Challenge for Democracy
Sir:
TIME is to be congratulated for the fine article on Palmiro Togliatti and the rise of Communism in Italy [TIME, May 5]. It showed the tremendous appeal that Communism has for people who are starving and without hope, and pointed the warning of what could happen in our own country were we to have another depression. The challenge is there for the Western democracies. . . .
EDWARD P. J. CORBETT
Chicago
Sir:
You made clear an important point: all Communists aren't black-bearded bomb tossers. They're at least as clever as we, and more interested. . . .
JOHN HARRINGTON
Chicago
Sir:
Congrats to TIME. The article on Italian Communism couldn't have been done up better by the old master himself--Hearst.
RICHARD B. SUTTIE
Petaluma, Calif.
Sir:
Your chagrin at Catholic Italy's going Communist amused me more than anything since I can remember, and I will be 88 years old next week. . . .
B. FREEDMAN
Chicago
A Night in Chicago
Sir:
In your issue of May 5 . . . it was stated that Dillinger was killed 13 years ago (1934).
I was returning from my wedding trip in California and we spent the night of July 22, 1933 in Chicago. The next morning the papers announced the death of Dillinger.
Either I was married a year later than I thought I was, or Dillinger was killed a year earlier than you state he was. . . .
PHILIP ADAIR
New York City
P:Shame on Reader Adair for not knowing when he was married.--ED.
Vile Caricature
Sir:
Your issue of April 21 contains an interesting but slightly misleading article on Keats's sketch of Haydon now exhibited in the London National Portrait Gallery. The reproduction fails to make clear that the "vile caricature of B. R. Haydon by John Keats" (as Haydon, not Keats, wrote beneath it) is the faintly drawn profile in the background, reproduced herewith [see cut] with the other sketches by Haydon suppressed. . . . This is indeed a "vile caricature.". . .
WILLARD B. POPE
University of Vermont
Burlington, Vt.
P:Although Professor Pope's claim is persuasive, the National Portrait Gallery in London insists that the phrase "a vile caricature" refers to all four heads in the sketch. TIME must plead with Keats:
Haydon! forgive me that I cannot speak
Definitively on these mighty things. . . .
--ED
Reminder
Sir:
Retiring Headmaster Fuess appears to be troubled about Andover's becoming too exclusive [TIME, May 5], and suggests a broadening of its enrollment, presumably by an increase of scholarships. This reminds me of the lady who installed an elevator in her house, and then felt obliged to join a gymnasium class in order to get the exercise of which the stairs deprived her.
MARGARET LEE SOUTHARD
Hingham, Mass.
Lonely Vicar
Sir:
I suppose "The Pope's Day" [TIME, May 5] is sufficiently newsworthy, even for your Protestant readers, to be included in TIME. I read it with some interest. One must admire the Pope's systematic life, if the day described is typical. I was, however, impressed with the man's loneliness. He never eats with anyone. How different from our Lord, whose vicar he claims to be, and of whom we read that He ate even with publicans and sinners! He is not married. How different from the Apostle Peter, whose successor the Pope pretends to be, and who, like other Apostles, had a wife and a mother-in-law, the latter being healed of a fever by our Lord! The humblest Protestant preacher would not exchange positions with the head of the Roman Catholic Church.
(REV.) CARL A. GIESELER
St. John's Lutheran Church
Denver
Old Gag
Sir:
TIME'S usually astute radio department should have known better than to have given credence to one of the oldest myths in American radio! This legend has been wished on children's radio entertainers since earliest days of broadcasting. The Uncle Don "incident" story [TIME, Feb. 24] is definitely apocryphal. Don himself recalls hearing the same gag told back in 1926 before he entered radio, as having happened to an Uncle "Gee Bee," a radio uncle on the now defunct New York station WGBS. Incidentally . . . Uncle Don started a new half-hour series on WOR March 1 in the new role of "Children's Disc Jockey."
RODNEY ERICKSON
Station WOR
New York City
P:This old saw (about the man who got caught wisecracking with his mike open)--which TIME labeled a legend and said that Uncle Don had called a canard--popped up in print at least as long ago as December 1933. It first appeared in TIME Oct. 9, 1939 as a "persistent but apocryphal tale," and there's not a word of truth to the story.--ED.
Russian Refreshment
Sir:
In contrast to the flood of hate-Russia propaganda that is fed to us by the daily press, the continual description of the Russians as oppressed, discouraged and persecuted slaves, such an article as Samuel Welles's excellent report in your issue of April 28 is like a ray of sunshine.
To read of Russians "as chipper as chipmunks," of neat houses "with lace curtains, begonias and geraniums in the windows," to nave anyone compare the "wonderful, hardworking" Russians with the "free-&-easy, friendly Midwesterners" of Mark Twain's books, is indeed refreshing. . . .
W. L. RIDEOUT
Yucaipa, Calif.
Sir:
. . . If the Russians could read a few such pieces about us, and we could read more such about them, perhaps we couldn't think each other such monsters.
RUTH OLSON
Los Angeles
Spelling by Sound
Sir:
Referring to TIME, April 28 [which reported that 17 out of 36 high-school students misspelled "thermometer"]: I wonder if our young students shouldn't really be complimented for no longer cooperating in wasting untold hours of valuable time in learning to spell with letters having no connection with the sound of the words. . . . More power to the students for having the courage to defy the old mossbacks by refusing to carry this senseless load any longer and thereby--we hope--start a movement for spelling reform. . . .
CHARLES M. FARRER
Seattle
Oatmeal Philosophy
Sir:
To Patricia V. Forth [TIME, May 5], and others who consider student veterans' wives a mentally and physically lazy group in danger of boring their husbands to death, a spirited Bronx cheer.
Let me point out to [her] that "Spartan Wives" are learning, not at the college level (as she recommends) but on the my-life-my-belly level, about science (is baby really sick enough to need a doctor? We dine on oatmeal for a week if she is), philosophy (some way must be found to cope with trouble and frustration . . .), economics (obviously), and sociology (living in a factory-hand or trailer-camp community is more enlightening than any text). . . .
HILDA K. FINDLEY
Columbus, Ohio
Down Beat
Sir:
With regard to your article . . . entitled "Like Bix" [TIME, May 5].
. . . When MacPartland does let loose with something like China Boy, Jazz Me Blues, etc., he faintly resembles Bix, but nowhere near enough to warrant the title of the article being "Like Bix." . . .
E. DONALD KAYE
Chicago
Sir:
Jazz music receives three types of treatment from writers today: 1) complete disregard from those who prefer not to "stoop"; 2) lofty head-patting from classical critics who think Louis Armstrong primarily a movie comedian; and 3) intelligent reporting by explorers who know whereof they speak.
It is a pleasure to see TIME included in the very small group of publications which consistently and frequently doses its readers with healthy treatment No. 3. The Jimmy MacPartland story, as many previous such, is right in there. . . .
RICHARD E. MADTES
Meadville, Pa.
Congressman Yamamoto?
Sir:
Re a congressional quote in your issue of May 5 -- "Do we want a Senator Yamamoto coming to Washington?"
As a member of a non-Asiatic family, of four generations' residence in Hawaii (sugar planters), I . . . would like to point out to this congressman that Yamamoto is an extremely common Japanese name, and no doubt shines with quiet dignity on the burial markers of more than one member of the Armed Forces of the United States. . . .
JAMES SPALDING BODRERO
Pasadena, Calif.
No Super-Bear
Sir:
YOUR RADIO COLUMN [TIME, MAY 12] STATES THAT A NEWSPAPER CARTOON STRIP CONCERNING BUDDY BEAR IS BEING DRAWN BY THE ARTISTS OF SUPERMAN. I KNOW ABSOLUTELY NOTHING OF ANY SUCH PROPOSED CARTOON FEATURE AND WOULD APPRECIATE AN EXPLANATION. PLEASE INFORM YOUR READERS SHUSTER AND I ARE NOT DRAWING BUDDY BEAR. . . .
JERRY SIEGEL
Superman Theater
Cleveland
P:TIME'S Radio Editor was carried away by the glowing handouts of Buddy's overenthusiastic sponsors, who mixed fancy with fact. -- ED.
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