Saludos!
Sir:
I was pleased to read the comments and articles published by TIME [Feb. 5 et seq.] on the situation created at La Prensa.
The eloquent expressions of solidarity with our newspaper contained in your articles constitute for us a valuable and encouraging stimulus.
While thanking you for backing us up, I salute you . . .
ALBERTO GAINZA PAZ
Director La Prensa Buenos Aires
Sir:
A salute to TIME and its Correspondent Frank Shea and LIFE Photographer Leonard McCombe for continuing the battle against Juan and Eva Peron's Fascist state.
A few months ago I delivered two former U.S. Navy LSMs to an Argentine firm . . . Peron's Mussolini-patterned police force had a wonderful time collecting all the TIME magazines I had aboard . . .
WALTER H. SEIFERLE Miami
Sir:
We are deeply grateful for your stand on Peron. We expect the truth from TIME. That's why we take it. More power to you.
FLETCHER D. PARKER Immanuel Congregational Church Hartford, Conn.
Sir:
. . . The shenanigans of the power-hungry Perons bode ill for the whole world. Curtailment of common liberties in Argentina is like the proverbial rock tossed into the millpond. First a great splash, then the seemingly never-ending ripples which go on & on, just as the evil created by Peron will go on & on and find its mark in the gullibility of "follow-the-leader" people all over the universe . . .
EDWARD P. SCHWARTZ Minneapolis
Historic Parallel
Sir:
I read your Feb. 12 report about those 200 Greeks who stood off a 45-minute attack [in Korea] by 3,000 Communists ... It is the fate and the history of these people to stand off attacks and keep on fighting, although outnumbered. That fate started some 2,000 years ago, with Leonidas and his 300 at Thermopylae . . .
Two years ago the same soldiers were fighting the same enemy at the same parallel (the 38th crosses Athens), in the opposite part of the globe, under much harder circumstances . . .
P. PANAJOTOPOULOS Athens, Greece
Brass Buttons to Burst
Sir:
The lightweight, .30-cal. T25 rifle is a "new tool" which certainly merits the Army's pride [TIME, Feb. 26]. I trust the Army is saving a few buttons to burst when it finds the supermen to fire the T25 at 750 rounds a minute using a 20-round clip.
DAVID B. H. MARTIN Manchester, Mass.
P:The Army's buttons are safe. Reader Martin confuses volume of fire with rate of fire.--ED.
Fundamental Virtues
Sir:
. . . You have done us all a service by featuring the two March 5 articles--"Frank's Barber Shop" [see A LETTER FROM THE PUBLISHER] and "The Long Road"--which have a universal appeal to all men. They serve to arouse sympathy for one's fellow man, and also emphasize . . . that the fundamental virtues of charity and love of neighbor ... in this spiritually rudderless era still are a more powerful influence for world peace and unity than the strictly negative Hoover Plan or a revitalized Fortress Europe, or an all-out atom bomb attack on the hydra-headed monster of Communism.
STEPHEN EDWIN HART Randolph, Mass.
World of Entertainment
SIR:
ENJOYED REVIEW OF RODGERS TV TRIBUTE MARCH 12 ISSUE, BUT FEEL YOU WILL WANT TO
CORRECT STATEMENT THAT PHILCO GAVE TV SETS. FACT IS THAT 25 PHILCO SETS WERE GIVEN TO ARMY HOSPITALS BY MAKERS OF RED CROSS SHOES, AS MOST APPROPRIATE TRIBUTE TO COMPOSER AND SHOWMAN RICHARD RODGERS, SINCE THIS GIFT WOULD BRING WORLD OF ENTERTAINMENT TO HOSPITALIZED SERVICEMEN . .
HARRY S. ROBINSON CINCINNATI
Herodotus Brought Up to Date
Sir:
On the main Post Office in New York City, there is this inscription adapted from Herodotus: "Neither snow, nor rain, nor heat, nor gloom of night stays these couriers from the swift completion of their appointed rounds." A noble sentiment and beautifully expressed!
I suggest something more realistic . . . "Yesterday's mail tomorrow."
As far back as I can remember, the Post
Office operated in the red,* but we had service. Within the last few years, the Postmaster General clamored for more funds; they were not forthcoming, and the service deteriorated. Obviously, [it was] hoped that the voters would urge their Congressmen to appropriate more money. I refuse to take the bait. What the Post Office really needs is efficiency. It will never get it under the present Administration.
GEORGE ALBERT DROVIN
Chestnut Hill, Philadelphia
Guilty Without Trial
Sir:
Your March 5 story on India is the most disturbing news I have read for a long time.
That a nation, so recently freed from oppression, can sentence anyone without a trial, no matter how guilty or undesirable, is depressing . . . Even Russia, notoriously insensible to human rights and indifferent to public opinion, has always observed the form, if not the spirit, of a trial.
That noise you hear is Gandhi turning over in his grave.
LEONARD E. MILLER
Montrose, Calif.
Soldier's Soldier
Sir:
I know that to thousands of airborne soldiers throughout the U.S., the photograph of Lieut. General Matthew B. Ridgway on your March 5 cover brought a quickened heartbeat. To the tens of thousands who served with him in World War II, Ridgway epitomizes the hopes and aspirations of free men.
A soldier's soldier, he is intolerant of despotism. He recognizes no half-measures . ._ . Defeatists and apologists do not last long in his command . . .
Your photograph catches the inspiration, the determination, and the humanity of a Great American . . .
FRED M. SCHELLHAMMER New York City
Sir:
... I was one of Lieut. General Ridgway's paratroopers in the 82nd Division ... He was a real G.I.'s general, and we worshiped him ...
The taxpayers of this country, and the mothers of all the men fighting on the U.N. side in Korea, are very fortunate to have a man like Ridgway leading them. If and when I have to get back in the shooting again, I hope I will be under [his] command.
SGT. JAMES E. BEACH Fort Campbell, Ky.
Ambassador's Wife
Sir:
The space so generously given the Philippines by TIME [Feb. 19] is very much appreciated ; but in the interest of truth I must say that Mrs. Cowen, contrary to the article, is very popular here. Her speech before the Inner Wheel, in which she called upon the wealthy to help the poor, was purposely timed and tuned to our current common struggle against Communism . . .
GERONIMA T. PECSON Civic Assembly of Women of the Philippines Manila
Sir:
The speech made by Ambassador Cowen's wife may have been a "cold shock" to the Philippines, but it was a far colder shock when they read in TIME that "Mrs. Cowen's relations with socially prominent Filipino women have not always been marked by intense cordiality."
TIME'S statement is wrong. The near adoration of socially prominent Filipino women for Mrs. Cowen, and her tremendous popularity in the country, is quite likely the very reason that the Embassy permitted her to make such a speech.
MARY JOHNSON TWEEDY Manila
SIR:
... AS PRESIDENT OF THE INNER WHEEL CLUB OF ROTARY ANNS BEFORE WHICH SHE DELIVERED HER ADDRESS ... I WISH TO STATE THAT SINCE THE ORIGINAL ARRIVAL OF AMERICANS IN THE PHILIPPINES THERE HAS BEEN NO AMERICAN WOMAN MORE UNIVERSALLY RESPECTED, ADMIRED AND LOVED THAN DOROTHY COWEN. TRINIDAD LEGARDA
MANILA
< Twist of Fate
Sir:
Somehow, your reviewer of Sink 'Em All [TIME, March 5] missed the great, ironic story about the death of the submarine Tang. On her fifth and last patrol, the sub attacked Japanese transports and tankers until only two torpedoes were left. Commander R. H. O'Kane ordered the first fired at a damaged troopship. It sped straight toward its mark. The second and last torpedo, however, swerved sharply to the left, porpoised and made a hairpin turn. It struck the Tang in the stern, blasting O'Kane and his men from the bridge, and sinking the sub 180 feet to the bottom. Only nine men survived the odd twist of fate, which ended the war record of a gallant sub and her brave crew.
JOHN MARSHALL
Philadelphia
Fall Landscape
Sir:
TIME'S March 5 display of "Nature's Patterns," from photographs now on exhibition at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, neglected one important comment.
The photographs constitute work over as much as two years by Professor Gyorgy Kepes of the M.I.T. faculty, in preparation for a book ... to be published next fall under the title of The New Landscape . . .
JOHN E. BURCHARD Massachusetts Institute of Technology Cambridge, Mass.
Political Divorce?
Sir:
Through the fog of accusations and denials, of shilly-shally and pugnacious stubbornness, one thing becomes clear: the executive branch at Washington "exercises more power than we thought it possessed under the Constitution.
. . . Chief handmaiden to such power is big politics. In the present instance, our chief executive had the ill fortune to be baptized into an order that believed in playing politics for keeps, an order that could lead normally honest men to place personal power, the conceit to do as one pleases, above public interest. Nero, the fiddler while Rome burned, began as a good ruler.
Divorce the President from politics. One eight-year term would do this . . .
P. H. MOSGROVE Pisgah, Ala.
* During the past 100 years the Post Office Dept. has shown operating surpluses in only 17 years (and most of these were war years).
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