritual values. The Prayer Book usually interprets the meaning of chosen people by linking it with the gift of the Torah, which is Israel's sacred trust and Israel's contribution to mankind."

ELLIOTT KROUSE

New York City

Nudes

Sir:

Your article on Artist Ben Johnson [Feb. 1] said that "the device of painting hatted nudes seems to be uniquely Johnson's."

Johnson had a significant forerunner who also created nudes wearing hats. TIME forgot about the German Lucas Cranach (1472-1553), whose paintings also portray females avec un cha peau.

LYNN DENTON

LINDA WILSON

Agnes Scott College

Decatur, Ga.

> Cranach dressed his models in men's hats--the large feathered headgear worn by the German Landsknechte (see cut).--ED.

Too Few Oos?

Sir:

Otto Harbach won't mind now, but Jeannette MacDonald or Nelson Eddy might object. In the Feb. 1 obituary on Librettist Harbach, there were not enough oooos in Indian Love Call.

Now, who can sing Indian Love Call without all the oos?

(MRS.) BETTY D. FORBES

Lebanon, Ind.

> Jeannette and Nelson notwithstanding, the sheet music has only five oos per line in the refrain.--ED.

An Author on Fiction

Sir:

One of the communications in your letters column [Feb. 1] that concerned the errors in technical accuracy in the bestseller Fail-Safe ended with the outraged protest that it wasn't true, that it was "nothing but fiction."

Not being in the mood for a thriller, I haven't read the book, but I assume it is clearly labeled a novel--in other words, fiction. Fiction has many responsibilities, such as to entertain and to stimulate the imagination, but it has no responsibility whatsoever to be true. In fact it has, as the existence of libel laws attests, a responsibility to be not true. The reader can't have it both ways.

One is reminded of the scare over Orson Welles's fictional Martian-invasion broadcast, and of those viewers of soap operas

James Thurber wrote about who have so little sense of the distinction between reality and fiction that they send real wedding presents, costing real money, when a soap opera shows its heroine getting married, and when, not two months later, the same heroine expects a blessed soap-opera event, send real layettes.

NANCY HALE Charlottesville, Va.

Ambassador Abroad

Sir:

In your issue of Jan. 18, you published an article on the Middle East in which it was stated:

"On instructions from Washington, U.S. Ambassador to Egypt John Badeau last week brought the major foes face to face. In Badeau's presence at Cairo, Saudi Arabia's U.N. specialist, Ahmad Shukairy, held a long, secret conference with Egypt's Foreign Minister Mahmoud Fawzi."

I am informed by Ambassador Badeau that these statements are completely untrue. At no time during Mr. Shukairy's visit to Cairo did Ambassador Badeau see him.

PHILLIPS TALBOT

Assistant Secretary

Department of State

Washington, D.C.

King of the Corral

Sir:

I admire the work of prolific, prosperous Ernie Havemann [Feb. 1], but challenge your citation of him as "King of the Corral" among freelance writers.

My own byline last year appeared 23 times in twelve magazines, including Atlantic Monthly, Satevepost, Look, and Playboy. In deference to Mortimer Caplin, I shall not cite income, but I suggest that 23 appearances in twelve magazines must outrank Havemann's 13 in five. And have you never heard of Mort Weisinger or Richard ("Dick the Factory") Gehman?

KEN W. PURDY

London

> Freelancers Purdy et al. do indeed bulk large down in the old corral, but Havemann, having sold his lucky day at the races to LIFE, has all that and $61,908 too.--ED.

Island Favorites

Sir:

Thank you for the wonderful article on holidaying in the Caribbean [Feb. ij. It was well written and informative, though I was mildly disappointed by the few lines afforded Trinidad and the complete omission of beautiful Tobago. You did not mention our unique carnival, celebrated two days before Ash Wednesday--a spectacle of color well worth traveling all this way to see.

NAPIER PILLAI

Port-of-Spain, Trinidad

Sir:

I was surprised you did not include the Dominican Republic. It has remarkably attractive tourist facilities, and, as the recent scene of one of Latin America's fairest and freest elections, is undoubtedly headed toward successful development after the long night of Trujillismo.

RUSSELL H. FITZGIBBON

U.C.LA.

Los Angeles

Sir:

Your "Carib Song," touting the posh spots, left me tone-deaf. It was in Port-au-Prince that my wife and I really felt as though we had left the States. The Creoles exude a contagious warmth, affectioi. and charm. Within one day, I discovered I spoke with a French accent of dubious origin. On the second day, my wife caught me kissing the hand of a lovely Creole girl. We had just been introduced. Vive le Old World charm.

L. A. KNIGHT

Grand Island, N.Y.

Sir:

You neglected to mention the most delightful and different island of them all, Aruba. A small, windy Dutch island that is located near the coast of Venezuela, it has much to offer those who want to get away from it all, including the many tourists who inhabit the other islands.

Since you were name-dropping hotels in your article, may I venture to say the Aruba Caribbean is by far the most desirable.

(MRS.) JUDY McKEE SHAW

St. Louis

Sir:

I would like to correct an impression left by your otherwise delightful article on Caribbean travel that unless the visitor can match dollar for dollar with Mr. Rockefeller, Mr. Mellon and Mr. Ford he had better stay home. The fact is that the majority of Barbados accommodations, for example, are approximately $15 with meals at this peak time of year.

PETER MORGAN

Chairman

Barbados Tourist Board

Barbados

For Fromm

Sir:

Let's welcome Psychoanalyst Erich Fromm [Jan. 25] to the world of politics. He can do much less harm there than he has done with the human mind.

PAUL G. NEIMARK

Executive Editor

Men's Digest

Chicago

Sir:

The concern for the destiny and infinite worth of man, a vision that there could be a day when men would find there was nothing more important to exchange than "trust for trust," was Marx's core of meaning. Fromm, with similar concern, sees the striving for individual self-realization and brotherhood (though they have become more and more unconscious yearnings) eroded, repressed and misdirected with the help of social forces.

When man gives up the struggle for self, he is on the road to giving up reason, freedom and then sanity. What is frightening and "rotten" for Fromm is not primarily the characteristics of middle, upper or lower classes but the general symptom of avoiding the pain of employing reason--the ease with which we turn the Kremlin into a menagerie of monsters devoid of understandable, recognizable human motivations and the West into the faultless frame of reference by which all else is judged.

ROBERT E. EPSTEIN

New York City

Religion & Race

Sir:

An intelligent observer can easily report such bitter remarks, some of which I myself heard, as were made by certain participants in the recent National Conference on Religion and Race [Jan. 25]. Religious bodies in the U.S. deserve their quota of blame for neglect of the acute racial issue. But I fail to see past failures as an excuse for scoffing at an honest effort to marshal joint religious forces in an all-out assault upon the rapidly growing spirit of racial hatred. Are we to leave untried the power of a united appeal to our country's conscience just because it looks funny to see Protestants, Jews and Catholics sitting down at the same table ?

(THE REV.) JOHN LAFARGE, S.J.

Associate Editor

America

New York City

Sir:

Stringfellow ("the most practical thing to do now is weep") and Campbell ("it is too late to establish harmonious relationships between the races") were but two of about 15 scheduled speakers in the four days of the meeting. Their pessimism was so far from being the dominant note that Mr. Stringfellow was loudly controverted in the auditorium and widely denounced in the corridors, while Mr. Campbell, so far as I could see, was ignored.

The real keynoter was Dr. Abraham J. Heschel, whose book you review on the same page but whose thumping paper at the conference you ignore. Dr. Heschel recalled an earlier conference on religion and race, that between Moses and Pharaoh, and predicted an equally happy outcome for this one. His prediction, I feel certain, will be borne out in the long-term fruits of this historic meeting.

I am thankful that TIME was not around to throw cold water on William Lloyd Garrison and his fellow abolitionists.

RICHARD P. GREENLEAF

Marion, Ind.

Sir:

I write you as a white man who pastored five years for an all-Negro church and two years in a racially inclusive congregation. I'd hate to think that the best hope we have to offer our people is the philosophy of the Rev. Will D. Campbell.

(THE REV.) P. EDGAR WILLIAMS

First Church of God

Chicago

Return to Humanism

Sir:

It was heartening to see the cover story on Architect-Humanist Yamasaki [Jan. 18]. I speak for myself as an industrial designer when I confess that for some time I was in considerable fear that the American architects were rapidly erecting not structures to be inhabited by man but, on the contrary, horrifyingly functional (and economical) glass and aluminum cages, spreading across the U.S.A. like an uncontrollable cancer.

Happily, and perhaps influenced by the philosophies of the Yamasakis of our era, there appears to be a gentle but firm return to sanity and sensitivity in our total approach to designing for the human being--both in the art of the structure that envelops man and in the art of those objects that man uses within that structure.

DAVID K. MUNRO

Fulbright Lecturer

Chulalongkorn University

Bangkok, Thailand

* More often attributed to Madame de Pompadour, speaking to Louis XV, in which case, the quote goes, "Apres nous, le deluge." Whoever said it wasn't being original: it goes back to an old French proverb about spendthrifts.

* Son of Writer McLaughlin.

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