Cancer Fight Sir:

. . . TIME is worth its weight in diamonds for such articles as the cancer cover story (TIME, June 27).

DWAYNE THORSON

New York City

Sir:

. . . Every American should read your article, it's . . . very understandable.

MARVIN MORRISON

Kansas City, Mo.

Sir:

Thank you for that perfectly wonderful article regarding the work that Dr. Rhoads is doing at Memorial Hospital.

I thought you might be interested to know that I was so touched by it that I have just sent my personal check to him to further the great work he and his associates are doing.

H. F. GIBSON New York City

Sir:

Was it merely coincidence that the cover of Dr. Rhoads appeared when the sign of Cancer (June 22-July 21) was in the ascendancy?

REBECCA A. HARMON San Francisco, Calif. P: Merely.--ED.

Unforgettable Afternoon

Sir:

. . . On the eve of the 30th session of Bread Loaf School of English, special kudos on the timely article "The Intolerable Touch"

[TIME, June 27], which was a masterful commentary on a masterful poet.

For those of us who have attended Bread Loaf School about a mile up the road from Homer Noble Farm, the article and picture served as a sort of reunion with both that lovely mountain-girt country and the remarkable Robert Frost . . . My friends and fellow students of other years at Bread Loaf will long remember his puckish wit and astounding erudition on any subject. An afternoon talk with Frost in his tiny cabin set up the hillside from the Noble house, his shepherd dog Gillie lying by the fire and appearing to listen as his master talks of a variety of subjects including baseball, politics, education, 14th Century anonymous carols, farming, and the metaphysical Poets Donne and Marvell--this is an unforgettable experience . . .

JOHN EDWARDS AKER New Orleans, La.

Lost Loot

Sir:

In your June 6 issue you describe the strange fate of the Schloss collection, which was seized by the Nazis and which in part is now being sold at auction in Paris.

Instead of sending their loot to the Alt Aussee mine, their great art repository, the

Nazis kept the 259 paintings in the Fuehrer-bau of Munich for the sole reason of pleasing Hitler whenever he visited the city. When the end came, and the SS guards had fled . . . the people from the neighborhood, joined by D.P.s and liberated inmates of the Dachau camp, stormed the party buildings in search of scarce items. When all the food and liquor, and much of the furniture, had been carted off, they broke into the air-raid cellars where the paintings were stored, climbing over stacks of Panzerfaust grenades . . .

Of the 259 paintings, 96 were recovered . .. The Jan Steen (Effects of Intemperance) mentioned in your article . . . had been sold to a Munich businessman, a strange character who in two years had risen from nothing to become the foremost buyer of art objects in that city. Upon learning that Military Government was looking for the Jan Steen he hid it in a garage. There, behind a false wall, it was discovered.

Some of the still missing paintings are, I feel sure, tucked away in the slum dwellings around the Fuehrerbau.

EDGAR BREITENBACH Chief, Monuments & Fine Arts Section U.S. Cultural Affairs Branch Military Government for Germany

Middlespeak

Sir:

Your review of George Orwell's 1984 [TIME, June 20] led me to buy a copy . . . Mr. Orwell devotes an appendix to a description of Newspeak, the dreadful language of Oceania which is based upon English (Oldspeak) but distorted so that political ideas at variance with those of the party can be expressed only with great difficulty, or not at all. Mr. Orwell rightly regards this etymological reorientation as important in forging the bonds of tyranny. To show by contrast the kind of Oldspeak idea that cannot be expressed in Newspeak, Mr. Orwell quotes from the American Declaration of Independence. One sentence, as Mr. Orwell renders it, reads:

"That to secure these rights, governments are instituted among men, deriving their powers from the consent of the governed."

The text I learned 40 years ago said: ". . . deriving their just powers . . ." The difference is vast. Too often in our day power is held to be its own justification. That is to say, the existence of governmental power is taken as evidence of the consent of the governed. The elimination of the word "just" in the passage above would seem to place the Declaration on the side of arbitrary authority in cases of imperial tyranny, for example, the Sassenach regime that held Ireland in thrall for centuries. The kind of thinking which would omit the word "just" has been influenced by the imprecise and slanted political vocabulary of our day, which might be called Middlespeak . . .

Mr. Orwell is at liberty to do whatever he likes with the politics of his mythical Oceanic dictatorship, but as an American I must insist that he exempt Thomas Jefferson's prose from the process of rewriting history which began in London long before 1984 . . .

DENNIS MCMENNUS Boston, Mass.

Message to Garcia

Sir:

How persuasively poetic is Jose Garcia Villa's use of the pedestrian comma in his verses (TIME, July 4)!

But how much more beautiful his work would be if he used the arcane semicolon instead of the comma, thus: a ;living;giant ;all;in;little ;pieces

And how superb the effect would be if he went a step farther and used the colon, thus: a :living:giant :all:in:little :pieces And what heights he would reach if he eschewed comma, semicolon and colon and used instead the enema, which I have just invented . . . Written enema-wise, his wordage would read: g Sxijxgp grant xil ra Kttig picas

TOM LENNON

Beverly Hills, Calif.

The Good Life (Cont'd)

Sir:

I nominate Mrs. A. Peter Emig ["The Good Life," TIME Letters, June 27] for the post of budget director of the U.S. or director of reorganization as suggested by Mr. Hoover's Commission.

On second thought . . . she is too valuable . . . I therefore nominate [her] for the presidency of the U.S. in 1952 on a Let's-Get-Down-to-Brass-Tacks ticket. Anyone who can do so much on so little would have this country solvent in a generation . . .

SELMA STEIG STEHR Dallas, Tex.

Sir:

. . . We have been married eleven years on a similar salary [$5,000 a year]; we have a house half paid for, the same 1933 Graham we had our first date in (it runs most of the time), two healthy kids. I do all the housework and laundry, and make the children's clothes or buy them on sale. We do eat, and read TIME regularly. But where is the rest of our Good Life? We can't go on a trip, buy a book, or go to a play.

I say it can't be done . . . Looks as if you have the story of the year.

(MRS.) IRVIN T. SHULTZ Waco, Tex.

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