Beyond Belief?

Sir:

For a number of years I have been reading your magazine, and I feel that it is one of the best sources of concise, pertinent and unbiased reporting of current events published in America.

In the issue of May 29, I was very much impressed by the article on Indo-China, regarding existing conditions and . . . results which might be obtained [with] the necessary capital and manpower . . .

RAYMOND A. BRODTON Everett, Pa.

Sir:

. . . One of the outstanding services to all mankind is the way your extraordinary news gatherers throughout the world make distant places and people as ... real as some part of our own land . . .

RALPH C. EKSKINE Tryon, N.C.

Sir:

The cover story on Indo-China is nauseating beyond belief. "The U.S. now has ... a new ally in the cold war." Who is this ally? The Emperor Bao Dai? A man who grovels before the oppressors of his people ... a traitor by any standards, who must be regarded with contempt or indifference by the majority of his people . . .

There is a burning desire for freedom in the peoples of Asia . . . With no aid from us, this has produced free nations in India and Indonesia. This desire for freedom is the only effective weapon that exists against oppression, Communistic or any other . . .

Our support of the Emperor Bao Dai is . . also a repudiation of our own ideals. This action of our State Department and the slant in your article stink to the skies.

JOHN B. THOMAS Chicago, Ill.

P: Excerpt from TIME'S story: "All in all, the new U.S. ally [Emperor Bao Dai] in Southeast Asia is a weak reed. And the alliance is as ironic as anything in history. For the same U.S. Government which abandoned the Chinese Nationalists because they were not good enough was committed ... to defend a playboy emperor and the worst and almost the last example of white man's armed imperialism in Asia . . ."--ED.

Cover Picture

Sir:

Re TIME'S May 29 cover picture of Viet Nam's Bao Dai: Is this a touched-up photograph or a painting? If it isn't a photograph, my hat is off to Boris Chaliapin; if it is, shame on TIME for not saying so.

GEORGE MCNEILLIE JR. Toronto, Canada

P: Reader McNeillie's hat is off.--ED.

Animal Crackers

Sir:

... In TIME, May 29, Petty Officer Smith and Marine Sergeant Bender were announced as behaving "coonily." This sounds intriguing. How does one go about it in one's living room ? . . .

ROBERT C. SOMMER Terre Haute, Ind.

P: First catch a raccoon (a "cagey" animal), then go on from there/--ED.

Treaty of Kittery

Sir:

Referring to your article on the Japanese reaction to the peace treaty of 1905, brought about by the intervention of President T. Roosevelt--"In a peace treaty signed at a conference of the two powers at Portsmouth N.H." [TIME, May 29]:

This is not correct. While the treaty is called the "Treaty of Portsmouth," it was not signed in Portsmouth at all but in Kittery Me. . . .

After a lapse of 45 years, it is curious that so many do not know the facts of this famous treaty. Believe it or not, Portsmouth Navy Yard is not in Portsmouth, N.H. but is located across the river in Kittery, Me.

BASIL G. WOODS Bangor, Me.

P: Let TIME--and other historians--henceforth keep the Maine facts in mind.--ED.

Rosy Upsurge?

Sir:

On the business page of the May 29 issue, you indicate . . . that the U.S. is awash in one glorious upsurge of prosperity . . . .

Whose prosperity ? Oh yes, there is plenty of it for the corporations, but isn't there always plenty for the corporations? . . .

Ask the average registered nurse--working exhausting hours every day and getting $200 a month if she is very lucky--if she is part of the "Fine Time for All" you so glibly mention. Ask the bookkeeper, the stenographer the sales clerk, the minister, the teacher if they are wonderfully happy and full of financial pudding. Ask any one of the millions of white-collar workers of the lower income brackets, and ask any of the people living on incomes and pensions and insurance annuities if everything is just rosy . . .

MARK HANNA Fresno, Calif.

Global Tricks

Sir:

Sorry to disappoint old Uncle Joe again, but the Russians are not the first to use a cyclodrome on a global basis [TIME, May 22]. We saw one in a fair last year.

DON SPINKS Boynton Beach, Fla.

P: Oldtime circusgoers recall other such acts where performers used bicycles (a harder trick, since they had to pedal to get the momentum). But the sphere, although elevated, was not split.--ED.

Kafkaesque Libretto

Sir:

Re your article on Composer Luigi Dallapiccola [TIME, May 29]: How many busybodies have written to inform you that his "Kafkaesque libretto" to Il Prigioniero was, with the exception of locale, lifted in its entirety from The Torture of Hope, a short story by [19th Century French Author] Villiers de L'Isle Adams?

WALTER S. BUNKER Cincinnati, Ohio

P: Including Reader Bunker, 18. Composer Dallapiccola adapted his libretto from two works: The Torture of Hope, and some of the more sinister legends of 14th Century German prankster Till Eulenspiegel.--ED.

Clam Flats Hula

Sir:

Herewith my five-year-old daughter's provincial New England version of TIME'S [May 29] Betty Grable jump-rope doggerel;

Charlie Chaddigan went to France To teach the girls the hula-hula dance. Salute to the captain, bow to the queen, And touch the bottom of the sub-mo-rine.

"Hula-hula" is accompanied, up here on the clam flats, by a fetching contortion of undeveloped hips, with nary a skip missed . . .

Note that in "Charlie Chaddigan" the spirit of Charlie Chaplin, at least, is honored in our revels.

C. F. HAYES Salem, Mass.

Bustards & Rats

Sir:

Your May 29 Science article describes Dr. Gardiner Bump of the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service as an excited and hopeful man looking forward to his experience with the bustard in the Southwestern desert. As a member of the Desert Rats, I view Dr. Bump's enthusiasm with alarm. The crime he intends to perpetrate upon our Southwest is far more serious than that wreaked upon Cambridge and Boston by the lad who introduced pigeons into that region . . .

We hunted bustards with jeep-mounted .50s and .45s . . . None of us ever saw them fly. They walk or run their 20 or 30 miles daily to a water hole. When cornered, they courageously face away from you, elevate their posteriors to the proper altitude, and zero in ... To us Desert Rats, they were known by a name other than, but somewhat similar to, bustard . . .

EUGENE L. LAMB Chaplain (Major) U.S.A.F. Lowry Air Force Base Denver, Colo.

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