Letters, Jun. 7, 1948

Oh, Henry

Sir:

. . . Your article on Henry Wallace [TIME, May 10] . . . was an obviously biased piece of writing, no help at all to us readers who are trying to make up their minds about the presidency . . .

ARTHUR B. SIMON New York City

Sir:

Your obvious sympathy for Mr. Wallace and his mistakes has made me feel so sorry for the poor man that I have decided to vote for him.

PHILIP KESSLER Los Angeles, Calif.

Sir:

Instead of the signs “Babies for Wallace,” wouldn’t “Wallace for Childish Ideas” be much more suitable ?

EDGAR HEMMELMAN Wessington Springs, S. Dak.

Sir:

. . . Your article is full of stupid innuendo and untruthful reporting . . .

“Henry’s limp hand.” Now, did you or your reporter ever shake his hand?

[Yes.—ED.]

“Looked tired and sullen.” Anything but! He’s the picture of health.

[He looked tired and sullen.—ED.] “Hair almost white.” Who is color-blind ? [Reader Chase.—ED.] “Wandering aimlessly around hotel lobbies.” He never did that in his life. He wouldn’t waste his time!

[If he had an aim, it wasn’t apparent.—ED.]

“Old friends came up to him with a smile and tried to talk. They soon gave up and just stared.” Fiddlesticks!

[Fiddle-faddle!—ED.]

(MRS.) SHERRET S. CHASE Ames, Iowa

Nymphs & Centaurs

Sir:

… I have said many things about myself, some flattering, some not so flattering, yet I never recall the statement which you attribute to me [”Who once described himself as ‘a centaur gadding about with nymphs, or Solomon dickering with his harem’ “—TIME, May 10] … So I put my research staff (consisting of my wife and myself) to work, and we finally dug up a review of my retrospective show of two years ago, in which a critic had said this about my work: “His early etchings of the 19205 show him, to be a painter of a private paradise whose homeland is alternately the Bible and Greek mythology. At times he thinks of himself as a talented youth burned in the fiery furnace, at times he is a centaur gadding about with nymphs, or Solomon dickering with his harem. In those years Evergood was a very young and a very immature painter . . .”

In the interest of truth and accuracy, and in order to preserve my wife’s peace of mind, would you mind correcting the distorted impression contained in your footnote?

PHILIP EVERGOOD New York City

¶ TIME’S apologies to Artist Evergood for stupidly attributing to him the New Masses’ high-flown comments. For a sample Evergood nymph, see cut.—ED.

Clinicians’ Children

Sir:

. . . Magnifying a small portion of TIME’S version of Dr. Leo Kanner’s report on “Frosted Children” [TIME, April 26], L. B. Martin suggests that through their efforts to achieve a scientific understanding of human behavior, psychologists and psychiatrists must deny the importance of affection and emotional expression in mental health, and that this denial would necessarily be reflected in their own children [TIME, Letters, May 17]. Nothing could be farther from the truth. As clinicians, psychologists and psychiatrists try to help their clients understand their emotions, and to learn to express them in normally acceptable ways in daily living. As parents, psychologists and psychiatrists could hardly be expected to refute their professional beliefs and produce the “frosted children” Mrs. Martin expects . . .

Kanner’s point is well taken, and jibes with current views on the effects of emotional barrenness often found in homes where parents are too busy or too uninterested to devote time and affection to children . . .

T. R. VALLANCE

Asst. Professor of Psychology

R. S. FELDMAN

Instructor in Psychology University of Massachusetts Amherst, Mass.

Arcaro Up

Sir:

FOR THE THOROUGHBRED CLUB OF AMERICA, THANK YOU FOR YOUR FAIR AND OBJECTIVE REPORTING OF THE AMERICAN RACING SCENE 1948 IN THE ARCARO COVER STORY [TIME, MAY 17].

E. E. D. SHAFFER President

Thoroughbred Club of America Lexington, Ky.

Sir:

. . . The Arcaro story . . . had interest, authority, understanding and color … It was a thoroughly good job.

HERBERT BAYARD SWOPE New York City

Sir:

I am now convinced that TIME is psychic. The mutuel ticket on the cover showed the winner of the Preakness (No. 4) before the post positions were even drawn . . .

LLOYD M. ST. OURS

Baltimore, Md.

Harlem Report [Cont’d]

Sir:

TIME had no need to apologize to Superintendent of Schools Jansen for its report on Harlem [TIME, May 17]. Eight years before his “. . . two-year-project to reduce delinquency in Harlem,” I established a psychiatric clinic at P.S. 89, in deep Harlem, under the sponsorship of the boss of the Truant Officers, George Chatfield. My final report, after two years of zealous effort, is so close to your April 5th [review of] the present Harlem Report, that I shall spare you the actual comparisons. And this was six years before Jansen’s special pleading that Harlem gangs “mimicked on the streets the warfare their older brothers were waging in Europe and in the Pacific.”

EDWARD E. HARKAVY, M.D. New York City

Sir:

Copians, Slicksters, Buccaneers, Spanish Dukes, Irish Dukes, Sabers, Royalistics, Imperial Lords, Fangwoods, Cobras, Mysterious Five, Mutineers, Bachelors, Turks, Olsen Gang, Egan’s Rats, Frenchmen, Over Dukes, Walkie Talkies, Socialistics, Comets, Redskins, Bowery Bums, Shamrocks, Commanches, Clashers, Bucks, Aggies, Forty Thieves, Rapiers, Red Devils, Lisbons, Champs, Trojans, Coriettes, Tiny Tims, Dragons, Jackson Knights, Vladecks, Bowery Boys, Braves, Garfield Boys, Navy Street Boys, Sand Street Boys, Red Hook Boys, Jolly Stompers, Redskin Roamers, Coney Island Boys, Beavers, Bishops, South Brooklyn Boys, Avon Dukes, Chancellors, Penguins, Robins, Nits . . .

This is a partial list of some of the kid gangs which Superintendent of Schools Jansen meant when he spoke of them in the past tense as if they no longer existed . . . Let

Mr. Jansen put them in his opium pipe . . . and remember that we will hear a lot more from them in the future.

HAL ELLSON

Brooklyn, N.Y.

Peeping Poros

Sir:

In your article on African Negro sculpture [TIME, May 10] you refer to the “wholly abstract mask [see cut, left] used in the circumcision ceremony of the secret Poro Society of the Ivory Coast Dan Tribe.”

Nonsense—it obviously symbolizes the human hands held over the face of a boy during the act of circumcision, a ritualistic act among some aboriginal tribes.

VANCE A. HOLCOMBE Wallace, Neb.

¶ To ensure the secresy of such ceremonies, the Poro had another mask, the Gblo ze ge (see cut, right)The man wearing the Gblo ze ge mask had the task of killing any boy caught spyinginto the mysteries. Such a peeping Poro was first made insensible with poison in his nose and eyes, then seated on a smokeless fire. After he was properly roasted, he was consumed by all the zos (the local big shots) of the countryside called together for the occasion.—ED.

Word Test

Sir:

After puzzling for days, I am still baffled. Why is the answer to the third group of words in the N.A.S.P. test [TIME, May 10] “adjacent”?

[Pick out the item which violates a positive rule or characteristic of the other five: adjacent, conform, deprive, liken, oblivious, prior.)

The word that doesn’t fit in that grouping is “liken,” an Anglo-Saxon derivative. All the others . . . are formed from Latin roots . . .

LAURA B. ALEXANDER Cape Elizabeth, Me.

Sir:

. . . “Deprive” would be possible, proceeding on this hypothesis: conform to, liken to, prior to, oblivious to, but deprive of … The reason for selecting “adjacent” completely eludes me. A misprint, a bad question, or are we “oblivious” to something quite obvious?

GORDON JOHNSON

Chicago, Ill.

¶N.A.S.P. erred. The correct answer is “deprive,” because it takes the prepositions “of” or “from,” while the other words in the group take “to” or “with.”—ED.