Smears or Achievements?

Sir:

I have a perverse sectional pride in our Southern demagogues, and have championed them as being considerably above those of other regions in any fair rating of aptitudes for their work. It is with chagrin that I confess a growing conviction that Senator McCarthy--a damned-Yankee, and a Roman Catholic one at that--just about has it made as the Exalted Kleagle and Imperial Wizard of all the Demagogues. The shades of Heflin and Bilbo--aye, even that of the superb Huey Long, must stand in their limbos with reverent awe at the spectacle of the meretricious antics of McCarthy . . .

J. L. CLUTE Matthews, N.C.

Sir:

I will wager a small hogshead of Wisconsin cheese that Joe McCarthy's efforts to get that Army dentist to open a little wider please have drawn wails of pain from half the bleeding hearts in the country. Is the U.S. Army a sacred institution, that it feels it has the right to conceal a bad administrative decision from inquiry by the legislature? In giving the Army a lesson in the Constitutional facts of life, Senator McCarthy is a better democrat than his critics.

JUDSON SPODE Madison, Mo.

Sir:

"Despite sneers, smears and bully-boy manners," TIME [March 1] notes "some real achievements" by Senator McCarthy. Yes, including one which no enemy of the nation has ever been able to accomplish--the achievement of obtaining the abject and complete surrender of the Army of the United States . . .

ALLEN KLEIN

Mount Vernon, N.Y.

Sir:

... I take it that you don't think as much of Joe McCarthy as I do. I certainly am glad that there is at least one man who isn't afraid to say and do what he thinks is for the good of the people, in spite of editors like you and politicians who are afraid to do something constructive for fear they'll hurt their political standing . . .

You referred to his audiences as mostly middle-aged and middle-class ... I wouldn't insult this group if I were you, since it makes up the majority of our population . . .

MRS. W. E. BRUGGEMAN

Bedford, Ohio

Cry! The Beloved Country

Sir:

. . . Being a Finlander who got licked in the war 1939-40 (even though the Russians probably said, as Hannibal: One more victory like this and I am a goner), I was particularly delighted to see that my countrymen licked the Russians in the Nordic winter sports [TIME, March i]; but please do not call the Finnish national anthem "Our Lord" in English. Maamme means "Our Country," and is a translation from Johan Ludvig Runeberg's poem Vart Land . . . But I am too delighted to kick about it, and "Our Lord" may be just as good as Maamme when it comes to sing for the Slobos (Finnish slang word for the Russians), and may have a better influence in the end.

NILS LUCANDER Detroit

Official Picture

Sir:

Umpteen million amateur photographers will read the article about George Tames's picture of President Eisenhower [TIME, Feb. 15], and I'll wager 90% of them will wonder what kind of camera . . . what f. opening . . . what shutter speed . . . what light source . . .

CARL F. OLENBERGER JR. Lincoln, Neb. -

P:I Says New York Times Magazine photographer Tames: "With my Rollie at waist level, flash off the camera and high to the left, I made one shot--250th of a second at f.16." -- ED.

Proud & Majestic

Sir:

I was delighted to see President Paul E. Magloire on the cover of the Feb. 22 issue . . . and to read about the quite extraordinary job he is doing to improve the economy and raise the living standards of Haiti . . . The U.S. has too long neglected giving as sober and thoughtful attention to the

Caribbean as its human and strategic importance makes necessary. Would you permit me to register one disagreement? ... It concerns . . . the American occupation of Haiti. Having played a small role in making known the facts of the occupation--during which many Haitians were killed by U.S. Marines as cacos or bandits for attempting to drive those they deemed invaders from their country--I know from firsthand experience that the occupation was far from as pleasant or as beneficial as your story indicates.

WALTER WHITE National Association for the

Advancement of Colored People New York City

Sir:

The article ... is tops . . .

ATHERTON LEE Port-au-Prince, Haiti

Sir:

I visited Haiti at the time of the Exposition, and was so hospitably received by the "high" Haitians, who reminded me that when they came to the U.S. they were sent to the "back of the bus" down South. They are a proud, majestic people . . . All Americans should make Haiti a must on their vacation itinerary--in seeing Haiti, so many of our prejudices could be annulled.

TERRY MAYER New York City

Sir:

. . . TIME states that "President Magloire and FAO are tackling malaria, venereal disease and tuberculosis." FAO, which stands for Food and Agriculture Organization, carries on absolutely no work in control or eradication of malaria, venereal disease, tuberculosis or any other disease. Among the U.N. specialized agencies, all such health work is exclusively within the scope of the World Health Organization . . .

HAROLD BALLOU World Health Organization Washington, B.C.

Sir:

. . . Those "250 different blood combinations" you mention as having been recognized by "a contemporary record" in Saint-Domingue are figments. You are obviously referring to the pseudo-ethnography of M. L. E. Moreau de Saint-Mery in his Description Topographique [published in 1797] . . .

Saint-Mery, a colonial who disliked mulattoes, either out of prejudice or whimsy, contrived a syllogistic system of names for all the crosses he thought possible between Negroes and whites--as well as Indians and the crosses between the crosses . . . When you ignore the repetitions, he actually has only ten: muldtre, quarter on, metif, mame-louque, quarteronne, marabou, griffe, sacatra, sang-mele, and sang-mele qui s'approche con-tinuellement du blanc.

There is no limit to this sort of verbal jugglery. With his method, Saint-Mery could just as easily have come up with 1,000 . . .

JAMES W. IVY New York City

Nice Quiet Corroboree

Sir:

Your Feb. 15 story about Sydney's welcome to the Queen . . . sounded as if it had been written by a jaundiced remittance man who had spent his money from home on an inglorious lost weekend and was suffering . . . Sydney's welcome was admittedly noisy and uninhibited, but the spirit of the welcome was a gay and happy greeting . . . The Queen and the Duke of Edinburgh may have found our welcome tiring but not tiresome, as you pointedly suggest. Doubtless, there were far too many official functions and politicians and too much heat, but we are not quite the unmannered, uncouth colonials your article implies . . . Your presidential parades and important civic affairs are not conducted with all that much of decorum and savoir faire, so why be superior about the undignified extroverts down thisa-way . . .

ISA SCHIMKE

Sydney, Australia

Sir:

. . . The surging, yelling hysteria of the Sydney people, which you Americans have attributed to the ignorance of staring hooligans and wild colonials, was only our spontaneous, uninhibited and uncontrollable greeting to the Queen . . . You, who have no monarch, can never understand . . .

BETTY RANDALL Strathfield, N.S.W.

Sir:

. . . No mention was made in your article of the many pleasant features of the royal visit . . . The decorated city left coronation London far behind in magnificence.

D. G. O'DONNELL

Sydney

Sir:

I was fascinated by TIME'S report of Queen Elizabeth's boisterous reception in Australia. The Aussies are a delightfully unpredictable people . . .

ALEXANDER MARKEY Bombay, India

New Firm at Old Stand

Sir:

Shipowner Stavros Niarchos, after war service in the Greek navy, is building the largest cargo ship ever built in the U.S., the largest tanker in the world [TIME, Feb. 22]. Admiral Nearchus (325 B.C.), explorer, built ships and sailed from the mouth of the Indus across the Arabian Sea and up to the head of the Persian Gulf. He and his crew reported to their commander in chief Alexander the Great in Iran, after a two-year voyage of tremendous hardship and valor. Could be ... a case of long-distance heredity.

M. W. DANIELS

San Francisco

Something for Smith

Sir:

Your Feb. 22 story, "Unemployment Uproar," prompts me to raise the question: Whose business is it to provide jobs? Why should Smith provide Jones with a job? . . . We need job-providers all right, but no person nor group of persons is obligated to become a job-provider. There must be an incentive for anyone to set up a business and hire helpers, and thereby provide jobs. However, the ability to establish and manage a business successfully is limited to a comparatively few persons--less than 10% of our total population--hence job-providers must have an adequate incentive for taking the risk involved in setting up a business . . .

Everything that reduces the incentive for the job-provider to stay in business injures the community as a whole . . .

ROBERT C. BARNETT Jefferson City, Mo.

A Bunch of Trouble

Sir:

Thanks for your Feb. 22 article, "The Unbundling" ... If Negroes were unbunched in housing, unbunched in job opportunities, unbunched in transportation, unbunched in political privileges, and unbunched in religious activities, we would approach the position in leadership . . . which the darker people of the world expect of us.

SAMUEL A. WILLIAMS Newark, N.J.

Sir:

. . . We the white people of the South, like the whites of South Africa, are determined to keep our land a white man's country. We Southern whites, unlike the majority in the North, have not been bemused and misled and culturally destroyed by a multiplicity of meaningless, noble-sounding words and phrases, such as democracy, human rights, equality, Americanism, American-way-of-life, and "no race but the human race." This type of meaningless jargon has taken the place of thinking among the white masses of the North ... I feel certain that my views are those of the great majority of Southern whites under 35 years of age. Segregation is going to last in the South, even though we have no Dr. Malan to inspire us in our determination to save white culture in America.

CHARLES D. HENDON

Newton, Miss.

Sir:

Your picture of the integrated G.I.s proves but one thing: Americans are suckers for propaganda. If the Negro had the pride in race he pretends to have, he would want his own military units and would let the white man have his.

J. R. McPHERSON Columbus, Miss.

Sir:

You conclude your discussion ... by saying: "In civilian life, the Negroes are bunched. They've got to be unbunched." You are so right. They are all bunched up in the South. Why not unbunch them by prorating the Negro population evenly throughout the country ? That would put an end to "The Solid South." It would then be just like the rest of the country . . .

Don't you think that trying something constructive like this would be much better than harping constantly on Jim Crow conditions in the South? Prorate the Negro problem, so the whole nation will be sharing in its solution--don't just try to bludgeon the people of the South into buddying up with colored hordes that, in some places, outnumber them considerably. They have been born and reared in the pattern which they follow, and after all, they are not in the army where they have to fall in under the lash of an executive directive. It might not go so smoothly and happily as it has gone in the armed forces.

PAULINE T. HARRIS Bellairej Texas

Verbal Bric-a-Brac

Sir:

About the dismissal of Clarence Manion as chairman of the Inter-Governmental Relations Committee: I noticed that several newspaper accounts [described Dean Manion as] a "Bricker backer." I was struck at once with the alliterative and rhythmic felicity of the phrase, but in addition, "Bricker backer" reminded me of the children's count-off jingle:

Icka Backka Soda Cracker Icka Backka Boo Icka Backka Soda Cracker OUT GO YOU

JOHN SHINN

New York City

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