Letters: Apr. 2, 1965

Alabama & After

Sir: I read your cover story on civil rights [March 19] with tears coursing. If only we Jews had had a Martin Luther King to arouse national and world conscience during the Hitler regime, how different our history might have been!

RUTH S. FILLER

Auckland, N.Z.

Sir: I believe that the events of Selma bear brilliant testimony to the promise of America. Nowhere else is the attempt to resolve this problem being made with such equanimity, openness, and faith in human goodness in our system of government. I am confident that a further source of pride in America—a just and honorable solution—is forthcoming for all of us.

JAMES A. REGISTER

Providence, R.I.

Sir: Your recent reporting of civil rights events in Mississippi and Alabama was superb. Your remarkable example of responsible and dynamic journalism is pricking the conscience of America.

WILLIAM LARKIN

St. Joseph, Mich.

Sir: I am comfortable in my home with my husband, two small children and an infant, and I am not about to go to Alabama. But from the bottom of my heart I do want to thank all of the ministers, rabbis, nuns, college professors, students, and just good plain white folk who took their lives in their hands and went on my behalf.

(P.S. And reporters.)

ROCHELLE WHITEMAN

Milwaukee

Sir: When asked whether the nonviolent civil rights demonstrators were not on occasion guilty of defying the law even as members of the white Citizens Council defy it, Judge Thurgood Marshall replied (roughly) as follows: “When civil rights demonstrators break the law to protest against an unjust social order, they are willing to pay the price—to go to jail if necessary—in order to witness to what they believe in. I wonder if the members of the white Citizens Councils are willing to do the same?” The tradition of civil disobedience in our country is an old one. When Henry Thoreau refused to pay taxes that were being used to finance a war that he regarded as unjust, he was imprisoned. When Ralph Waldo Emerson visited him, he said, “Henry, why are you here?” And Thoreau replied, “Waldo, why are you not here?”

MALCOLM L. DIAMOND

Princeton University

Princeton, N.J.

Sir: I find your largely negative comments about clergy participation in the demonstrations in Selma and Montgomery [March 26] reasonably factual but unpardonably superficial. We went to Alabama chiefly in response to Martin Luther King’s call for help. Responding to desperate calls for help would seem to be appropriate clerical behavior. We went as an act of deliberate identification with those in need whose cause is just, to lend encouragement and support, and hopefully to redeem in part our past record of passivity and neutralism. We went as American citizens deploring and protesting Wallace’s disfiguration of American democracy. In Montgomery we discovered another reason for being present. Justice Department men encouraged us to join the march on the county courthouse on March 17 to help calm the demonstrators and to deter possible brutality from police and citizenry.

(THE REV.) THOMAS BASICH

Advent Lutheran Church

Roseville, Minn.

Sir: Unfortunately, the white moderates or liberals of our city have been much too quiet, but many have worked uncounted hours to promote a long-range plan for peace and adherence to all laws, including the Civil Rights Act. There are in Selma, as everywhere, people of good faith and good intentions who were heartbroken by the acts of violence here. They will continue to try to be heard, not only by the members of the news media, but also by the people who will continue to live with this problem long after the spotlight has faded.

(MRS.) MURIEL N. LEWIS

Selma, Ala.

Sir: We miserable sinners of the South stand in awe and envy of you lip-smacking purists who have enjoyed the past few weeks basking in self-righteousness while we come to grips with the greatest problem facing the nation. Sometime when you aren’t gloating over how good you are, we hope you will get around to telling your readers that the whole mote is not in the Southern eye. Surely there is a trace of a beam in the eye of the self-righteous Northern saviors who can forget what is going on in the subways of New York and the streets of Chicago.

KARL ELEBASH JR.

Tuscaloosa, Ala.

Sir: TIME’S review of the President’s civil rights speech was nearly as exciting as the event itself. Johnson’s speech, like no other he has made, and his proposed action reveal him as a great leader and a humane man. May the nation rise from its “mortal coil” in the image he has given us.

WALTER E. ANDERSON

Hayward, Calif.

The Face of King

Sir: It is not Martin Luther King but the spirit of the Negro movement that TIME has captured on its cover. Expediency has made a demagogue of the Reverend, but that is the only way a battle against overwhelming odds can be won.

DARYUSH A. IRANI

Bombay

Sir: While artistic license may be allowable in some areas, to take away a man’s forehead is to defame him.

(MRS.) LAURA R. MAXWELL

New York City

Sir: Since Shahn obviously wasn’t trying for a likeness, presumably he was trying to be symbolic—in which case he should have concentrated on King’s backbone.

MALCOLM ELLIS

Aylmer, Quebec

Sir: Shahn has outdone Picasso in creating the untrue, the hideous and the monstrous.

RUSSELL M. TREE

Port Huron, Mich.

Sir: I first viewed Shahn’s study of King with a sense of outrage and revulsion. Here, I thought, in the depiction of a mindless, brutish, protesting Voice, is the ultimate insult to the man and his cause. But when I could bear to peek at it again, I was reminded of the piercing agony of a face in Picasso’s Guernica. So now I think I am beginning to understand why you allowed yourselves to use it.

HELEN C. BARBER

Wellesley Hills, Mass.

The U.S. Role in Viet Nam

Sir: Would the U.S. sit back and watch the Communist Chinese wage war in Mexico and foist Communism on the people there? Similarly, you cannot expect the Chinese to idly watch the U.S. wage war in Viet Nam and foist an American-style administration there. The ugliest thing in all of Asia is the American image. The West should leave the East alone to sort out its own affairs, live the way it likes, and have governments that suit it.

S. JAWAD

Karachi

Sir: What is there to negotiate? If someone invaded Canada, then surely the U.S. would come to our aid. But I certainly hope that if things went badly they wouldn’t try to negotiate away our liberty or part of our country.

BOB BEAULAC

Regina, Sask.

Sir: The American policy in Viet Nam is a thing the American people thought they had buried in a landslide last November.

CHARLES O. PUTERBAUGH

Sparta, Wis.

Vengeance in Montevideo

Sir: You reported that Reuters had “dismissed as the work of a crank” an anonymous letter giving the first news of the death of Herberts Cukurs in Montevideo [March 19]. I would not like our sources, even anonymous ones, to think that we do not treat their tip-offs seriously. Our Montevideo man was on the job within minutes after the letter was received by our Bonn office. The trouble was that the letter gave a nonexistent address, and it was not until the following weekend that more precise information led to the murder chalet.

STUART UNDERHILL

Managing Editor

Reuters

London

Sir: Latvian Flyer Herberts Cukurs took part in Latvia’s freedom battles against the Bolsheviks from 1918 to 1920. Mr. Cukurs was like the American Lindbergh in aviation history. He built his own plane from one old motor of automobile. He was a great patriot all his lifetime, and it’s hard to believe that he exterminated 30,000 Jews in Latvia.

PETER GAUJA

Dorchester, Mass.

Meg’s Legs

Sir: TIME refers to Princess Margaret’s kinky—”meaning nonconformist”—stockings [March 19]. With all due respect for royalty, this is a bowdlerized version. “Kinky” is a postwar British colloquialism meaning “with or appealing to unconventional sexual tastes, especially fetishism.” It is widely applied to articles of feminine attire in black leather—e.g., knee-or thigh-length boots—and, more recently, to fancy stockings.

GERARD VANNECK

Jamaica, N.Y.

Ex-Cepter

Sir: Leave it to a Princetonian to devise such an esoteric term as “cept” to describe “the smallest convenient unit of knowledge” [March 26]. In the “old days” at Brown University we mundanely called these forms of knowledge “fifty-pointers.” While it’s true that we didn’t have anything as sophisticated as “multi” or “kilo” fifty-pointers, they did work.

RICHARD J. VESELY

Havertown, Pa.

Sir: Cept: TIME magazine is usually un-key.

Cept: But occasionally TIME pulls out a bona fide cept.

Cept: One such “The Use & Abuse of the Cept.”

Cept: “Accuracy is the soul of truth”—and TIME neatly sums up our Princeton existence in the second paragraph.

PHILIP L. FETZER

EDWARD L. OVERTREE

WILLIAM H. RICHARDSON

SAMUEL M. SIPE JR.

Princeton University

Princeton, N.J.

Sir: Q. What is the smallest convenient unit of knowledge?

A. TIME, of course.

MORSE HAMILTON

Southwestern University Memphis

Oiled

Sir: Re your report of my dance at the Albright-Knox Festival of the Arts in Buffalo [March 19]: I was not “stark naked.” Both Miss Rainer and myself were covered completely with a thick coating of mineral oil. We did not simply “move across the stage in slow motion,” but proceeded carefully in a rhythm too complicated to explain. Furthermore I have a stiff knee and am unable to do a great many steps. I think it is more important to realize that this dance was performed by a handicapped person rather than a naked one.

ROBERT MORRIS

New York City

Merger Routine

Sir: In your article about the Manufacturers Hanover Trust Co. merger decision [March 19], there are three points on which we would like to comment:

The bank had no actual knowledge that the Justice Department would try to block the merger until after 3 o’clock, Friday, Sept. 8, 1961, at which time the merger was already effected. The actual opinion of Justice was not seen until a still later date.

The two banks received approval of the Board of Governors of the Federal Reserve System on Sept. 6, 1961, and publicly announced on Sept. 7 their intention to consummate the merger as of the close of business Friday, Sept. 8. There was no speedup.

The banks had submitted their application to the Federal Reserve Board on March 16, 1961, and in accordance with the requirements of law, a copy of such application was forwarded by the board to Justice on March 20. In April the presidents of the then two banks personally offered to furnish Justice any additional information it might request. No such request was made.

W. H. MILLER

Senior Vice President

Manufacturers Hanover Trust Co.

New York City

Lenten Lament

Sir: We have been accustomed to singing the Lenten hymn, Lord Who Throughout These Forty Days. After reading of Bishop Donegan’s suggestion that Lent be shortened from 40 days to a single week or two [March 12], our organist left for me the following note: “Perhaps next year we’ll be singing Lord Who Threw Out These Forty Days.”

(THE REV.) FORDON M. DOFFING

Assistant Pastor

Church of St. Joseph

West St. Paul, Minn.

Sir: Instant coffee! Instant Lent! Evaporated ministers next.

NANCY SHIELDS Spokane