Letters, Jul. 6, 1959

The Case of Lewis Strauss

Sir:

I found your June 15 story on Lewis Strauss most interesting and informative. It told not only about him but of the pettiness of our Congressmen. To refuse a capable man a position because of personality, rather than wrongdoing, reflects the immaturity of some of our Congressmen and is a strong mark against our country.

ROCHELLE RUBIN

New York City

Sir:

Regarding the case of Lewis Strauss: Voltaire, a great mind with insight into human nature, spoke with profound prophecy in his Catiline:

Alas! who serves his country often serves A most ungrateful mistress, even thy merit Offends the Senate; with a jealous eye It views thy greatness.

MRS. FORREST K. WHITWORTH

Dallas

Sir:

Senator Gale McGee is making Wyoming’s November mistake obvious with his puppet-like willingness to carry the flag of any Democratic Senator who has a petty personal grievance to air. We don’t feel his actions represent the feelings of the people of Wyoming.

JOHN AND RACHEL MASEK

Moorcroft, Wyo.

Sir:

So the old Joe McCarthy hate-smear mantle now goes to Senator Clinton P. Anderson. We’re glad he’s not from Wisconsin!

T. K. KINGERY

Stoughton, Wis.

Sir:

Hurrah for our Clint.

KARL STERNBERG

Santa Fe, N. Mex.

“Bizarre, Idiotic & Disgusting”?

Sir:

I take exception to the statement in your article “Sculpture 1959” [June 15] that “artists have never been asked to do more than reflect the time in which they live.” I resent that artists are viewed as sponges that simply soak in “our time” and spew it out on canvas. Artists have in many cultures been expected to produce and have produced art that depicts an “ideal state” of what ought to be. Today, there are artists depicting what ought to be, but they have no listeners among people who are aware of our times and acknowledge their awareness.

MRS. KATHRYN CAMPOLI

Chicago

Sir:

You missed the milking stool—misnomered Beast—splashproof, anti-streamline prototype of the ’30s.

ANSEL S. WOOD

Washington, D.C.

¶ For David V. Hayes’ Beast, see cut. —ED.

Sir:

Your caption for “Sculpture 1959” [“Elegant, Brutal & Witty”] should have read: “Bizarre, Idiotic & Disgusting.”

MRS. LOUISE N. KNIGHT

Honolulu

Hot Steel

Sir:

If one sits down and delves into the nature and causes of the present steel crisis, these facts will be brought into focus:

The United Steelworkers are entitled to a just wage increase and other fringe benefits owing to their greater dexterity, improved efficiency, and increased productivity per man-hour per pound of steel produced. On the other hand, the steel industry is entitled to a just return on investment per dollar.

The Government of the U.S. can help to bring this about by providing an adequate and realistic new revenue act that would equalize plant and equipment replacement costs, finance normal or expanding needs of the steel industry, as well as curb inflationary tendencies, meet foreign competition, hold the price line and increase wages.

If the Government wants to avert the threatened steel strike, it should investigate the possibilities of a revised revenue act.

WILLIAM P. GALLAGHER

Member

U.S.W., Local 1843

Pittsburgh

Sir:

How can you quote the arguments of the Steelworkers Union with a straight face! They are utterly false.

Taking away a dollar, or a billion dollars, from users of steel (meaning you and me) or from the stockholders (still you and me), and giving it to the richly paid steelworkers, will not add one penny to national purchasing power.

LAURANCE H. HART

Metuchen, N.J.

Sally’s Sallies

Sir:

I have just read your article, “Sally’s Service,” [about British Teen-Ager Sally Moore, who rewrote an Anglican church’s evening service for more teen-age appeal—June 15]. I think this gal Sally should take another look at what she is doing to God’s service and her fellow youths. If she and other teenagers would put down their Elvis records and Mad comics and turn to the Book of Common Prayer and the Bible, they could better understand the Psalms and Apostles’ Creed, instead of having to drop them from their service or distort them so that even an Episcopalian can’t recognize his own Creed.

JOHN H. HAAS III

Lakewood, Ohio

Sir:

Sally Moore’s action in England is a good example of one of Christianity’s greatest troubles: too many people are rewriting their religion to fit their own tastes and limited understanding.

ROBERT THRUN

Union Grove, Wis.

Sir:

The Rev. Richard Coote of the Church of All Saints in Birmingham, England, forgets that we are to stand “amazed” in the presence of God—not “amused.”

(THE REV.) DREW J. GUNNELLS JR.

First Baptist Church

Summit, Miss.

Sir:

Now that jazz bands and rock ‘n’ roll have moved into churches, how about the sky pilots slipping a few hymns into the jukeboxes?

DONALD A. RAND

Indian Rocks Beach, Fla.

Aid in Spain

Sir:

In your June 15 article, “Spain: Nation in Trouble,” you state: “Wisely spent, the $2 billion pumped into Spain [by the U.S.] during the past eight years might have gone far toward putting the country on its feet. But bureaucrats went on an ill-conceived spending spree . . .”

Since the 1953 agreements between the U.S. and Spain were established, the economic aid “pumped” into Spain has amounted to $928,361,000, not $2 billion. These include defense support, PL 480 sales, Export-Import Bank and DLF loans.

As to how “wisely” the dollars have been spent, I can only say that it is up to a joint committee of American and Spanish officials to determine the priority and ultimate destination of these dollars, which are allocated to furnish the Spanish economy with raw materials, food, heavy and light industrial equipment and transport items—those goods that are most urgently needed by Spain. The held opinion in the Administration, in Congress, and in my country is that the Spanish-American program is one of the most efficiently run, ably planned, and carefully supervised programs carried out by the International Cooperation Administration.

JOSE MARIA DE AREILZA

The Ambassador of Spain

Washington

Pain? Yes

Sir:

Embarrassed? No. Pain, yes. Pain for me because I hate human misery and wrote a play which said so [A Raisin in the Sun). Pain about you, because you couldn’t care less. And pain for my beleaguered family, surrounded by imposed frozen financing, in a city that says it wants repairs [June 22].

Remembering the 30 years of battle and good-sized fortune that my mother and dad put in trying to demolish the ghetto, I experience a deep personal pain. It is true that that fight won our people some new and decent housing in Chicago, but I cannot forget that it also won my father’s death and my mother’s current punishment by people who apparently want the property and not repairs.

LORRAINE HANSBERRY

New York City

The Builder

Sir:

We wish to thank TIME [June 15] for the fine article on the submarine George Washington. However, we would like to point out that the atomic submarines George Washington, Triton, U.S.S. Skate, U.S.S. Skipjack, U.S.S. Seawolf and U.S.S. Nautilus, all built in Groton, were built by the Electric Boat Division of General Dynamics Corp.

EDWIN S. ALLIN

President

Groton Chamber of Commerce

Groton, Conn.

The Other Max

Sir:

Max Conrad is an even more remarkable man than your June 15 article indicates. Many years ago he tried to save a woman from walking into a turning propeller, suffered serious head injuries himself. It’s still difficult for him to write, he talks hesitantly, yet has been gradually overcoming these handicaps out of sheer will power and determination.

We’re occasionally mistaken for each other because of the similarity of our names. Until Max’s record-breaking flight, I was always able to clear up the confusion between us by saying that he has ten children and I have only two, and that he has flown the ocean many times and I never have. Now I can only talk about

our kids, because I was flying a twin-engined Piper Apache across the Atlantic to Paris at the same time he was flying from Casablanca to Los Angeles. Near as I can figure it, we passed within a few hundred miles of each other out over the Atlantic.

MAX KARANT

Vice President

Aircraft Owners & Pilots Association

Washington, D.C.