Keyhole Pressure
Sir:
You have done a national service in your article on the "Washington Head-Hunters" [TIME, Jan. 24] ... Winchell and Pearson.
If the American nation is to be run by keyhole columnist pressure, so that one can . . . undermine men like Forrestal and Clay, then indeed the U.S. is in a hell of a shape.
Don't pay any attention to their return smears. The American people are catching up on them--but fast.
I. H. PETERMAN
Philadelphia, Pa.
Sir:
. . . Secretary Forrestal is one man in the present administration who ... is not swayed by the forever complaining minorities who seem to give their allegiance more to Soviet Russia and Palestine than to their own country. As for this "Wall Street" name-calling, the columnists should be advised that this is the end of the '40s, not the middle of the '30s . . .
GEORGIANA M. SHAFFER
Los Angeles, Calif.
Sir:
. . . Able public servants are few and seldom appreciated. We are deeply indebted to the Defense Secretary for his businesslike job in a difficult position.
Let . . . Winchell attend to his nightclub gossip and leave, to men of recognized ability, important matters of government administration.
GEORGE JODRIE
Portland, Me.
Out of China
Sir:
.. . Very often the public views a news magazine on variations between two extremes: either believing every word, or doubting every report. China is indeed a perplexing problem. Even living here for the past two years has not lifted the screen of mystery. Nevertheless I must let you know . . . that your coverage of the situation has fitted the actual situation to the last dotted "i." . . .
CHAPLAIN CALVIN H. ELLIOTT
Tsingtao, China
Sybaritic Specimens
Sir:
Your G.M. story [TIME, Jan. 24] was terrific . . . Almost makes me want to trade my Plymouth in on one of those Cadillacs.
S. T. BITTING
Glenview, ILL.
Sir:
Since the subject of made-to-order auto bodies belongs to the esoteric, I am horrified at the appellation and price [$30,000] of the "sybaritic specimens." A "Coup de Ville" is improper French for the wrong type of carrosserie. A Coupee de Ville is a body with an open-type front as the Coach-craft Coupe de Ville I designed in 1940 . . .
PETER STENGEL
Beverly Hills, Calif,
Sir:
Your review of chromium-plated razzle-dazzle 1949 automobiles was most discerning ...
In the 60 years since Daimler invented the internal combustion engine and adapted it to personalized transportation back in 1887, there has been no essential change in automobile design. People still use twice as much space on the road as the car requires, because today's operator cannot see how much room he needs . . . [He] skids off the road in his front-end-heavy blunderbus and involuntarily kills and maims more than a million people inside or outside the car . . .
President Wilson of G.M., whose birthplace was flanked by the houses of two locomotive engineers, still ignores the fact that locomotives have had their weights concentrated over the driving wheels for over 100 years to assure traction, while his product has engine weight over the front wheels that are used for steering.
This unbalance makes it necessary that every passenger car built today requires . . . straight line stops ... or the car will skid out of control . . . When it comes to curves which slow a car without the use of brakes, the same principle applies, and you are liable to go off the road and land wrapped round a tree or in the ditch. Unavoidable deceleration of a car on a curve with weight out in front results in many fatal accidents . . .
ARTHUR W. STEVENS
President
Automobile Safety Association
Boston, Mass.
Korean Dilemma
Sir:
TIME, Jan. 10, implies that romance was an easy road to the U.S. for foreign spouses [but] neglects to mention the dilemma of Korean wives of American personnel. The Korean national, although his nation is recognized by the U.S., is not eligible to reside in the U.S. as a permanent alien resident, nor dare he hope to achieve American citizenship, because the Korean is an Oriental and is subject to the Oriental Exclusion Act.
The Koreans, oppressed for the last 40 years by Japanese masters, although they conducted an underground government aimed at the sabotage of Nipponese imperialism and have assisted the American occupation for as long as they could conscientiously believe in it, still are given a polite brushoff whenever they broach the matter of entry into the U.S. . . .
The American attitude towards marriage between Korean subjects and American personnel was, and still is, extremely harsh. Those hardy enough to apply for permission to marry are required to produce a ream of documents attesting to the character, health, religious, economic and political integrity of the persons applying. Ninety-eight percent of the couples genuinely in love are given a flat "no" on the implied grounds that the Korean is a sort of subhuman type unfit for life in the U.S. . . .
K. W. HAHN
Seoul, Korea
Readers' Rights
Sir:
TIME'S book reviewer has a right to his minority opinion about the value of Lajos Zilahy's novel, The Dukays [TIME, Jan. 24].
TIME'S readers, however, also have a right to know whether or not the reviewer read the book . . . He refers to the two leading characters of the book as "Kristina" and "her daughter, Countess Zia" . . . He need only have gone as far as page 11 to find out this basic fact: the book is primarily the story of two daughters of Count Dukay, Kristina and Zia . . .
K. S. GINIGER
New York City
P: Pressagent Giniger (Prentice-Hall) caught TIME'S book reviewer gathering literary wool. The reviewer happily awoke in time to correct himself in the last 1,200,000 copies of the press run.--ED.
Muskets, Bombards & Women
Sir:
Muskets at Cressy in 1346? [TIME, Jan. 24]. Perhaps Will Durant was trying to think of bombards. Muskets came 200 years later. That's a long shot.
PAUL ST. GAUDENS
Cambridge, Mass.
Sir:
To give interviews is suicidal. The statement ascribed to me [from a San Francisco Chronicle interview] about the "muskets at Cressy" being "as effective in their time" as the atom bomb burdens me with two absurdities. The first was my fault; I should have remembered, even in the excitement of being interviewed by two fair women, that there were no muskets at Cressy. The second was due to forgivable abbreviation in the press; what I said was that there had been as much advance in military destructiveness between Cressy (1346) and 1939 as between 1939 and Hiroshima; and that the increased destructiveness had not deterred statesmen from making war . . .
WILL DURANT
Los Angeles, Calif.
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