Bewildered Hollywoodsters Sirs:

HAVING JUST LOCKED OURSELVES IN ROOM AND TAKEN LARGE DOSE OF RUSSIAN "CONFESSION GAS" MENTIONED IN YOUR SHALL WE SAY DELIGHTFULLY UNBIASED ARTICLE ON THE SOVIET TRIALS [TIME, Feb. 8], WE FIND WE HAVE A CONFESSION TO MAKE. WE CONFESS WE ARE BEWILDERED. STARTING WITH LIBERALS' ASSUMPTION THAT POSSIBLY THE RUSSIAN EXPERIMENT SHOULD NOT BE ENTIRELY DISCOURAGED, BEING BASED ON AT LEAST AS HIGH IDEALS OF HUMAN PROGRESS AS THOSE OF CERTAIN WELL KNOWN FINANCIAL SUPPORTERS OF WHAT WAS HIS NAME OH YES LANDON, CONTINUING WITH THE FURTHER LIBERAL ASSUMPTION THAT POSSIBLY THE HITLER EXPERIMENT IN NAZIISM IS NOT QUITE WHAT IS MEANT BY DEMOCRACY, WE MUST CONFESS THAT WE CAN'T EXACTLY UNDERSTAND WHAT TROTSKY AND HIS FOLLOWERS ARE DRIVING AT WHEN THEY ALLY THEMSELVES WITH MR. HITLER AND OTHERS IN A FRANTIC ATTEMPT TO UPSET THE RUSSIAN APPLECART AT ANY COST. OF COURSE IT IS POSSIBLE THAT THE RUSSIAN TRIALS WERE QUITE AS PHONEY AS TIME WITH PERFECTLY UNDERSTANDABLE IF SOMEWHAT UNINFORMED PREJUDICE SUGGESTS, AND IT IS ALSO POSSIBLE THAT THE WORLD WOULD BE A MUCH BETTER PLACE IF STALIN AND THE ENTIRE SOVIET GOVERNMENT WERE MURDERED AND THE U.S.S.R. BLASTED INTO DEMORALIZED CONFUSION AND THE UKRAINE GIVEN TO NAZI GERMANY AND CERTAIN CONCESSIONS MADE TO FASCIST JAPAN WHICH WOULD ASSIST THEM IN A FUTURE WAR ON DEMOCRATIC AMERICA, BUT, AGAIN, WE MUST CONFESS THAT WE DON'T SEE WHY ALL THIS SHOULD BE DONE UNDER MR. TROTSKY'S BANNER OF "THE ONE AND ONLY RELIABLE" BRAND OF SOCIALISM. WE HAVE NO DESIRE TO MEDDLE IN RUSSIAN OR INTERNATIONAL POLITICS BUT WE WOULD LIKE TO KNOW AS AMERICANS IF THERE IS NOT A DANGER TO OUR OWN COUNTRY IN THIS BACKHANDED ASSISTANCE TO FASCISM UNDER THE GUISE OF MAKING THE WORLD SAFE FOR TROTSKY. AS WE UNDERSTAND IT FIREMEN ARE NOT USUALLY EXPECTED TO BLOW UP THE HOME IN ORDER TO SAVE THE OUTHOUSE.

DONALD OGDEN STEWART DUDLEY NICHOLS Hollywood, Calif.

Not the least interested in making the world safe for Trotsky, or in seeing Stalin murdered, or vice versa, was TIME in reporting as clearly and objectively as possible the devious, contradictory, altogether "Russian" propaganda trial of Old Bolsheviks.--ED.

Friend of Franco

Sirs: Remember that Russians and Russian equipment are largely responsible for General Miaja's "spunkiness" [TIME, Feb. 8]. Also bear in mind that the whole army had repudiated your "spunky" General, but that he was the only man that the Azana Government at that time could get to take the post of Minister of War. The only man on whom they could rely to do their bidding. The man who had pocketed the soldier's pay, and other little genteel acts along those lines. I quote from a letter smuggled out of Madrid: "It is certain that the militia had not the courage to go out and fight the battle in the open but have consistently run back into the city where they are now skulking in among the women and children and howling to all nations that Franco is bombing their women and kids! They have not even honored the neutral zone which Franco indicated the womenfolk would be free from bombs for this area is now jammed with militia, the police headquarters such as have not gone to Valencia and the officers of the brave Junta de Defensa."

I am appalled and crushed at American public opinion. ... I have made my home in Madrid for the past 16 years, and have had the privilege and the joy of spending three weeks in White Spain under General Franco--where all is Peace, Law, Order, Justice, and life practically normal.

E. M. FROMKES

New York City

Dimple Squeak

Sirs:

In TIME, Feb. 1, your able book review editor passed up several fascinating books, chose for review a book about an erotic Russian musician whose chief claim to fame was he was homosexual. Yet on the same page was listed a book (but passed with scant attention) called Fifty Million Brothers by Reader's Digest's blue-pencil genius, Charles W. Ferguson. As a "Fergie" fan, I protest, not only at your slight to Fergie's book but your unfailing and sedulous attention to books with perversion themes.

EZRA SQUEAK

"Dimple of the Universe"

Chilling Hollow, Tenn.

McCall Editors

Sirs:

IN YOUR NEWSWEEK McCALL ARTICLE YOU MIGHT ALSO WELL HAVE SAID THAT "MR. WARNER HAD THE SKILL OR LUCK TO PICK" EDITOR HARRY PAYNE BURTON NOW OF COSMOPOLITAN WHO TOOK A HOPELESSLY AMATEURISH PATTERN MAGAZINE FROM A MILLION CIRCULATION TO MORE THAN TWO MILLION.

WILLIAM C. LENGEL

Scarsdale, N. Y.

Able Editor Burton left McCall's in 1927 after five brilliantly successful years, joined Cosmopolitan in 1931. McCall Co.'s other big magazine and Cosmopolitan's rival, Redbook, has been edited since 1927 by quick-thinking Edwin Balmer, who finds time on the side to write many a popular novel, many of them in collaboration with a prolific Redbook contributor, Princeton's Philip Wylie.--ED.

Walton v. Weaver (Cont'd)

Sirs:

The Feb. 8 issue of TIME published a letter signed by Willie Weaver of Curityba, Brazil, in which he refers to the gentleman from Illinois who had asked TIME (Nov. 30) for the location of a monastery to which he, tired of the world, might retire. I am not questioning Mr. Weaver's right to form an opinion of the man from Illinois; that is not our quarrel. When he sets out upon a haughty castigation of monasteries in general, however, I can but draw the inevitable conclusion: Willie's education has been sadly neglected. . . .

BILL DRYDEN

Clayton, Mo.

Sirs:

Don't know what your correspondent, Willie Weaver of Curityba, Brazil, is doing in the jungles of South America, but I think someone should entice that gentleman to drop his facoes and take up a pen.

The description of the wild beauty of a waterfall on the Rio Parana is as much a jewel of writing as his tiny humming bird is a "jewel of nature." Following several colorful and exceedingly virile paragraphs, it was positively shocking in its clear beauty, its excellent choice of words, its exquisite phrases. . . .

I am sorry that Mr. Weaver, no doubt still deep in his jungles, is unaware of the pleasure his paragraphs have given.

S. BADINE

Kansas City, Mo.

Sirs:

At first I was a little mad when I read Willie Weaver's letter with its unflattering inferences about me and anyone else who might have a longing for the monastic life (TIME, Feb. 8). But after reading it again my anger was gone. You have to admire anybody who can write and feel like that. I've been aiming to set out soon on a tramp from Brownsville to Cape Horn. I will look him up when I go through Brazil.

For the past ten years I haven't been exactly a stay-at-home. I've seen life at its beautiful, heroic best and its seamy worst in the jungles of man and nature. But unlike Willie Weaver I am saddened, rather than gladdened, on the whole. The sum of the world's pleasures, beauty and goodness is not worth the price paid by one man's death at the stake or one woman's travail in a stillbirth, to both of which I have been a helpless, terrified witness, along with an unmerciful God. Their screams still haunt my waking hours and the vision of their contorted faces returns again & again in my dreams. The defect in human nature that enables men & women to ignore or to enjoy the crucifixion of others is a puzzle that I may sometime take with me into a monastery.

FRANK WALTON Chicago, Ill.

Sirs:

When Willie Weaver gets all through being tough and hard and beating on his (presumably) hairy chest in the Brazilian jungle, let him go to some monastery, really live the life a couple of weeks and see if he can take it.

In my 15 years of religious life, I have associated with fellow religious who in their time were soldiers and sailors and notable athletes. . . .

If Willie knew his South American and especially Brazilian history he would thank God for ; the monks who wrought so mightily the length and breadth of the South American continent. . . .

J. EDWARDS St. Louis, Mo.

Norris on Watson on Norris

Sirs:

In TIME'S Letters columns of Feb. 1 ex-Senator James E. Watson is given the last word on Senator George W. Norris. I bid you read the enclosed letter from Senator Norris regarding Mr. Watson's conception of his insurgency.

ALFRED LIEF

New York City

Excerpts from an open letter by Senator Norris to Author Alfred Lief, who is currently preparing to write a Norris biography : "The statement that I said to Senator Watson that if Cannon had appointed me to the Judiciary committee, I probably would have 'gone along,' is absolutely false. I never made such a statement. I never had such a thought. It is true that Cannon would not put me on the Judiciary committee, and probably true that he would not do this because of his feelings towards me, although as to that I cannot say. At least, he did not put me on that committee, and I never begged him or made any complaint to him. I never asked him to put me on the committee. I knew better than to make such a request. I never made any promise to him or any request of him.

"It is claimed in his memoirs that the Insurgents were angry at Cannon because he would not give them proper committee appointments. This, so far as I know, is likewise without foundation and absolutely untrue. Of course, I cannot say what might have secretly moved other people, but I do not know of a single Insurgent who became one because Cannon did not appoint him to a particular committee.

As a matter of fact, I think he refused to appoint Insurgents to committees because he was angry with them on account of their insurgency, which had already started. To assert that the Insurgents were moved by some selfish motive is an absolutely unfounded and unjustifiable charge."--ED.

Roosevelt Rent

Sirs:

Is it true that the Roosevelt home at Hyde Park, Dutchess County, New York was rented as the summer White House from the Roosevelts and that the U. S. Government paid $46,000 rental? . . .

MRS. WHARTON L. DONALDSON

Chester, Pa.

The U. S. Government has never paid any rent for any summer White House.--ED.

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