Letters, Jan. 4, 1954

Symbol of Faith

Sir:

It’s always been a mystery to me why Roman Catholics were so warmly devoted to their Holy Father. Your Dec. 14 story on the Pope gives some idea of their reasons. Though a Protestant myself, I cannot understand those who are so eager to attack our Catholic brothers in Christ as though their beliefs were equivalent to the cold, atheistic inhumanism of Marxist philosophy. I say, thank God for the strength of the Catholic Church on our side in the struggle for peace and decency in the world.

SIMON RODD

Manchester, Conn.

Sir:

. . . In a troubled world, His Holiness stands as a factor of balance, and it is comforting to see such a man, whose only aims and feelings are peace for every nation, and whose hands have been made to bless. Even those who are not Roman Catholics feel deeply impressed when they meet the Pope. His mystical smile and his whole appearance are both moving and heartening. More than a man, he is the symbol of a faith.

ARLETTE MOUNET

Limoges, France

Sir:

Your excellent article on Pope Pius XII made me prouder than ever to be a Catholic and a Catholic priest. Now it will be amusing to read the bitter letters it will evoke from bitter little men with bitter little minds.

(THE REV.) ROBERT J. ANTHONY

Pastor

St. Mary’s Church Eden, Mass.

Sir:

. . . You have given pages to the head of the worst pack of gangsters at large in the world today, next to the pack in Russia . . . Shame on you.

ERNEST MALTER, D.D.S.

Chicago

Sirs:

. . . Please go easy in that Religion section. You’ll be scaring the infidels to death with the idea of a priesthood dominating the U.S. . . .

(MRS.) MAE TINGQUIST

Irwin, Pa.

Sir:

No one doubts the power, prestige and popularity of the Pope, but remember that Stalin and Hitler also had a lot of power, prestige and popularity, and I believe that the Pope is just as wrong … I do not hate Roman Catholics, I feel sorry for them . . . I hate the doctrines, the tactics, methods and objectives . . . The Reformation was all in vain . . .

MEROLD E. WESTPHAL

Independent Presbyterian Church

Greensboro, N.C.

Sir:

… I am disturbed to think that TIME is still confused about the issue of His Holiness’ “asking mercy for the Rosenbergs” . . . The Pope . . . was not committed to expressing his views on the merits of the case in question … He could, however, be the channel through which an announcement could be made that a given number of appeals had been received regarding clemency for the Rosenbergs . . .

GEORGE E. RYAN

Brighton, Mass.

Sir:

Excellent and panoramic your chronicle . . . Missing was what Protestant visitors to the Vatican did when granted an audience with His Holiness. I was third in the line when the Pontiff entered (exactly as you depicted) and the Roman Catholics present bent . . . and kissed the ring. Others just stood like statues … I was struck with the Pope’s quiet, humble manner, and as he gave his blessing, I gave him a hearty Protestant handshake.

(THE REV.) WILLIAM GLENESK

Trinity United Church

Magnetawan, Ont.

Cantankerous Kelly

Sir:

Some years ago the boys of Ireland . . . won freedom for three-quarters of their country. In Ireland’s northeastern corner, which Britain yet holds, there is a small band of gallant Irish boys who still struggle for freedom. One of these, William Kelly, who contumeliously declared he would never swear allegiance “to a foreign Queen,” was, therefor, as reported in your Dec. 14 story, convicted of “sedition” and given choice of binding himself “to be of good behavior” (be a nice, polite Briton) or go, a felon in felon’s garb, to a convict prison. From the dock defiant, and vowing he would never accept the ignominious convict’s garment wherewith Britain has always insisted on humiliating Irish political prisoners, “cantankerous Kelly chose jail.”

TIME’S quoted words are not, as readers will think, the sputtering of an English jingo, but are, marvelous to relate, the considered dictum of TIME . . . Come Fourth of July next, I’ll be eagerly watching for its berating of cantankerous Patrick Henry, and other scurvy fellows of his age . . .

SEUMAS MACMANUS

Miami Beach, Fla.

¶ All Kellys, wherever they are, will give thanks that a MacManus of Miami has risen to refute the charge that one of the contumelious clan of Kelly could ever be merely cantankerous. —ED.

Brandy for Archimedes

Sir:

I never thought that TIME would print, and in color, a picture for which I posed. But you very obligingly did so with your Dufy lithograph in the Dec. 14 issue. When I was a drama student in Paris, early in 1937, I was asked if I would pose for Raoul Dufy in his Montmartre atelier for a picture to go into the soon-to-open International Exposition. I gladly accepted, and found that I was to be Archimedes [see cut] in what a studio aide called une peinture qui sera vraiment extraordinaire. Dufy frocked me in a white toga-like affair which had been borrowed from an amateur theatrical group, had me strike the pose he wanted, and then began to slash away with bold strokes … all the while keeping up a fast line of chatter with various onlookers. I nearly fainted after having stood virtually motionless for 50 minutes—during which the artist completed one painting and then, to my horror, tore it up and began another—but when it was over, Dufy rewarded me with a good snifter of brandy and a pat on the back.

RICHARD THOMAS

New York City

Ex-President’s Reply

Sir:

In your covering of my recent arrest in Miami by Federal authorities [TIME, Dec. 14], I note that although you recognize that I maintained a democratic government—an honorable and almost miraculous record in these days of “strong men,” “people’s democracies” and “international hypocrisy”—you characterize that democratic government as “graft-ridden.” I will not claim that my administration was 100% free of graft. No administration—democratic or dictatorial—could ever make that sweeping claim, just as no nation could truthfully boast that it is free of crime. What a government can and should do is to combat graft or crime with all the vigor possible under the circumstances in which it holds office; and, if TIME should care to look up the actual record, you will have to agree that I was the Cuban executive who made the most consistent and the most fundamental efforts to curb laxity, fraud and disorganization in the management of the public funds . . .

You say that my arrest has been a “big headache” for the U.S. State Department because “Latin Americans . . . would unfailingly interpret it as overt U.S. support of Strongman Batista.” If the policy which seems to have dictated my arrest is continued, however, this “headache” will prove indeed to be a very minor one—not only for the State Department, but for the American people. They may awake one day to realize that the support of corrupt, bloody and hated dictators like Batista, who ran on a Communist “popular front” in 1940, supported a Communist coalition in 1944, and was elected largely with the help of Communist rats as Senator in 1948—will provide both a hotbed for Red propaganda, and a terrible undertone of anti-American sentiment in a continent that is more important to U.S. defense than either Europe or Asia . . . And if such a policy should eventually lead you to lose Latin America, as you lost China, the enemy will not be facing Hong Kong, but the straits of Florida.

CARLOS PRÍO SOCARRÁS

New York City

Case of a cat

SIR:

RE “ANYONE FOR TELEPATHY?” [TIME, DEC. 7]: 1) IN MENTIONING MY BOOK “NEW WORLD OF THE MIND” (THANK YOU) , YOU QUOTE ME AS SAYING, OF ALL THINGS, THAT I DO NOT BELIEVE IN MY WORK MYSELF. THE REPORTER GOT HIS NOTES BADLY TWISTED ON THAT ONE. 2) HE SAID I “ADMITTED” I CANNOT “PROVE” MY THEORIES (SUCH AS ESP, FOR EXAMPLE) BY CONVENTIONAL STANDARDS: ON THE CONTRARY, i “ADMITTED” THAT WE CAN AND DO. ON THAT HE WAS COMPLETELY TURNED AROUND. . .

J. B. RHINE

PARAPSYCHOLOGY LABORATORY

DUKE UNIVERSITY, DURHAM, N.C.

¶ The amiable skepticism attributed to Reader Rhine referred, of course, not to his work in general but to the case of a hypothetically psychic cat; 2) a better phrase would have been that he cannot yet prove his theories by standards acceptable to the conventional.—ED.

Why Pamela Said No

Sir:

Why don’t you buy your reviewer a copy of Samuel Richardson’s Pamela [TIME, Dec. 14] ? I think he might enjoy it, in spite of the prejudice he seems to have absorbed from one of those histories of the English novel we all had to read in college. Pamela—or at least the first half of it—is one of the most amusing books in the language, and it is hard to see why [Henry] Fielding or anyone else should imagine that its author did not intend it to be amusing. I seriously doubt that “most of London enjoyed a good cry” over this “tearjerker.” London in 1740 was a sophisticated town, and . . . Richardson must have known what he was doing when he wrote a bedroom farce in a manner so naive and pious as to offend nobody. Fielding’s heavy-handed satire proves only that he was better as novelist than as critic … so perhaps we should be grateful that he missed the point of Pamela’s wary innocence. That he would in the end prefer a tedious trollop like Amber, I very much doubt.

After all, Pamela understood the value of suspense, and may have said “No!” for artistic as well as moral reasons.

WILLIAM E. WILLNER

Atlanta, Ga.