Design for Living

SIR:

SHIP AHOY! YOUR WONDERFUL JULY 27 ARTICLE, "DESIGN FOR LIVING," TOUCHED A TENDER SPOT IN A SAILING ENTHUSIAST. WHEN MY WIFE, TWO DAUGHTERS, DACHSHUND AND I SET SAIL ON OUR 18-FT. SEAGULL, "SCHORR-NUFF," THOSE WE LEAVE BEHIND PROCLAIM US NUTS. TIME HAS PRINTED THE TRUTH. WE ARE LIVING. THOSE LANDLUBBERS ARE NUTS . . .

BOB SCHORR CHICAGO

Sir:

So you pick a Wall Street yachtsman for the cover! TIME should have peeked over Manhattan's canyons and discovered blue-water sailing off the Pacific Coast . . .

HOLT CONDON Corona del Mar, Calif.

Sir:

... I noticed that you give an indication of the prices of smaller boats, but I am very curious to know what would be the price of a schooner like the Goodwill ....

MRS. F. M. GARVIN Flushing, N.Y.

P: The 161-ft. Goodwill cost $625,000 to build in 1921, but her present owner, Ralph E. Larrabee, says she could not be duplicated today for $1,500,000.--ED.

Good for a Yak

Sir:

Are the various assertions and pronouncements of William O. Douglas still of sufficient interest to command 18 lines of your valuable space? Not for this original TIME subscriber!

The best thing he can do now is to go to Upper Mongolia, get on a yak--and stay there. His elevation to the Supreme Court is probably the worst appointment since Caligula made his horse a consul.

E. D. TOLAND Concord, N.H.

Rouault's Art

Sir:

Let me congratulate you on your very fine color spread and article on Georges Rouault [TIME, July 27] ... His pictures portray such great feeling, intense emotion and torment within the soul . . . Rouault once said, "Some day I hope to paint a Christ so moving that tLose who see it will be converted."

DAVID SHIRAS Wayzata, Minn.

Before the Diprotodon

Sir:

It is not that I wish to belittle Dr. Ruben A. Stirton's zealous search for facts about the prehistoric diprotodon [TIME, July 20], but it seems to me that James Thurber discovered it first . . .

I believe Mr. Thurber's friend [see cut] wears a wider smile and carries its tail at a jauntier angle because it has just discovered it is not herbivorous at all. It enjoyed its meal of Millmoss thoroughly . . .

SARAH STEVENSON SOLSTAD New Haven, Conn.

Servants & Masters

Sir:

We have read the article, "The Bureaucracy: Servant or Master?" in TIME, July 20. Although there are a number of built-in disclaimers and escape hatches in this piece, it is essentially based on the ancient, long-discredited spoils premise that both governmental policies and governmental functions can be properly and effectively executed only by political appointees. [It] makes much of the fact that during the Roosevelt and Truman Administrations many positions were included in the civil service system by executive order . . . The great majority of all federal positions, always, have been brought under civil service by executive order. There is nothing new, iniquitous or unusual about it. . .

The shocking proposition put forward by you that the price for the reforms brought about by the merit system "is too high" cannot be supported by the facts. The statement that "no civil service ever cooperates efficiently with a Government dedicated to cutting expenses" not only is a gratuitous smear of tens of thousands of loyal, devoted American citizens in the federal service, but also is factually wide of the mark. Moreover, Congress controls the purse strings. The Administration at the top policy level recommends a budget based upon its policies and services rendered to the people.

TIME'S editors should know that federal employees do not establish policy but execute it; and to make career employees the whipping boy because of the size of the budget is not only unfair but wholly unrealistic . . . We are aware that "nobody wants to end or to impair the merit system," but in view of the tenor of the piece as a whole, its derogation of career employees, its repetition of some of the most moth-eaten of the spoilsmen's cliches, such a qualification loses any real meaning or force. Virtually every attack on the merit system in history has been advanced under the cover of pious protestations. But when those attacks have succeeded --as they sometimes do when public vigilance falters--the real nature of the evil virus of spoils is fully revealed . . .

LUTHER C. STEWARD President National Federation of Federal Employees Washington, B.C.

Sir:

I am prejudiced. I am a "socalled" career employee in the federal service. It is on a personal basis that I take issue and not on policy as presented by TIME. You might have mentioned that of the 2,300,000 employees in the federal service, the normal rate of attrition of these employees over the past several years has been approximately 500,000 per annum . . . Government needs more expertness rather than less if we are to have less government . . .

CHARLES H. READ Philadelphia

Sir:

Your article . . . was an excellent analysis of the Administration's need for control of policymaking jobs, and the part that civil service protection sometimes plays in frustrating this control. However, the really basic problem that lies at the root of the Eisenhower regime's inability to manage 2,300,000 federal workers efficiently is veterans' preference, and the way an accepted principle in U.S. life is being misused to an extent that our entire career service is being threatened.

No one seriously questions that veterans deserve special consideration in obtaining Government jobs. But veterans' preference laws today have been so superimposed on the civil service system that . . . when it comes time to hire Government employees, there is no way of making sure that the best-qualified people are chosen. In fact, veterans who have demonstrated their incompetence by failing civil service tests can move ahead of competent nonveterans through the addition of preference points . . . Recruiting becomes harder as fewer ambitious, able people apply for federal jobs.

When it comes time to fire Government employees, supervisors find themselves confronted by the nearly insuperable barrier of veterans' job-retention rights . . . Thousands of irreplaceable career workers are being forced out of the public service in this way. Morale and efficiency are declining sharply as a result. These abuses of veterans' preference hurt all but a small minority of our nation, including the vast majority of veterans themselves . . .

JAMES R. WATSON Executive Director National Civil Service League New York City

Schola Arduissima

Sir:

Your lively and interesting July 20 article about a lively and interesting teacher is welcome. Dr. Sweet's Latin teaching has appealed to top teachers in college and school. More than 60 persons applied for the ten Carnegie Corporation fellowships at Michigan this summer, and his work has doubled the enrollment in third-year Latin at William Penn Charter School, and is having similar effects elsewhere.

Among Sweet's other achievements are: captain of track at Amherst and undefeated in dual meet competition in college; instructor in the Mountain Infantry training school at Camp Hale during the war; expert with a flatboat; good mountain climber and a top-notch track coach.

JOHN F. GUMMERE Headmaster The William Penn Charter School Philadelphia

Calling Scrabblers

Sir:

Re Scrabble [TIME, July 20]: After playing for six months an average of one or two games daily, my husband and I recently made our highest score to date. He won with 378 points against my 344 for a total of 722, without either having received an extra 50 points for using all the letters at once. Does anyone know the highest possible score, or the best score in the game? . . .

MARTHA L. BARKOFF New Orleans

P: From the game's instructions: "The combined total score for a game may range from about 500 points to 700 or more, depending on the skill of the players."--ED.

Burning Issue

Sir:

Where did Thomas M. Galey (of Owensburg, Ky.) get the idea that "the dogged British renewed the struggle [of the Revolutionary War] in 1812, burning our White House to our everlasting disgrace [TIME, July 20] ?"

The Columbia Encyclopedia, a fairly American authority, says: "The radical Western group [in Congress] dreamed of conquering Canada and also West Florida. They were led in Congress by Henry Clay. He, John C. Calhoun, Langdon Cheves and other 'war hawks' managed to override the opposition of John Randolph and other conservatives. War was declared June 18, 1812." Also Mr. Galey should not feel too everlastingly disgraced by the fact that the British burned the White House. Long before that event the town of Toronto, as the Canadian Encyclopedia mentions and the Columbia doesn't, "was occupied by the Americans, and the government buildings were burned" (April 1813).

I am sorry to learn that the British are not "completely untangled yet" from the American hair, but if the operation requires another war I am afraid that, as in 1812, the Americans will have to start it.

G. K. SANDWELL Toronto, Ont.

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