Korean Truce
Sir:
To my bitter disillusionment I am learning that Eisenhower is a fatuous Chamberlain who has perpetrated the greatest sellout since Munich . . . He has sold out South Korea and is proceeding to kick the venerable S. Rhee in the teeth because the Korean President has the patriotism to protest . . .
JOHN DELGADO New York City
Sir:
. . . To many of us, it has the earmarks of another Munich in the making--possibly at Bermuda . . . Such a peace, if achieved, will merely prove to be a phantom. Let's quit chasing mirages.
A. CARLTON ELLIOTT
Bellingham, Wash.
Sir:
TIME asks: "Under present conditions is truce on the same side as right?" Obviously, to all those conscious of the legacy of Valley Forge, the answer must be no ... For Americans of the Valley Forge heritage . . . it would seem to me that the promulgation of the current truce terms without so much as consulting the most valiant contenders for world freedom in the world today is a blot on the escutcheon of moral America from which it indeed may never recover . . .
C. A. DE CAMP Lt. Col. (Ret.) Carmel, Calif.
The Great Greek Spirit
Sir:
. . . Your June 15 article on the village of Kalavryta is one that would make me mortgage the homestead on TIME'S facts. Early in January 1944 a mid-air collision between many B-17's occurred near this village. Having parachuted within a day's walk of Kalavryta we started south and late in the afternoon came upon this village. The ruins were devastating and still smoldering; my heart skipped a beat, and I thought "Did one of our colliding B-17's land on this village?" It was with little relief that I heard the story of the massacre. The facts as I heard them are the same as your story.
A tribute to the great Greek spirit and love of Americans, they bedded me in one of the only standing buildings in the area and brought me a hot glass of goat's milk. In my ignorance of this unselfish (as I later learned) gift, I almost refused it because of the possibility of contracting some disease.
When you realize my being in the village would subject them to reprisal again, you can better understand why I hold the spirit and the love of the Hellenikos insurmountable.
WALTER G. BURRY
Minneapolis
Sir:
Many thanks for your superb article on Kalavryta. In its classical simplicity it conveys, in all clarity, the extent of the tragedy. It is a piece of writing that would do honor to Thucydides.
M. PEZAS
Athens, Greece
... I visited some of the forlorn, cold, little children [of Kalavryta] in their primitive, unheated houses, partially rebuilt . . . [These] children are available for sponsorship through the Save the Children Federation at $8 per month . . . Readers who cannot sponsor a child but who would like to help may send contributions ... to this organization at the Carnegie Endowment International Center, U.N. Plaza, New York 17.
These children deserve well of mankind ... RICHARD P. SAUNDERS
President
Save the Children Federation New York City
Jehovah & the Witnesses
Sir:
... I regret deeply your unconscious persecution of ... Albert Einstein, in your June 22 issue. Surely we must recognize by now the harsh . . . intolerant attitude of our crusading Senators who are ferreting out subversives wherever they claim to find them. ' Their fanatic credo has become "Whoever disagrees with Joe McCarthy & Co. is a harborer of Communist sympathies . . ."
JOHN RICHARDSON Warwick, N. Dak.
Sir:
Dr. Albert Einstein . . . states that intellectuals should refuse to testify before congressional investigating committees, even if it cost a jail sentence or economic ruin to those refusing . . . When the great professor took the oath of loyalty in becoming an American citizen, he swore that he would uphold and defend the Constitution . . . Here is a wonderful opportunity to demonstrate his sincerity.
The question has come up recently whether clergymen should be brought before these committees. I am a Presbyterian clergyman. As a member of ... the clergy, I maintain that we should not ask for exemption from questioning. If we are innocent, it will soon be evident . . . We have no reason to hide behind the privileges of the cloth and plead immunity . . . Neither have intellectuals. We are proud of our intellectuals . . . but they must not develop what some wit has called "the Jehovah complex" and expect the awed common citizen to stand back and say "the intellectual can do no wrong . . ." They already have more immunity than any class except journalists and Senators . . . But a sound democratic principle is that every person, no matter what class, how distinguished or how exalted, must be willing to humble himself and stand questioning.
We all deplore such tactics as McCarthyism . . . But if our boys have to go across oceans and bleed for this freedom we enjoy, it is not too much to ask grey-haired professors, full of honors as well as of days, to descend from the heights and to occupy the witness chair of a common American citizen . . . Let us hear no more such anarchy.
(THE REV.) J. LUDWELL DAVIS Highland Park Presbyterian Church San Antonio
Sir:
Einstein should be happy. He has a historic precedent: Archimedes, who doodled with theory while the Romans sacked and burned Syracuse about his ears . . .'
WILLIAM BOONE
Jalapa, Mexico
Massacres & Morals
Sir:
Re the June 15 story, "Bloody Ghost": you have cleverly slanted and biasedly reported most news stories from Israel . . .
"Bloody Ghost" may or may not be as you reported; frankly I do not know. Thousands of Jewish women and children were slaughtered by Arab pogromists in Palestine. The fate of tens of thousands of Jews in Arab countries is very precarious, and not too infrequently are there bloody pogroms--thus, to try to present the new nation as responsible for massacre is grossly unfair! . . .
SOL B. DWORK Perth Amboy, NJ.
Sir:
The Tel Aviv court decision that perpetrators of the Deir Yassin massacre of women and children should receive government pensions is a severe blow to Israeli prestige. Morally, the action was a greater crime than the original massacre, because it came in a period of relative peace, without the pressure of war hysteria or the heat of battle. The court has condemned itself [yet] no people on earth have a longer history of regard for human rights.
Is this, then, the new Israel? Was it for this that we contributed thousands, as Christian Americans, hoping to establish peace with justice?
(THE REV.) KENNETH E. MORSE Wagner College Staten Island, N.Y.
Pish, etc.
Sir:
Since the late election, your National Affairs section is cloyingly pish-tush: and you are right and all is right as right can be and
God's in his Heaven and Ike's in the White House and has a commendable score in golf and a long string of trout ... To many, shocked by the deep-freeze-mink-coat-elec-tion-campaign mess, it should now be regrettably obvious that the electorate sacrificed Abe Lincoln Stevenson for General Ulysses Grant Eisenhower. Everybody likes Ike, but not everything and everybody that Ike likes.
LAURENCE STUCKEY
Stamford, Conn.
New Bedford since the Whales
Sir:
TIME did a serious injury to New Bedford and insulted many of its residents by the story published in the June 8 issue, reporting the conviction of Mayor Edward C. Peirce on gambling conspiracy charges . .
Since when has it been a disgrace for an American city to have "Irish, Portuguese, Greek and Italian" citizens . . . TIME makes no charge of the failure of these groups to abide by the laws of their adopted land; there is only the insulting inference that, because of the presence of these groups, New Bedford "is old, shabby, resigned, and tolerant of both vulgarity and venality in politics."
Entirely omitted from the TIME diatribe is the fact that if TIME'S charges had been true, Mayor Peirce would have been neither tried nor convicted. How well known is the fact that many, many cities of the country, including New York City, tolerate gambling, vice and thuggery of every kind, including the present condition of the New York waterfront, probably the worst scandal of neglect of law enforcement in the history of the country . . . Thank God, the reputation of New Bedford does not rest in the hands of TIME magazine.
BASIL BREWER Publisher
The Standard-Times New Bedford, Mass.
Sir:
Your item on New Bedford is nothing but the truth, the whole truth and nothing but the truth . . . Do not repudiate a word . . .
VICTOR THOMAS KONDI New Bedford, Mass.
Patriarchs & Boy Scouts
Sir:
So Jesuit Father Gerard Murphy says ". . . nowadays a girl marries a fellow of 25 and 15 years later finds she is still mated with a Boy Scout"--TIME, May 25.
I married a fellow of 25, and seven years later find I am mated to a Boy Scout. This is certainly no cause for complaint. My husband is [attached to] Post 48, Greece Baptist Church, Greece, N.Y.
If Father Murphy wishes to imply that American men in general are still adolescents, let him say so. To make Boy Scouts synonymous with immaturity is going a bit too far ...
DORIS S. NOUNDORF Rochester, N.Y.
Sir:
As a Catholic woman graduate of a Jesuit college, I would like to comment that Father Joseph F. Cantillon (who thinks modern woman has "sold out to commercialism") is typical of a good cross section of teaching Jesuits. They must be misogynists at heart, always emphasizing the "sanctity of woman's body" but never the integrity of her mind ... I would suggest some honest soul-searching for these unrealistic fathers, and orchids to Father Gerard Murphy and the increasing number of his prototypes among the younger Jesuits . . .
MADELEINE SMITH CHESNUTT Cuernavaca, Mexico
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