Letters, Aug. 9, 1954

Necessary Steps

Sir:

The Communists have won in Indo-China, and it is time we woke up . . . Why does our Government lull us with lowered taxes, business-as-usual talk? What we need is to arm and to make ready. We should tax till it hurts. Develop our military. Enact the universal military service legislation. President Eisenhower is a great military leader. What is stopping him from advising Congress and the people of the danger and of the necessary steps to be taken? . . .

DONALD OLYPHANT Point Pleasant, Pa.

The Trouble with France

Sir:

Congratulations on your article [July 12] on France’s Premier Pierre Mend èes-France . . . Whether he succeeds or fails in his attempt to find a solution to France’s many problems, he will be remembered . . . as the only Premier of France since the war who had the nerve to tell his people exactly what was wrong with their country . . .

DICK McCONCHIE Aransas Pass, Texas

Sir:

. . . If I am not mistaken, our newly promoted Prime Minister helped to drive a far better bargain at Geneva than the U.S. specialists did at Panmunjom some time ago . . .

If you Americans did not like the idea of the [July 20] deadline, and considered that it put Mendès-France in a weak position, you might as well know that the French people did like the idea of such a deadline, because that was something entirely new in our rotten politics. Our previous unimaginative statesmen did not ‘know anything better than stalling. The risk taken by P. M.F. worked like a fresh wind in a dead man’s house . . .

A. DARDENNE St. Germain-en-Laye, France

Calif. to Okla.

Sir: Your “Aroma in Oklahoma” [July 19] gives a lively report on the political capers of candidates in that lowbrow-dominated commonwealth. Perhaps a remedy for the odorous buffoonery which travesties democracy in Oklahoma and her sister states is to be found in another article which appeared in your same issue: the new government of Guatemala has deprived that country’s illiterates of the privilege of voting.

If Oklahoma would restrict the suffrage to those who had something more in their heads than can be gotten from “country” music and singing commercials, no candidate would ask for votes on the ground that he was “the best damn cowboy singer in the world.” Democracy should not be degraded to a device for the amusement of morons.

GLENN E. HOOVER Oakland, Calif.

Sleepy Time

Sir:

I have just read “Sleepy Talk” in the July 19 issue. It is most disappointing to learn that “there is no optimism period that each individual should sleep each night.” Such a period might mitigate the pessimism which besets me when I first get up in the morning.

IRENE WARSAW

Bay City, Mich.

Sir:

“There is no optimism period . . .” Or no ravell’d sleaves in TIME’S composing room?

B. M. BRUSH Albuquerque, N. Mex.

Sir:

. . . Your proofreaders, I daresay, must have been taken in by the soporific tenor of the article . . . I believe the correct word to be “optimum,” not optimism; or am I, too, with Morpheus?

HARRIS J. NADLEY Philadelphia

¶One linotype operator and two proofreaders just had one of those pessimum days.—ED.

Ecumenical Rhubarb Sir:

After reading your July 19 article on the controversy over Cardinal Stritch’s remarks [Roman Catholics should not participate, even as observers, in the forthcoming Assembly of the World Council of Churches at Evanston, Ill.], I wondered, as I always do when I read about religious disputes, if the men of God aren’t forgetting that their job is to teach men the good life, and not jockey for position in some clerical Executive Suite. Gentlemen, let’s not argue about who has got a seat closer to God, but how to live more nearly according to His wishes.

MARVIN D. GOODMAN

Miami, Fla.

Sir:

Regarding your coverage of the ecumenical rhubarb: The comments [of the editor of the Christian Century] must surely place him foremost in the growing ranks of anti-Catholics who betray their religious inferiority complex by blindly condemning the church’s dogma of infallibility. Rather than attempt to disprove this claim, the editor prefers to disqualify this assertion by simply stating it cannot be true . . . The amalgamation of quasi-secular interests and ministerial tea parties which he prefers leads to chaos simplified—the dilemma of the Protestant churches today. By the way, I’m a non-Catholic.

KEVIN KIRBY

Chicago

Sir:

Fortunately not all Roman Catholics are like Cardinal Stritch. I suspect there are some dissenters even among the clergy of his own archdiocese. We have a good friend, a Jesuit priest, with whom we have limited ecumenical relations on the rice-roots level. We even pray together on occasion, and pray God’s blessing on each other’s work. We believe this is what our common Lord desires of His catholic church . . .

(THE REV.) EDWIN SWANSON

Augustana Lutheran Mission Hiroshima-Ken, Japan

Teacher’s Pay

Sir:

Listed among the National Education Association’s major resolutions at their convention [TIME, July 19] are two items which I feel will help to further education as a profession, but which will . . . help to bankrupt the country . . . Being a teacher and a member of N.E.A., I would appreciate receiving in the neighborhood of $4,000 to $9,000 per annum. Being a taxpayer, I would appreciate some relief from heavy taxes . . .

But . . . where will the Federal aid come from to advance the salary level? Definitely from the average citizen, in terms of more taxes—real or income . . .

JANET FLOWER Gresham, Ore.

Sir:

We with college education or the equivalent and working 49 or 50 weeks out of the year are tired of teachers demanding an equal salary.

I believe the one way to settle the problem of teacher shortage, teacher’s salary and schoolroom shortage is starting a year-around work year for the teacher and a rotating system for the children.

AUDREY KERBER Watertown, Wis.

The Oregon Trail

Sir:

Is TIME [July 19] really sure that the U.S.S. Oregon is among the lovable old fighting ships Congress will preserve? Were there not pictures during the war of the Oregon being towed off for scrap as a great gesture of sacrifice? . . .

DOUGLAS HASKELL

New York City

¶The Navy changed its mind, moved the 58-year-old battleship to Apra Harbor, Guam, where, towards the end of the Pacific war, she did duty as a breakwater and ammunition ship. Shorn of superstructure and stricken from the Navy’s active list, she still lies in Guam awaiting further orders.—ED.

Who Was Madame de—?

Sir:

It seems to be the general practice among film critics to ignore the author of the story on which the screen treatment is based, or else to include the author’s name in a list of credits printed so small that no one over 39 could read it. TIME’S review of The Earrings of Madame De [July 26] says: “The triumph belongs to Director Max Ophuls.” The triumph, also belongs to Louise de Vilmorin, well-known French novelist, beauty [see cut], and femme du monde. Her short story, originally called Madame de—, first appeared in 1951 in a French literary magazine [the Revue de Paris] and was an instant success . . . Madame de Vilmorin claims that she wrote it at high speed, and did not even pause to give her heroine a name: Paris society amused itself trying to fill in the blank. Max Ophuls has made what TIME correctly calls a film classic out of a short story that is already a classic.

ROSALIND CONSTABLE New York City

Deadly Parallel

Sir:

Frederick Woltman performed a public service in his recent series on Senator McCarthy [TIME, July 19]. Those of us who equate Communism with those other totalitarian movements, Naziism and Fascism, have been watching the conduct of McCarthy with mixed feelings.

On the one hand, we recognize that the Communist movement in America is not a political party in the sense in which we understand the functioning of such organizations . . . It is an international conspiracy . . . On the other hand, we wonder if McCarthy has the qualifications to lead the anti-Communist fight. Those of us who were politically sophisticated in the early ’30s see a deadly parallel in the tactics and techniques of Mr. McCarthy and Mr. Hitler . . .

KERMIT HABER

New York City

Cattlemen’s Beef

Sir:

. . . Can you support the American National Cattlemen’s Association’s figures when you say [July 26] they predict “that 7,000,000 cattle will be slaughtered this year against 5,600,000 in 1953”? . . .

H. S. HOWES JR.

Boston

¶TIME erred [see below].—ED.

SIR:

COWS ARE FEMALE BOVINE CRITTERS. CATTLE INCLUDE PA, MA AND THE KIDS. THEREFORE TIME’S QUOTE OF OUR PREDICTION “7,OOO,OOO CATTLE . . .” IS WRONG. OUR FIGURE WAS FOR COWS ALONE. EXPECTED SLAUGHTER OF ALL CATTLE IS BETWEEN 39 AND 40 MILLION HEAD—FAR EXCEEDING 1953 RECORD SLAUGHTER OF 36.7 MILLION.

LYLE LIGGETT

AMERICAN NATIONAL CATTLEMEN’S ASS’N. DENVER