Bugs, Bars & Whistle Stops

Sir:

Compare your covers of March 8, 1943 and May 22, 1950 . . . The Truman of 1943 appears . . . much more haggard and worn than the 1950 version.

Incidentally, your 1943 article makes very interesting reading today. You refer to his presence in the Senate as "a queer accident of democracy"; his Presidency underlines this.

ROBERT I. ADRIANCE Orono, Me.

Sir:

Your cover picture of the President shows DIPHTHERIA BUGS on his tie. He should be quarantined immediately . . .

E. C. MCMULLEN Pediatrician Pine Bluff, Ark.

Sir:

Could those bars of music so obscurely placed on TIME'S cover be from the Missouri Waltz? . . .

DAVID POWELL Windsor, Conn.

P: They are the first four bars of Happy Days Are Here Again.--ED.

Sir:

The cover picture of President Truman ... set me to wondering how one man could hold the destiny of this great nation in the hollow of his head.

O. W. WOODSON Memphis, Tenn.

Sir:

Your use of the Pendergast School graduate as a cover subject is a sure indication that your supply of subjects is practically exhausted ... I had no idea they were so scarce.

M. W. NICKEL Bluefield, W.Va.

Sir:

Your belittling allusion to small towns on Harry's recent jousting tour as "whistle stops" and "tank towns" sort of roused my risibilities. Most people who live in small towns do so from choice . . .

Someone has to feed you city slickers, though sometimes I wonder if it's worth it ...

H. W. PECKENPAUGH Little Rock, Ark.

Fight Pictures

Sir:

. . . You refer to George Bellows' classic picture of "Firpo knocking Dempsey through the ropes" [TIME. May 22]. Bellows died in 1925, and I doubt he painted the episode referred to. His classic fight picture, unless my memory deceives me, was titled Stag at Sharkey's. Sharkey's was one of the early, small fight clubs in New York, about 1910 . . .

T. F. DOUGHERTY New York City

P: Artist Bellows (1882-1925) painted the Dempsey-Firpo fight the year after Dempsey won it (in the second round). Stag at Sharkey's was one of the three early fight pictures which made Bellows famous.--ED.

Echo's Answer

Sir:

In his letter in TIME'S May 15 issue, Senator McCarthy echoed his charge that the American Institute of Pacific Relations is not a "loyal organization." In the same issue TIME observed: "So far, McCarthy had charged much, but had proved not one case."

The American I.P.R. is without qualification loyal to the U.S. Government. International cooperation in research does not qualify national loyalties. If the Department of Justice thought the American Institute of Pacific Relations disloyal, it would list it as a subversive organization, which it has never done . ..

There is no Communist on the staff or board of the American I.P.R. It accepts no articles from Communists or from anyone whose commitments, left or right, are believed to preclude either loyalty or objectivity. The Far Eastern Survey is a major source of reliable, documented information on the menacing spread of Communism and Russian influence in Asia--and on the risks of supporting reaction . . .

CLAYTON LANE Executive Secretary American Institute of Pacific Relations New York City

Pension Plans

Sir:

Congratulations on your splendid two-page treatment of "Old Age Pensions" [TIME, May 22]. My 18 years of experience with retirement work indicates that your staff has analyzed the situation very well.

J. M. CLIFFORD Lansing, Mich.

Sir:

As I read your very interesting report . . . I was again impressed with the idea that, as far as I know, all of the pension plans . . . offer the worker at retirement age the choice of continuing to work as he has throughout his life (without making any allowance for the fact that his physical strength and vitality is no longer what it once was) or of retiring on a pension that, in most cases, would not assure him of more than the bare necessities of life (while he still has the health, strength and vitality to do a considerable amount of work). . .

Few men want to retire completely at 60 or 65, if they are in good health. What they want is the opportunity to let down--to reduce the amount of work . . . That might mean working fewer weeks in the year, or fewer days in the week or fewer hours in the day . . . They would need a small pension--say, $50 a month--which they would receive regardless of how much, if any, employment they chose to assume . . .

WARNER M. BATEMAN Shaker Heights, Ohio

Sir:

Your article was the best, clearest presentation that I have come upon . . .

E. F. MALONE Dayton, Ohio

In a Barrel of Brine

Sir:

We got a kick out of your May 22 treatment of Big Nose George Parrott (an alias).

. . . You did, however, commit the error of making a hulking moron out of a dashing movie bandit. There is no record of his actually killing a man (he was one of six men who fired on the two murdered deputy sheriffs from ambush while the officers were examining the hot ashes of the gang's campfire) or chasing a woman. More typical was his humble apology, "I'm sorry," to Sheriff Rankin after the slugging . . .

The 70-year-old preoccupation here with this particular lynching . . . lies not in the man's character, but in the community conscience, stimulated by the brutally clumsy execution and the mutilation of the body, which wasn't buried until a year after death (it was used for dissections by doctors who kept it in a whisky barrel filled with brine --the same barrel that was dug up last month). . .

Big Nose's bones [see cut] ... are now on display in Carbon County Museum. The exhibit is a great favorite with Rawlins school kids.

DICK WHITE Managing Editor Rawlins Daily Times Rawlins, Wyo.

Sir:

I don't know when any news .story has filled me with such sickening revulsion . . .

Let us hope that there are some influential people in Rawlins, with a sense of moral values, who will insist that decent burial be given the gruesome remains of Big Nose George.

MILDRED ESTELLE CARSON Monmouth, ILL.

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