The Bad Companions

Sir:

You are mystified (in the Aug. 30 issue) by the "senseless" atrocities of the four supposedly well-brought-up boys from Brooklyn? In an earlier issue of TIME [Aug. 9], the English author, J. B. Priestley, in his comments on the new sadism, explains the matter quite thoroughly, except that the British do not make a cult of masculinity, as we do ... In America, however, grandmaws and tiny tots alike throng to the movies, where filmdom's masterminds charitably make room for a nice, big torture scene" in color . . . After all, the young punks share in our 3% annual rise in productivity and have more cars, more money, more switchknives, and more idle time to read and re-enact the immortal works of Mickey Spillane.

FREDERICK RENVYLE Watertown, Mass.

Sir:

It is no wonder youthful ghouls in New York should be caught murdering and battering old men and then yowl "Mama" when run down. You are breeding a race of monsters, nurtured in a diseased way of life that is based upon atom bombs, crime comics, bad movies and the cult of the almighty dollar . . . This is what you want to foist upon the world . . . You fool only your own "booboisie . . ."

JAMES LESLIE Edmonton, Alberta

Paris in the Fall

Sir:

Your picture of Paris in the rain [Aug. 30] might be consoling to those who wanted to go to Paris this summer and couldn't; it might also be seized upon with vindictive satisfaction by those who went and got rained upon . . . But to an old parigot, that beautiful photograph brings waves of tender nostalgia . . . Thanks to the habitual dove-grey Paris sky, I first learned to see color in the wet stones of the misty buildings ... in the black trunks of the chestnut trees and in their rich green leaves shining from the rain's varnish . . . What man who has not felt the wet seeping into his shoes as he hunches his shoulders under the late October rain on a lonely Paris boulevard has ever fully savored Paul Verlaine's tender and melancholy verse?

II pleure dans mon coeur Comme il pleut sur la ville. Quelle est cette langueur Qui penetre mon coeur?

BUCKLEY MAC-GURRIN

El Monte, Calif.

Sir:

Something besides the Paris weather is "absolutely filthy" in your story; it's that absolutely filthy word "Briticism." Granted that it has slipped into the uncritical compendiums which pass for dictionaries nowadays, "Briticism" is a case of verbal illegitimacy at its worst. Its father is unknown (mercifully for him), and it lacks even a mother tongue . . . What's wrong with "Britishism?" I wic you'd write in Englic.

GEORGE CROZIER New York City

P: Despite Reader Crozier's wittishisms, TIME will continue to go along with Webster's (Unabridged) and the Oxford English Dictionary.--ED.

Calm Intelligence

Sir:

TIME, Aug. 30 and Artist Giro are to be congratulated most sincerely on the remarkably expressive portrait of Burma's U Nu--a message of calm intelligence from the East to the West.

LOUISE M. PLUMMER Boulder, Colo.

Sir:

As an old Burma hand (jg), I am sending you a rousing "Thadu!"*for your excellent story on Premier U Nu . . . That TIME is the first major publication to recognize the unique significance of Burma in Southeast Asia and U Nu's great potentiality as a leader of Asian opinion to counteract the shilly-shallying of Pandit Nehru is not surprising, but it is extremely gratifying. It was my privilege to adapt the Prime Minister's play [The People Win Through] as a motion picture and to produce the film in Burma . . . Its thesis, a dramatic explanation and affirmation of the democratic process aimed at an audience of people just emerging from centuries of feudalism and colonial rule, will have a telling effect in other countries of Asia because it unmasks Communism in Asian terms . . .

PAUL GANGELIN

Hollywood

Judgments & Prophecies

Sir:

This is to express my hearty approval of your new feature: Judgments & Prophecies [Aug. 23 et seq.].

REX E. PETTIJOHN Minneapolis

Sir:

In Judgments & Prophecies [Aug. 30], Mrs. Eleanor Roosevelt recommends negotiating with the Communists. The Communists have already "negotiated" themselves into control of a large part of Europe and Asia . . . The means employed by them thus far ... are murder, imprisonment, theft (whole countries) and lying propaganda. How do you negotiate with such people? By appeasement, of course, the only way acceptable to them ... It were better that the whole world should be destroyed rather than that Communism should triumph.

(THE REV.) WILLIAM R. BOOTH Church of the Transfiguration New York City

Sir:

In your Judgments & Prophecies column, four writers were able to express their opinions on certain subjects without using pronouns. The fifth "writer," namely Mrs. F.D.R., used six "I's" and one "me" to tell your readers how revolting she thinks the H-bomb is ...

RUTH NORDLUND Bellingham, Wash.

Wonderful

Sir:

Congratulations on your wonderful coverage of a wonderful university in your Sept. 6 issue. Alumni of the State University of Iowa are justifiably proud of its fine record as well as that of its president, Virgil Hancher, and it was with a tremendous thrill that we read your article . . .

RICHARD W. PETERSON Council Bluffs, Iowa

How Are Things in Bali Ha'i?

Sir:

. . . Having served for an extended period in Samoa with the Navy in World War II, I would not be optimistic about the chances of business success in store for a bra factory out there [TIME, Aug. 23]. In the first place, the Exquisite Form Brassiere Co. will have to provide many unusual and asymmetrical patterns for the unfortunate natives who "have been deformed by mu-mu* Furthermore, unless styles and mores have changed greatly there since 1943, the demand for the output of the brassiere company will be limited indeed, and tourists are few in numbers . . .

LEON BROMBERG, M.D. St. Louis

P: TIME should have explained that the Samoans would make the product, not necessarily wear it.--ED.

High Life in Virginia City

SIR:

WITHOUT LOOKING A GIFT HORSE IN THE MOUTH, I WOULD BEG TO CORRECT YOUR ESTIMATE OF THE LOCAL POPULATION OF VIRGINIA CITY IN THE REVIEW [AUG. 30] OF MY "COMSTOCK COMMOTION" FROM 2,450 TO THE ACTUAL 4OO. YOUR FIGURE SOUNDS BETTER, BUT IT ALSO GIVES US LESS FAVORABLE SALOON-TO-POPULATION RATIO. OUR 17 SALOONS FOR 4OO INHABITANTS, WE BELIEVE, IS THE GREATEST DENSITY IN THE U.S., AND WE DON'T WANT IT MISREPRESENTED.

LUCIUS BEEBE

TERRITORIAL ENTERPRISE VIRGINIA CITY, NEV.

Tanguy Flavor

Sir:

In reference to your Aug. 30 article under the heading "Seance in Connecticut": You have quoted me as saying that Dali and Picasso are monkeys. As I do not mean to doubt the veracity of your art editor, it is evident that there was a misunderstanding because of my difficulty in expressing myself in English. I believe, and said so, that the young artists who think they are saying something new by changing their style or type of painting--as Dali and Picasso have done--are monkeys. This is strictly what I intended to convey . . .

YVES TANGUY Woodbury, Conn.

Sir:

Re TIME'S picture, "Painters Sage & Tanguy":

With druggist's jacket With Lisa-like grin With frame sans picture With next of kin With sketch replete with verbal vision Why didn't you print

picture of his'n? At any rate, a picture by Tanguy please?

HENRY C. STREITZ Philadelphia

P:Let Reader Streitz look at the Aug. 30 issue again. And for a plain and simpler Tanguy, see cut.--ED.

What to Do About Junior

Sir:

... As mother of two ... I have watched magazine after magazine plug one psychiatric view after another on child behavior--all, as Dr. Hilde Bruch points out [TIME, Aug. 30], without any scientific proof whatsoever . . . As the result, parents are in total confusion . . . Scout leaders report behavior in ten-and twelve-year-olds that usually was relegated to the nursery-school level. But discipline? Ah, that's a dirty word and used only to describe the old Prussian army . . . But the greatest loss of all has been good, old-fashioned common sense. Without this, the genius becomes stupid in society, and the stupid, with just a modicum of it, can raise his I.Q. . . . Today, junior's hotspot is no longer his little red bottom. It's his little psyche that gets all the attention . . . and, up to now, no one has ever given any thought to what all this has been doing to mother's poor old frustrated psyche--without which she may very well not be able to endure junior at all.

MRS. JACK E. SHERWOOD San Gabriel, Calif.

Sir:

... Psychiatrists might be better employed playing in the backyard than uttering statements that are absolutely void of making sense to a layman parent.

DONALD H. ROSENTHAL Chicago

*Filariasis.

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