Before If Becomes Cake
Sirs:
. . . Look! . . . The Administration has ways at its disposal to get [U.S. surplus] wheat and send it overseas. If things really get tough, we will accept rationing. Of course we will groan and grumble and protest, but that only expresses our discomfort, not our displeasure.
Is there anyone who is really fool enough to think that an appreciable amount of grain will be saved by voluntary sacrifice? I go into the grocery store and there is a cake. I buy that cake because I know that if I don't, my smarter neighbor will, and the poor Italian kids sitting across the table from us will still starve. (All cake is gone by 6 p.m. no matter who buys it.) The problem is one of getting the grain before it becomes cake. We won't eat it only if we can't get it. Let the Administration send the food overseas. What are we paying them for, anyway?
ROLAND STAHL JR.
Lisbon, N.H.
Uneven Battle
Sirs:
It was a very uneven battle: 85%* of the American people wanted OPA continued. The N.A.M. and a lot of pressure groups did not. The result: our "patriotic" Congressmen voted 356-10-42 to cripple OPA. Let the people rise and give the Congressmen the proper alternative: either represent us properly or face the consequences on Election Day.
MAX PETER HAAS New York City
The Faith of a Bishop
Sirs:
TIME [April 8], in commenting upon the address I delivered in Boston on "Religious Freedom and Democracy," quite properly reported the highly improper allegations made by the editor of the Pilot, official organ of the Archdiocese of Boston. The Pilot is reported as declaring: "At the heart of his objection to the Catholic Church is the unwillingness to acknowledge the divinity of Christ." The Boston papers reported the statement as "refusal of the divinity of Christ."
. . . I not only believe in the divinity of Christ but hold that it is the central doctrine of the Christian faith. . . . To question the political activities of the Roman Catholic Church is not to question the divinity of Christ. . . .
G. BROMLEY OXNAM
Bishop of the Methodist Church
The New York Area New York City
Trilby's Tootsies
Sirs:
I have just read your account of Kiki [TIME, April 15], where a reference is made to Trilby's "tiny feet." Remembering that Trilby was "very tall and fully developed,"
I thought this a slight mistake in description. If you will turn to the text, Chapter I, you will find Trilby's feet referred to in George Du Maurier's own words: "The shape of those lovely slender feet (that were neither large nor small). . . ."
MRS. WARD TABLER
Berkeley, Calif.
Sirs:
You had better take another turn through memory lane and glance at Trilby's feet. You will find that they were shapely but not "tiny" as you say in your Kiki article. . . . Her shoes would have fitted that miner's daughter, Clementine, nicely. She had big teeth, a big mouth, and I'll bet she would have made a hit in The Outlaw.
CHARLES K. IMBRIE, D.D. First Presbyterian Church
Watertown, N.Y.
P: Right is Reader Tabler: Trilby's feet were not tiny (see cut). But wrong is Reader Imbrie: they were no match for Clementine's, whose "shoes were number nine."--ED.
Station AFN
Sirs:
It made a great many of the former members of the American Forces Network very happy to garner at long last a bit of recognition in your magazine [TIME, April 8]. However, you didn't quite do right by AFN. You stated that AFN established stations in Le Havre and Paris for the entertainment of the G.I.s. This is very true, but we also had stations in Marseilles, Nice, Dijon, Nancy, Reims, Biarritz, and Munich, Berlin, Bremen, Kassel and Frankfurt in Germany. These -Svengali, the villain-hypnotist; by Trilby's author and illustrator, George Du Maurier. fixed or permanent stations were also augmented by mobile stations with the ist, 7th, gth and isth Field Armies. We would have had one with General Patton's 3rd Army had it not been for the fact that the late General moved too fast. . . .
(Formerly AFN Station Manager and Distribution Officer) Hollywood
Groucho Clears It Up
Sirs:
I see where numerous relatives of mine have written TIME, frantically yelping that they are cousins of Sam Marx of M-G-M [TIME, April 8]. The Marx fortunes have certainly sunk to a low ebb when members of the family find it necessary to rush into print to claim relationship to anyone.
I don't know about the rest of them, but I was born during a volcanic eruption in one of the banana countries in Central America. I don't remember which one--I don't even remember the bananas, I hardly remember the stalk.
At the age of three, an utter stranger apprenticed me to a basket weaver in Guatemala. I soon learned to weave with such dexterousness that, by the time my second teeth arrived, I was known throughout the village as the basket child of Guatemala.
After I was run out of Guatemala, I met two other fellows, named, I believe, Harpo and Chico. After considerable bickering, they convinced me that America, softened up by an excess of rationing, could be persuaded to swallow another dose of Casablanca--this one to be called A Night in Casablanca.
Well, we made the picture and that's that. The point is that Harpo and Chico are brothers but they are both strangers to me. And, as for Sam Marx of M-G-M who reluctantly confesses to being their cousin--well, he's slightly mistaken. The fact of the matter is, he happens to be their joint child by a former marriage.
GROUCHO MARX
Beverly Hills, Calif.
Who's to Blame for Conway?
Sirs:
Robert Conway has been nominated as the "Biggest Damn Fool of the Year" [TIME, April 22]. . . . The blame is not on Conway. He is but a tool, an agent of the New York Daily News and its readers. The News and its allied organs do not exist in a vacuum, printing blasts of prejudice from an editorial ivory tower contrary to the opinions of the rest of mankind. They exist because their millions of readers want to believe perversions of the truth. . . .
RICHARD D. WALK
Iowa City, Iowa
Curvaceous Lawyer
Sirs:
Re curved balls [TIME, April 22]: when John B. Stanchfield, a brilliant New York lawyer, was a college student away back in the '70s, he stood close to the wall of a college building exactly the same distance from the corner of the building as the distance from the pitcher's slab to home plate. With a doubting professor of physics right behind him, Stanchfield took his wind-up and pitched. As the ball reached the end of the building it disappeared around the corner....
CHARLES M. LINCOLN
Warren, Ohio
TIME'S Commercials
Sirs:
... I have become incensed of late at the way TIME has gleefully pounced upon the FCC "public service" pronunciamento in order to deliver a weekly lambasting to commercial radio. . . .
Taking your April 22 issue just as an example, it is to be noted that approximately 65% of the space in that issue is devoted to commercial advertising, 35% to actual printed TIME material. . . .
Sure, some of the commercials are boresome ... so are some of the ads in TIME, but no one's forcing me to read them; and all radios have a dial and a switch ! . . .
TED NELSON
Laredo, Tex.
P: But TIME'S ads never sing jingles, blow sirens or pop up in the middle of news stories.--ED.
Narrow, Disgusting, Residual
Sirs:
Your review [TIME, April 15] of the movie adaptation of A. J. Cronin's tender The Green Years is a wholly disgusting critical endeavor. . . . The remark that "if cinema carries this sort of thing much farther, theaters will have to be consecrated" . . . is narrow, and is so lacking in perspicacity as to suggest that the reviewer is the residual of a brain extraction. . . .
The movie-going public seems to like religious films. The Bells of St. Mary's, The Keys of the Kingdom, and Going My Way have met with a popular box-office reception. A soundly constructed religious film can compete with the trivial film, and, can perform a definite service and teach a moral. . . .
THOMAS J. N. JUKO
Dudley, Mass.
They Saw Henry
Sirs:
"Has anyone here seen Henry?" you ask. I'm your man. Saw it in London last January. As one who was exposed to the normal amount of school and college Shakespeare but seldom reads him for pleasure alone, I'll go the whole hog with TIME'S reviewer [April 8]. ...
JEFFREY E. FULLER Captain, A.U.S.
New York City
Sirs:
I saw Henry. . . .
When I read TIME'S review, I must admit the excitement of the critic communicated itself to me, and since I'm fortunate (in this case) to live in Boston, I went over and saw it. ... For the first time in my life, I was able to see Shakespeare in his proper perspective. ...
HAROLD ROSENTHAL
Boston
Dyed or Blowed?
Sirs:
Have I been kidding myself or have you been deluding me for the past two decades? Aside from reading periodical barbs against your "editorial policy" in LETTERS, I know a Republican who thinks you are dyed-in-the-wool New Dealers and a Democrat who states you are blowed-in-the-glass Republicans; a Protestant who claims you are too pro-Catholic and a devout Catholic who wouldn't give your publication houseroom because he swears you're anti-Catholic. However, these people agree on one point, which is that / am gullible." Have you anything to say in your defense that I might use in mine ?
EAMON ANTONY
Bridgeport, Conn.
P: If Reader Antony's circle of informants were complete, he would also have heard that TIME is 1) backed by Moscow gold; 2) owned by Wall Street.--ED.
* According to the March 3 Gallup poll, 73% of the U.S. wants the present price ceiling law continued.--ED.
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