Across-the-Channel Sway

Sir:

Allow me to commend you for your article on Augustus John [TIME, May 31].

I believe, however, that there was one . . . error. One sentence reads: "For half a century now, he has been working right across the Channel from Picasso and Matisse, and yet he has never been swayed an inch by the powerful influence of those moderns' magnetic brushes."

Surely you mean that "for half a century, Matisse and Picasso have been working right across the Channel from John and have never been swayed an inch by the honest, nonexhibitionist painting of this master." J. FRANCIS Annapolis, Md.

Batting Averages

Sir:

In diagnosing the Republican primary results in Oregon and elsewhere, you miscalled the entire ball game. In commenting on my recitation of Casey at the Bat [TIME, May 31], you struck out the wrong man. It was . . . not Stassen . . .

The score is 2 to 1 for Stassen (36 delegates to 18) in primaries where both [he and Dewey] participated. Stassen has taken the New York governor out of his Albany dugout on to the open diamond where people can judge their relative performance. . . . ELMER J. RYAN South St. Paul, Minn.

Sir:

. . . "The mighty Stassen" did strike out in Oregon. But, according to my scorebook, that was his sixth trip to the plate. He had already

slammed home runs in Wisconsin, Nebraska and Pennsylvania, and belted base hits in Ohio and New Hampshire. That's five for six, or a batting average of .833--tops in any man's league.

Dewey rapped homers in Oregon and New Hampshire, but looked pretty bad as he fanned the breeze in Wisconsin and Nebraska, and was called out on strikes in Pennsylvania. He hit two for five, for a batting average of .400--good hitting, but less than half Slugger Stassen's average.

Robert Taft was the swinging gate in Nebraska: he went down on called strikes in Pennsylvania, and looked pretty unimpressive on his own home grounds in Ohio --'Safe on a blooper. That's one for three, or an average of .333.

Vandenberg, while a fearsome threat, refused to play ball, and thus has no primary record to be judged by. Warren likewise stayed out of the lineup, preferring to watch the game from the dugout (hoping, perhaps, to be called by the convention in the ninth inning as a surprise pinch hitter).

Harold Stassen can't be expected to hit a home run every time--any more than

Dewey can be expected to strike out every time. The dust has cleared all right, but TIME had better clean off its specs and take another look at the front runners before it finds it has lost its reputation as an accurate and objective political umpire.

CLYDE E. BEANE Los Angeles, Calif.

P: TIME'S specs are not rose-colored. (For a candidate in another league taking a full cut, see cut.)--ED.

Dramatized Urgency

Sir:

OUR BROTHER GARRY DAVIS IN RENOUNCING HIS U.S. CITIZENSHIP TO BECOME A WORLD CITIZEN [TIME, JUNE 7] HAS DRAMATIZED . . . HIS

BELIEF IN THE TREMENDOUS URGENCY OF THE WORLD SITUATION. WE, AS U.S. CITIZENS, SUPPORT 1OO% HIS OBJECTIVE OF A FEDERAL WORLD GOVERNMENT WITH LIMITED POWERS TO PREVENT WAR, DEVELOPED THROUGH THE UNITED NATIONS.

VIRGINIA DAVIS EMERY MARJORIE DAVIS

Philadelphia, Pa.

A Monster in Our Midst

Sir: Startling to me was your article on tele vision [TIME, May 24]. Any sensitive reader is awakened to a realization that an infant monster is in our midst--a monster with tremendous potentialities for good or evil. Our haunting fear is that the gentlemen of advertising will grasp this marvelous instrument and flood our homes with the moral mediocrity of the soap companies and the sensualism of Hollywood . . . The people of America must voice their conviction that television programs be an enlightenment to the home and not the saloonkeeper's prop . . .

ROBERT KREIDER

University of Basel Basel, Switzerland

F.Y.I.

Sir:

RE THE UTTERLY INDEFENSIBLE CHARGE WHICH TIME MAKES IN ITS ISSUE OF MAY 31 THAT DR. LOUIE D. NEWTON IS A "WIDE-EYED RUSSOPHILE IN HIS POLITICS" . . .

LIFE [NOV. 10] CHARGED HIM AS BEING A FELLOW TRAVELER, FOR WHICH STATEMENT A PARTIAL APOLOGY WAS PRINTED [DEC. 15]. NOW THAT TIME ATTEMPTS TO BRAND HIM AS A POLITICAL HENCHMAN OF COMMUNISM, IT WOULD APPEAR THAT YOU EDITORS ARE DETERMINED TO . . . ATTACK . . . DR. NEWTON.

FOR YOUR INFORMATION, DR. NEWTON HAS NEVER ALLOWED HIMSELF TO BE INVOLVED DIRECTLY OR INDIRECTLY WITH ANY POLITICAL CROUP, EVEN WITHIN OUR OWN COUNTRY, AND THERE IS NO BASIS OF FACT WHATEVER THAT COULD POSSIBLY JUSTIFY YOUR LATEST CHARGE . . .

J. LON DUCKWORTH

Chairman Board of Deacons Druid Hills Baptist Church Atlanta, Ga.

P: TIME was wrong, regrets that it misread Dr. Newton's hopeful reports of Soviet religious freedom [TIME, Aug. 26, 1946] as evidence of political Russophilia, thanks Deacon Duckworth for setting the record straight.--ED.

Indispensable Pabulum

Sir:

Though very, very late, would you be so kind as to allow me to offer my heartfelt congratulations to TIME on its 25th anniversary?

Every week TIME is as welcome as the flowers in May or a gentle shower in the heart of the desert of Sahara. It has become the indispensable mental pabulum for me that makes me to live on in this "how weary, stale, flat and unprofitable" world.

Thanks to TIME'S effort ... to tell the news, i.e., the fact, the truth of this tragic and gaudy era, scales have fallen from my eyes. I am able to know "to what gods I must pray and what kind of fights I must love."

Reading the report, one thing I know-- that, whereas I was blind, now I see why it's called TIME: it means "Truths in Much Eye-Tems" or "Thorough Impressions, Mellow Expressions . . ."

Today we celebrated and introspected the first anniversary of the enforcement of our new constitution. What I thought today was that our freedom, at present, might be said to be a lean one as well as my poor body, yet it should be far better than fat slavery . . .

TADASY KOHNO

Takada-Machi Nishikunizaki-Gun Oita-Ken, Japan

Gettysburg Injustice

Sir:

Your reviewer of Earl Schenck Miers' and Richard A. Brown's Gettysburg [TIME, May 31] does an injustice to the British observer with the Confederates, Colonel Arthur Fremantle, when applying the word "tactless" to Fremantle's remark to General Longstreet after the failure of Pickett's charge.

Colonel Fremantle's remark, "I wouldn't have missed this for anything," while inappropriate, was not tactless; for the observer was in ignorance of the tactical situation at the time, and erroneously supposed that he had arrived just in time to witness an attack. He was unaware, when he spoke to Longstreet, that he was viewing Pickett's retreat. To quote Fremantle: "When I got close up to General Longstreet, I saw one of his regiments advancing through the woods in good order; so, thinking I was just in time to see the attack, I remarked to the general that 'I wouldn't have missed this for anything ...'."

CHARLES B. GARRIGUS

Kingsburg, Calif.

Whose Peak?

Sir:

... In the article about Lieut. Zebulon Montgomery Pike [TIME, May 10], you state: "Pike predicted that the summit would never be reached by man. But 14 years later it was scaled (by someone else); in 1835 it was recorded on a map as Pikes Peak."

The "someone else" referred to in your article happened to be my great-great-grandfather's brother, Dr. Edwin James. Let me quote from a booklet by L. H. Pammel:

"Leaving St. Louis on May 4, 1820, Dr. James, in company with Major Long and Captain Bell, traveled on horseback across the country. By the order of the Honorable Secretary of War . . . Major Long had been instructed to explore the country from the Missouri westward to the Rocky Mountains to the source of the River Platte and thence by way of the Arkansas and Red Rivers to the Mississippi. Dr. James became botanist, geologist and surgeon . . . They were particularly desirous of visiting what Pike called the highest peak of the mountains, which now bears the name of that distinguished explorer and soldier. Its summit had been reported inaccessible. A detachment of the party, however, conducted by Dr. James, went to the top on the 13th and 14th of July, 1820. From this circumstance it was called James' Peak, and this name is given to it on the map which accompanies the report of the expedition."

. . . Pike was just a piker--he didn't even get to the top of his own mountain.

EDWIN P. JAMES

Des Moines, Iowa

Machine Age Understanding

Sir:

When, in the 1860s, Jacob Burckhardt read the review of his Civilization of the Renaissance in Italy in the N.Y. Herald Tribune, he --the author never satisfied--wrote in his own handwriting: "Bravo!" If it were not plagiarism, I would like to do the same thing on the review of my book, Mechanization Takes Command [TIME, May 17]. Not because you are so friendly, but just out of pure admiration, how it is possible to express in so compressed a form, a comparatively complex and difficult subject, and with such astonishing ease and mastery! It is not only training, it is art how your staff accomplished it to convey the hidden idea ... It can only be compared with the anonymous spirit that built the cathedrals, so that they could be understood by both the simple man and the scholar ...

SIEGFRIED GIEDION Zurich, Switzerland

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