Letters, Dec. 15, 1958

Work: Its Rights & Wrongs

Sir:

Re your Nov. 24 comments on the right-to-work laws: every man’s right to work and earn his living in the country in which he has residence is a fundamental liberty. It is a right as fundamental as trial by jury or freedom of religion. Today there is no conflict between management and labor. Management has simply thrown in the sponge and adopted the motto: “If you can’t beat them, join them.” The closed shop smacks of ostracism if not outright violence. No skilled artisan wishes to become a mere tool, the slave of the type of ex-con who has lately wormed himself into labor leadership.

(MRS.) FRANCES O. BRIGGS

Ithaca, N.Y.

Sir:

As a housewife and mother, I find myself still part of an open shop, but I shudder to think that any job I might get could be had only by paying tribute to some power-mad labor leader. Looking at my children, I feel that we must make the right-to-work laws justify the trouble, or we sleeping (almost) free Americans may wake up to find ourselves regretful prisoners of the “liberals.”

Believe it or not, in 1941 it was F.D.R. who said: “The Government of the United States will not order nor will Congress pass legislation ordering a closed shop . . . That would be too much like the Hitler method toward labor.”

SIBYL O. SAUNDERS

Wellesley Hills, Mass.

Penguins & Places

Sir:

In TIME, Nov. 24, I read a letter concerning the transplantation of penguins from the Antarctic to the Arctic. Quite recently this airline enforced the immigration of two penguins from the South to the North Pole.

It all began in Rome, on a broadcasting station’s quiz show, where one of the questions was: “Can penguins live at the North Pole?” KLM had just inaugurated its polar service from Amsterdam to Tokyo, so we took two penguins to the Arctic to find out. It was not easy to arrange their accommodations.

In Anchorage the Alaskan press club organized a great reception. The penguins were renamed Egegik (an Alaskan name) and Angela (Italian) Kinglea (meaning very good friend). They consumed their first meal in the Far North, consisting of hooligans (local fish) and salmon.

At all events they are quite happy in their new home, for as soon as they got into the snow their grey feathers at once took on a glossy black sheen again.

R. J. VOGELS KLM Royal Dutch Airlines

The Hague

Sir:

For the time being, Mr. and Mrs. Egegik Penguin are residing at the Arctic Research Test Center in Anchorage in preparation for their life in the Arctic. These penguins are the first to come to the 49th state in more than 100 years.

HELEN A. SHENITZ

Historical Library and Museum Juneau, Alaska

Man of the Year

Sir:

Obviously, Boris Pasternak.

HARM J. DE BLIJ

Durban, South Africa

Sir:

Mao Tse-tung. This year he told Khrushchev what to do.

BERT D. SOLOMON

Hollywood, Calif.

Sir:

If Nikita Khrushchev was TIME’S 1957 choice for Man of the Year, then he doubly deserves your selection for 1958. No other man dominated the world’s news more, albeit to the disgust of free men and nations, than this sly, scheming, abusive, arrogant, warmongering, vodka-guzzling Soviet Premier. His crowning achievement, in a year of diabolic propaganda missiles and poison-pen missives, is his current step to fold up the four-power occupation of Berlin, thus defying Western determination to hold on in West Berlin. What other choice is more timely ?

B. K. FRANK

Portland, Ore.

Sir:

Let us honor a truly great man: Herbert Hoover.

Lois S. SHINKWIN

San Diego, Calif.

Sir:

If France is of any consequence in the scheme of world affairs, De Gaulle is the representative force of the year. However significant or negligible his accomplishments to come, he has assembled France.

LEE J. KINGSMILL Seattle

Sir:

Vice Admiral H. G. Rickover, U.S.N.

B. MATHIEU ROOs New York City

Sir:

Animal of the Year: The Vicuna—for its significant role of informer on the Republican Administration.

JOHN D. COWANS

Montreal

Sir:

Pakistan’s General Mohammed Ayub Khan. No leader of the pro-Western Asiatic nations has a mass following equal to that of our President.

MOHDAZIZ HAJI DOSSA

Karachi

The Older Rapscallion

Sir:

Enjoyed your fine cinema review of The Horse’s Mouth, but found it interesting where you state Alec Guinness “never quite manages to convince anybody that the old rapscallion [Gulley Jimson] is really a genius . . . He is a highly intelligent actor, but he simply lacks the demonic force to fill out a personality as large as Jimson’s [Nov. 24].” I can’t help thinking back a few years to when my late, demonic-forced husband, Robert (Odd Man Out) Newton, wanted to play Joyce Gary’s hero. He was constantly being told he should and was trying to raise the backing. I just couldn’t help wondering which way the review would have turned had Newton raised the money first.

VERA NEWTON

Los Angeles

Christian Discussion

Sir:

Four consecutive weeks of Catholic propaganda in your magazine is enough. We’ve had it! We Protestants pay our subscription just like the others. Your masthead nowhere states that you publish a Roman Catholic magazine. Good thing this isn’t 1960; Candidate Kennedy wouldn’t have a fighting chance with all this provocative Roman fuss.

(THE REV.) JOHN F. STRENG

St. James Evangelical Lutheran Church Wheeling, W.Va.

Sir:

I stand in shame of fellow Protestants who have used your columns to display their gross stupidity. Pope Pius was truly one of the great men of our time and was devoted, as few others, to peace and brotherhood.

ALFRED RANDALL JR.

Painted Post, N.Y.

Sir:

To say that your magazine is “top-heavy with Catholic news” at the time of a papal choice is like complaining that it is top-heavy with political news at election time.

SALLY PALMER

North Hollywood, Calif.

Sir:

Some letters in your columns have accused you of being heavily pro-Catholic; I have found you on occasion to be just the opposite. In all, though, I think you have been quite safely neutral.

M. W. STODDART

New York City

The Greek Words for It

Sir:

Your Nov. 24 article on Cyprus includes some highly unfortunate words. If the British get tougher in Cyprus, the NKVD is surely going to develop an inferiority complex. Do not forget that when the Greeks had the highest civilization on earth, the British still lived up in trees.

BASIL G. TARLADGIS Athens, Greece

Sir:

Thanks for the fine story with its comments by Britain’s General Darling. Go to a foreign land, occupy it, “get to grips with the bastards” and issue pistols to anyone who can kill a Greek—what a perfect picture of British “culture” at work.

VLADIMIR POPOVICH

Santa Monica, Calif.

Watch Out, Monty

Sir:

Some Italians may be satisfied with the apology they got from Field Marshal Viscount Montgomery of Alamein [Nov. 24], but unless he does a better job of apologizing, he had better hide. If he doesn’t, I or some other Italian will have the pleasure of showing him how brave we can really be.

BRUNO ARDUINI

Oakland, Calif.

Roasted Rib

Sir:

Having been associated with real intellectuals in the field of theology and secular interests for the past several years, I find it amazing that Author Robert Graves can draw such nonsense from his observations of the Genesis story. It is further amazing that anyone would buy such rot as his latest book, Adam’s Rib [Nov. 17]—at that price too [$6]. Ouch!

(THE REV.) WILLIAM R. COSE

Evangelical Free Church Hamilton City, Calif.

Sir:

Though scholars may gravely conceive The “real” truth of Adam and Eve,

Solutions they proffer

At six bucks an offer Are rather more hard to believe.

MRS. DON J. HANSON

Wheaton, Ill.

It Makes You Think

Sir:

Re your Nov. 24 comment on IBM’s common stock: If an owner of IBM common had 100 shares December 1933, how many shares would he now have with splits and stock dividends?

HARRISON B. SMITH

Cincinnati

¶One hundred shares of IBM, worth $8,900 in 1933, now amount to 1,713 shares with a value of $756,711.—ED.