Shabby

Sir:

Blair McClenachan writes in a letter to TIME [May 2]: "It seems shabby as hell to entrust a man with hundreds of thousands of dollars to manage, and pay him only $6,500 a year for the responsibility . . ."

Why, man, that's nothing. As a teacher, I have millions of dollars' worth of children to manage, and I don't even get $3,000.

GENE REICHENTHAL

Quaker Street Village, N.Y.

Phony Conspiracy?

Sir:

Our liberal friend Paul Davis says: "Fundamentally, the hullabaloo over a Communist conspiracy to overthrow our Government is phony" [TIME, May 9].

I rise to remark that the dry conspiracy to establish Prohibition was just as "phony," but they put it over . . .

LAMBERT FAIRCHILD

New York City

Half-Century Man

Sir:

The suggestion [that TIME run a Man of the Half-Century cover next Jan. 2] is slightly premature. The half-century will not be completed until Dec. 31, 1950.

THOMAS H. DANIEL

Washington, D.C.

P: Reader Daniel has a point, but a debatable one. Other readers in another century raised the same question --but, said the London Times in 1896: "On the whole, we may consider we are tolerably safe in holding that the next century begins on January 1, 1901 .. ."--ED.

Sir:

Man of the Half-Century, Man of the Century, Man of Our Time--unquestionably Harry S. Truman.

ROBERT E. DAEHN

Chicago, Ill.

The MacArthur Story

Sir:

Congratulations on your article on Japan [TIME, May 9]. It presents a vivid and wellbalanced picture of conditions as I observed them on a recent educational mission, which included Tokyo, Kyoto, Osaka, Hiroshima, Kobe and Yokohama. I heartily concur in the praise of General MacArthur's leadership.

RAYMOND WALTERS

University of Cincinnati Cincinnati, Ohio

Sir:

Arigato, or thank you, for publishing a feature article on General MacArthur and Japan.

Also my sincere thanks to Mr. Chaliapin's wonderful cover.

SHUNZABURO YABUUCHI

Fukushima City, Japan

Sir:

Bravo for the straight-from-the shoulder, comprehensive article on MacArthur and America's debt to Asia . . .

JOHN P. CRAWFORD

Philadelphia, Pa.

Sir:

. . . MacArthur's imprint in the Far East is only comparable with Winston Churchill's historical stature in the West.

LYNN ATKINSON

Los Angeles, Calif.

Sir:

I thank you very much for your thorough view of occupied Japan . . . I want to tell you that we are steadily recovering from moral chaos . . . Small kind behaviorisms are seen in the street very much oftener now than just after the war. If we are able to go through the economic hardships of this year and the next, we should be one of the peaceful and honest nations of the world.

HIROSHI YAMAJI

Tokyo, Japan

San Francisco Punch

Sir:

The story of Lima's "Wine of the Country" [TIME,-April 25] awakened memories. It might also serve to describe a spot in San Francisco in the days of the Bank Exchange and its presiding genius, Pisco John . .

In the Bank Exchange there was a high mahogany bar, its top worn smooth, it was said, by the sleeves of Mark Twain, Bret Harte and others whose tongues and voices were loosened and made eloquent by that ambrosial drink . . .

Pisco John and the lights went out together as the 18th Amendment came in.

THOMAS E. RIPLEY

Santa Barbara, Calif.

P: Reader Ripley's memory has wandered slightly: the stylish Bank Exchange's presiding genius was Duncan Nichol, and potent Pisco Punch ("Two, and you'd hug a wildcat") was his invention. Pisco John's was a sailors' pub a few blocks away.--ED.

Music on the Move

Sir:

. . . Rocky Mount and the schoolchildren of Eastern Carolina join TIME'S [May 9] salute to Dr. Swalin and his contribution to music appreciation in North Carolina.

Unable to seat the crowd in a local tobacco warehouse, we moved to the Rocky Mount Ballpark (pictured but not mentioned in your story). Then it rained. Under a canopy rigged by attaching the home plate canvas covering to a 300-ft. cable swung from the roof of the stadium, Dr. Swalin and his orchestra performed to 6,000 white and Negro county school kids, bettering by 3,000 any previous audience . . .

MEL WARNER

Rocky Mount, N.C.

The Want to Write

Sir:

It is rarely that I take exception to TIME, but you have erred in the review of Kenneth Roberts' new book I Wanted to Write [TIME April 25].

As to "peppering his book with cracks about . . . his literary betters, including Sinclair Lewis, William Faulkner and George Santayana," only time (lower case) can tell how right he is. I dare your book editor to reread any of Lewis' or Faulkner's books of the early '30s in comparison with Arnndel, The Lively Lady or Captain Caution and repeat his claim that they are Roberts' betters. Perhaps Santayana might be . . .

I Wanted to Write is not a short book, but it ranks high in readability . . . If your reviewer had to plow through it and concludes that a pruning would go well, it may be that his choice of vocational tools is wrong.

W. W. CLEPPER

Nutley, N.J.

Sir:

. . . By whose standards are Sinclair Lewis, William Faulkner and George Santayana, Roberts' "literary betters"? . . .

CHARLES S. MILL

Scarsdale, N.Y.

P: Among others, by TIME'S.--ED.

Ghost Ranger Sir:

I was nonplussed, I was bewildered . . . to see well-informed and ordinarily accurate TIME report in its May 2 issue that Stan Jones, writer of Ghost Riders,* is a "leathery-necked forest ranger" in Death Valley National Monument . . .

The field officers actively engaged in ad ministering our national forests are known as "forest rangers"; such men employed by the national parks and national monuments are "park rangers" ... A forest ranger in Death Valley would be an amazing phenome non. It's a long way between trees in that country . . . May I add that your mistake is indeed a very common one . . .

MERLIN K. POTTS

Mount Rainier National Park

Longmire, Wash.

* Now changed to Riders in the Sky.

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