Truth About Tito

Sir:

Reading the "Report on Yugoslavia," by Mr. Andre Laguerre [TIME, Jan. 30], I was most impressed by the honesty of the report and the courage, both of the correspondent and of TIME magazine, in printing it today when the truth about Tito's Communistic Yugoslavia is concealed on many sides . . .

MARGARET LEAVITT

New York City

Sir:

. . . The split between Stalin and Tito, and consequently the present Western policy toward Tito, have left the impression with many that, after all, Tito is not such a bad boy, and that a Communist state, if not controlled by Moscow, is not such an awful evil . . .

By presenting fully and correctly the facts about Yugoslavia, and by interpreting them in a way that should disperse the confusion in the mind of many, TIME has again performed its duty well--in the interest of your great country as well as in the interest of our common democratic cause.

GRGA ZLATOPER (former Yugoslav foreign correspondent)

New York City

Sir:

Bureau Chief Laguerre has done a remarkable piece of reporting. It is an article which should awaken the great American populace to conditions under Communist rule. Your magazine continues its fine work against aggressiveness. Please keep it up.

ANNA B. NEAL

Philadelphia, Pa.

Floored

Sir:

Your Jan. 30 account of Columbia Historian Carlton Hayes once falling from his lecture platform recalls a similar pratfall by famed Harvardian George Lyman Kittredge. Picking himself up from the floor with monumental dignity, he faced the tittering class and said: "This is the first time I have ever descended to the level of my students."

DONALD MICHAEL RAUH

New York City

P: As reported in TIME, Feb. 17, 1936. --ED.

Titan's Successor

Sir:

Does TIME know where Producer Curt Oertel, who made the Michelangelo film The Titan [TIME, Jan. 30], now lives? While serving with U.S. combat forces in April 1945, I found him in a little village which is now within the Russian-occupied zone of Germany. At that time he was working . . . on a documentary of famous German art . . .

KENNETH L. MYERS

Broken Bow, Neb.

P: Swiss Producer Oertel now lives in the U.S.-occupied town of Wiesbaden, where he is working on a new documentary film (in color) on the life, times and work of 16th Century Flemish Painter Pieter Bruegel.--ED.

Reciprocity

Sir:

I should be most grateful if you would publish this letter, as being my only means of correcting an impression apparently made by a recent broadcast of mine on American influence on European music.

In your issue of Jan. 23 you describe a passage of this broadcast as being "almost angrily contemptuous of American creative music." What I actually said of contemporary American composers was that "their artistic formation was European, and even when they achieved a really personal or (if there is such a thing) a really American style, they played no reciprocal part in influencing the music of Europe."

That this statement is true would, I think, be difficult to deny. If it is expressed with either anger or contempt (neither of which do I feel with regard to the American composers whose names I gave), then words do indeed bear different senses on different sides of the Atlantic.

MARTIN COOPER

London, England

P: Or perhaps they just sound different at such a distance.--ED.

Evangelists, Orphans & Communists

Sir:

In your Jan. 23 issue, TIME refers to the work and activity of Church of Christ evangelists in Italy. I would like to call to your attention certain statements . . .

TIME states that Churches of Christ have "an estimated membership in the U.S. of 700,000." We have more than 10,000 congregations, with 7,000 of them outside of Texas, and with more than a million members in the U.S. . . .

Again, TIME says: "The orphanage had room for 50 boys, but only 22 came." The truth is that the Italian government, when our workers had taken 22 orphans into the home, ordered them not to care for any more of these orphans . . .

Once more, TIME states: "From Rome came 'intimations' that they must close the orphanage . . . Apparent reason: most of the 250 converts claimed by the missionaries were Communists" . . . Our sole purpose is to save men's souls by a proclamation of the primitive gospel of Christ, and when a man obeys that gospel, he can no longer be a Communist . . .

LEONARD MULLENS

Church of Christ Dallas, Texas

P: The "estimated membership of 700,000" was based on the figure (682,000) given in the 1949 Yearbook of American Churches.--ED.

Conversation Piece

Sir:

I was rather amused by the footnote to your story of Hainan Island [TIME, Jan. 30]. It states, inter alia, that "Premier Wang An-shih's statism [1069-76] reduced China to economic and political chaos." This reminds me of an episode which, I think, may be worth mentioning . . .

When Mr. Henry Wallace visited Chungking after Moscow ... in 1944, I had the pleasure of having a brief conversation with him at a dinner party . . . Before the dinner, while all the guests were viewing the sight across the Chialing River from the veranda of the host's residence, Wallace said to me in all seriousness:

"You must know your great statesman Wang An-shih."

"I only read about him," I answered, "but I did not realize that you, Mr. Wallace, knew him well."

"Oh, yes," he said without hesitation, "I think your government should introduce the same reforms as Wang An-shih advocated in his time."

H. C. KIANG

New York City

Mississippi Misunderstood

Sir:

. . . Your Jan. 23 article, "Shooter's Chance," like most other articles I have read concerning Mississippi, is obviously indicative of the highest type of prejudice . . .

This statement, "Under Mississippi's earthy and antiquated penal system, the tougher and more ruthless a convict is, the better off he is," comes from not only a prejudicial mind but one that . . . apparently is not interested in obtaining the true facts . . . The Mississippi Penal Farm may be in some degree "earthy" but it is not "antiquated." The history of the state prison at Parchman, Miss, has shown marked improvement through the years, and it is now and has been for a long time modern.

Your statement, "Hogjaw, who had also shot (but only wounded) another fleeing prisoner last August, was obviously the type of man that some Mississippi law enforcers admired," is another that carries with it every implication short of libel . . . This is another subject which you . . . know nothing about. Most of our law-enforcing officers in Mississippi are high type gentlemen . . .

ALTON MASSEY

Mayor, City of Kosciusko

Kosciusko, Miss.

P: TIME still considers arming a convict to catch a criminal an odd and antiquated practice. But TIME has only admiration for Mayor Massey and the people of Mississippi for their generous reaction to the murder of three negro children.--ED.

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