Letters: Aug. 6, 1965

Painter of Dreams

Sir: Congratulations on your superb Chagall spread [July 30.] It is fantastically impressive.

RICHARD A. MADIGAN Assistant Director Corcoran Gallery of Art Washington, D.C.

Sir: Congratulations.

MARTHA BENNETT KING Art Institute of Chicago Chicago

Sir: In Chagall you have selected a classic symbol of the decline of the Paris School, the most important creative art center since the Renaissance. Just compare the daring, but successful, lyrical vitality of his 1911-1914 pictures with the decorative boudoir puffs and frills of his post-World War II efforts. The world innovative center for Western art shifted in the 1940s to New York under the influence of noted refugee painters from Europe, such as Mondriaan, Leger and Matta.

STEPHEN D. PAINE Boston

¶ Not to mention Refugee Chagall.

Sir: How could TIME print such meaningless, airy-fairy prose on an artist who foists his polychromatic private hallucinations on the public as art?

KENNETH NARY New York City

Sir: Your story renewed my admiration and appreciation for this artist, who can paint what many of us can only dream. His universal figures and impressions surpass the barriers of language and age. (MRS.) ANN KUPERBERG Elizabeth, NJ.

Martian Chronicle

Sir: In answer to Reader Rosey’s query [July 30], “Was this trip necessary?”: I believe that the 1965 Mariner IV trip to Mars was no more necessary than the 1492 Columbus trip to America—but Mariner’s impact on mankind may be greater.

P. Y. MATTHEWS Lieutenant Commander, U.S.N. Sandia Base, N. Mex.

Sir: The selection of our space scientists as men of the year is mandatory.

RICHARD J. KOHOUT Major, U.S.A.F. Eglin A.F.B., Fla.

Work Finished

Sir: Re Adlai Stevenson [July 30]: I remember his humorous comment after some prefatory remarks at the Harvard commencement last month. He said: “I suppose that I must talk now and you must listen. I do hope that we both finish our work at the same time!” We all regret that his work is now finished and that we can no longer listen to his eloquent voice.

PETER H. NASH Dean, the Graduate School University of Rhode Island Kingston, R.I.

Sir: As a conservative Republican, I could not support Stevenson for President. But his sincere, eloquent statesmanship at the U.N. was an example to all.

EDWARD E. MONTGOMERY JR. Chicago

Sir: May we offer condolences? To millions the world over, Stevenson represented the finer breed of American and proved that the best man need not always win at politics.

SARWAT ALI NUSRAT ALI AZMAT ALI Karachi, Pakistan

Sir: Does Artist Boris Chaliapin find it as amazing as I do that his 13-year-old painting of the then Governor should parallel so exactly the photograph taken just seconds before Stevenson’s death?

(MRS.) E. JANE WILLS Wilmington, Del.

Bay of Pigs Revisited

Sir: In the discussion of the Bay of Pigs fiasco by Sorensen, Schlesinger and TIME [July 30], the moral issue is ignored. What right has the U.S. to overthrow the government of a sovereign state? We justify our military presence in Viet Nam on the principle that North Viet Nam has no right to interfere with the sovereignty of South Viet Nam. And yet we have ignored this principle in Guatemala, Cuba and the Dominican Republic. How can we ask the world to live by one standard of morality when we insist upon living by two?

LEO A. DESPRES Professor of Anthropology Western Reserve University Cleveland

Sir: I am a Cuban exile who was in Guatemala during the preparation for the invasion. The night we got notice of the tragic defeat I could sense what you point out: “It was a chance, perhaps never to return, to dispose of the single Communist regime in the Western Hemisphere.” The late President had several really amateur advisers. I don’t blame either the Pentagon or the CIA. I blame the naive counselors like Schlesinger for the fateful mistake that has kept my country under Soviet rule.

JOSE M. ARENCIBIA Chicago

Lion & Mosquito

Sir: The struggle between Ho Chi Minh [July 16] and the U.S. brings to mind Aesop’s fable about the lion and the mosquito. The analogy would be complete if the might of the U.S. lion should prove less effective than the peskiness of Ho Chi Minh, the mosquito. Aesop’s victorious mosquito, however, was soon trapped by the web of the spider. And isn’t Red China’s web all primed for Ho?

VASYL CHAPLENKO Brooklyn

Sir: The Administration’s policy in Viet Nam will not convince anyone that we are right, but will only justify the critics of America who say that we have nothing to offer the world except technical know-how and multiplied “overkill” to obliterate large sections of our globe. Our vital interests lie right in our backyard, with Herculean labors right at our own feet—labors to make Americans secure, free and prosperous.

EMMETT PROPAX Calhoun, Neb.

Sir: More than 500 Americans have been killed in Viet Nam to date. More than 550 Americans were killed during the three-day July 4th weekend.

RALPH G. HOFFMANN Chesterton, Ind.

Sir: Critics of American involvement in Viet Nam should heed Kipling’s advice. Capitulation to Communist takeover bids is the modern form of Danegeld.*

ROBERT W. HENDERSON Brentford, Middlesex, England

Equal Rights

Sir: TIME’S Essay on criminal justice [July 16] informed the layman and aroused him to become concerned about law. What was most commendable was your trenchant analysis of the real problem, so often overlooked: equal rights under the law, whether of offended or offender.

J. JAY LOWERY III Fairplay, Colo.

The Hard Way

Sir: Can President Johnson really say with a straight face that it took traveling in 44 states, plus the reading of digests of 20,000 to 30,000 letters a week, for him to realize his responsibility to the cause of Negro rights, and then suggest that all other Americans should consider the challenge of this problem? Is he serious when he says that as a Senator he did not have responsibility for this cause, and at the same time charge the rest of us with this responsibility? I am greatly heartened by Mr. Johnson’s attitude, but his thinking seems to get a little muddled when he is on the defensive.

ROBERT M. STAPLES Member, Steering Committee Billerica Fair Housing Committee Billerica, Mass.

Friends & Lenders

Sir: In answer to your question on foreign aid, “Should a Friend in Need be a Friend in Deed?” [July 23], I refer you to Schopenhauer: “A friend in need is not a friend, indeed; he is merely a borrower.”

E. F. HARVIE Oklahoma City

Sir: Why do we say that the purpose of foreign aid is to help nations secure economic and political independence, and then resort to petty blackmail when they assert their independence? If our form of government and our economic system are truly great, we should permit others to test our noble intentions.

MARGARET LUCAS Cincinnati

Overfulfilment

Sir: Your report on German prostitution [July 23] says that the Dusseldorf brothel with 228 tenants handles nearly 8,000 customers per day. If the Dusseldorf gals are typical, then the enthusiastic reports we have read on the industrious nature of the German worker are greatly understated.

JAMES M. POLLAK Los Angeles

Sir: Gloriosky! That means that each girl has approximately 35 clients per day! And at the rate of $3.75 apiece, that adds up to a very gemütlich $40,000 a year!

PATRICIA K. VANCE Sao Paulo, Brazil

Pacific Junkyard

Sir: Hawaii’s outer-island hotels [July 23] will easily draw the intelligent tourist away from the cellblock gun-turret piles that corrupt Waikiki and blotch the lovely profiles of Diamond Head and Punchbowl. A few of our developers care for Honolulu, once one of the world’s beautiful cities; the rest are feverishly changing it into the architectural junkyard of the Pacific.

ELLSWORTH TAYLOR Honolulu

Sir: I am impressed by your vocabulary. But what does supercalifragilisticexpiali-docious mean? All I have to offer in return is pneumonoultramicroscopicsilicovolcanoconiosis (a lung disease).

(HM3) JOHN J. FORDICE U.S.N. Great Lakes, 111.

¶ Julieandrewsdocious for fab.

Sir: Your story on Rockefeller’s Hawaii hotel contains an error. Mauna Kea is not the tallest island mountain in the world. Mounts Idenburg, Wilhelmina, Juliana and Wilhelm in New Guinea are all higher, and Idenburg is the highest of all, at 15,750 ft.

RHYS V. CAMPBELL Upland, Calif.

¶ Reader Campbell’s error. Though admittedly higher than Mauna Kea (13,825 ft.), Idenburg & Co. are only peaks in the Snow Mountains ranges. Mauna Kea is a full-fledged mountain.

Spahn Yarn

Sir: Your unnecessarily caustic article maligning Pitcher Warren Spahn [July 23] was read with disbelief by this admirer of TIME and Spahn. Are your qualifications for a successful baseball career harmonica playing, airport parties or barroom brawls?

JOHN N. THAYER Prairie Village, Kans.

Pound’s Bust

Sir: I was pleased to see proper recognition of Gaudier-Brzeska in TIME [July 23]. I do not, however, own an estate in the Tyrol. The bust referred to is, for the present, at my son-in-law’s there.

EZRA POUND Rapallo, Italy

Pepperpot & Margarine?

Sir: As a result of your suggestion that our name needs changing [July 16], our friends have proposed Lippincott & Marvelous, Hepcat & Strudel, Turnaround & Twinkletoes. Telephone calls are getting more urgent—and more frequent. In a week, I have 100 of them, and everyone in our organization is getting the same treatment. We are not likely to get any more letters addressed to Apricot & Hercules.

WALTER P. MARGULIES Lippincott & Margulies, Inc. New York City

Good Works

Sir: The average Latin American today is most concerned about better living standards, educational opportunity and full employment. At best, religion is but a sideshow to life. For Catholic and Protestant missionaries to concentrate on evangelization [July 23] is thus to miss the point. In the long run, Christianity in Latin America will be relevant only to the degree that it becomes identified with the contemporary social revolution. The Catholic Church has begun to realize this. By lending technical and professional assistance to church-sponsored programs of social reform, Papal Volunteers are witnessing to the fact that Christ came not to save souls, but to love men.

ROBERT F. CLARK Administrative Assistant Papal Volunteers for Latin America Chicago

Long Ago-Go

Sir: They did a hot dance at the Shadrach-Meshach-and-Abednego-Go.

HALLOCK CAMPBELL Wallingford, Pa.

* Tribute paid by the English to buy off Danish invaders in the 10th century. Kipling’s moral: “The end of that game is oppression and shame,/ And the nation that plays it is lost!”