Yugoslav Heretic

Sir:

. . . Mr. Ed Clark, your correspondent in Belgrade, came to see me for an interview. I told him that I had nothing further to add than had already been published in the London Times . . . Mr. Clark's interview, as reported in your story [Jan. 10], repeats statements made by me in the London Times, but also [makes] statements which I did not make.

VLADIMIR DEDIJER Belgrade, Yugoslavia

P: TIME Correspondent Ed Clark, who has known Dedijer since wartime days, stands by his interview, but understands why Dedijer (since given six months suspended sentence for "a criminal act of hostile propaganda") did not.--ED.

The Upper Colorado

SIR:

HEARTIEST CONGRATULATIONS ON BEING THE FIRST MAGAZINE OF NATIONAL CIRCULATION WILLING AND INTERESTED ENOUGH TO TELL THE TRUTH ABOUT THE UPPER COLORADO RIVER STORAGE PROJECT [JAN. 31]. YOUR FACTS STAND OUT IN BOLD CONTRAST TO THE EMOTIONAL MISREPRESENTATION SPREAD AROUND THE COUNTRY BY THE PSEUDO-CONSERVATIONISTS AND WATER-GREEDY CALIFORNIA INTERESTS.

WILLIAM B. SMART DESERET "NEWS-TELEGRAM" SALT LAKE CITY

Atheism on the Air

Sir:

Three cheers for Mrs. Margaret Knight and her BBC trilogy on scientific humanism and "Morals Without Religion" [TIME, Jan. 24]. A breath of humanistic fresh air would do a world of good in our country, where the traditional orthodoxies have made a farce of morality . . .

EDD DOERR Indianapolis

Sir:

. . . No doubt, Mrs. Knight must belong to the school that believes our ancestors were apes (if Christ is a legend, what else can you believe?), that our world came into being from revolving gaseous matter. Now if she could explain who put the swirling gas into existence, I might discover a grain of truth in her fantastic statements.

EDWARD W. VERBA Campbell, Ohio

Sir:

... I don't criticize the BBC for carrying Mrs. Knight's broadcasts, for she has a right to say what she will. Christianity has survived far worse dangers, and if she gives us an incentive to defend our faith, so much the better.

MARY MURPHY Indianapolis

The Case of Leo Frank

Sir:

Re the lynching of Leo Frank, as recounted in your Jan. 24 story, "A Political Suicide": You mentioned that Leo Frank was a Jew; however, you failed to state that the strongest factor in the incitement to lynch was antisemitism. I saw with my own eyes some of the handbills circulated in Atlanta at the time of the trial . . . Hate was mongered against all the Jews in town . . . My father was a Jew, living in Atlanta then. He endured the atrocity of the lynchers' parade past his very own door on that fateful night . . .

The annals of history will echo this sin against God and his creatures unto eternity . . . May the memory of Governor John M. Slaton be a blessing to all who mourn his passing.

HERMAN Russ Dayton

Sir:

. . . Why this dislike of the South? Whenever TIME can dig at anything Southern, it doesn't miss a shot . . . Your article on Governor Slaton's death was only an excuse for publishing the incident about the lynching of Frank. Most of us would be glad to forget it.

WM. T. SEIBELS Montgomery, Ala.

Sir:

. . . There is no better illustration of racial prejudice . . . than an incident as the mob began gathering before Slaton's home, immediately after his courageous commutation of Frank's death sentence became known.

Albert R. Israel, for many years one of the most widely known Associated Press men in the South, was then a member of its Atlanta staff. When word came that the mob was assembling, Israel set sail for the scene with this parting admonition: "Fellows, if you want to get in touch with me, I'll be at the so-and-so drugstore at 9 o'clock, but if you telephone, for God's sake don't ask for Israel. Ask for Mr. O'Leary!"

DUDLEY HADDOCK Sarasota, Fla.

Sir:

When I was a child in Alabama, I remember hearing ignorant country minstrels strum guitars and sing:

Little Mary Phagan She went to town one day. She went to the pencil factory To get her weekly pay.

Until I read your article, I had never heard the name Leo Frank. What does this mean? It means that sympathy for the victim reached even to the children, but any hate or prejudice--intimated by your article--was interred "under the pines" . . .

BEN R. AUSTIN New York City

Okaying Miss K

Sir:

Congratulations on the fine article [Jan. 31] on Grace Kelly. I am very glad to know she has a mind of her own as far as her career and the publicity involved are concerned. Hollywood has miscast and ruined Greer Garson . . . Deborah Kerr will probably be in the same boat soon . . . and Audrey Hepburn will probably be playing in something called The Eleanor Roosevelt Story before long. But it looks as if Miss K can take care of herself . . .

ELIDA DEBEVOISE Northampton, Mass.

Jumbo-Package Jargon

Sir:

As a linguist and etymologist, I do sympathize with the editors of America in their outcry against the corruption of the English language by the advertising agencies [TIME, Jan. 24]. I feel, though, that Father Davis has overlooked the deeper meaning of the old fairy tale of Rumpelstiltskin and the old rule that "the baby has to have a name." The excesses of the advertisers are merely proof that the Biblical injunction to Adam that he give names to the things of the earth is getting harder every day . . .

ERNEST N. KIRRMANN East Northfield, Mass.

Sir:

Can the excitable Rev. Thurston N. Davis, S.J. produce a U.S. family where the wife invites her husband to "make yourself comfortable, dear, in your slipper-gripper Mistletoes," or tells the children, "jump into your perma-sized skijamas, kids, while I make you some Dagwitches with diced cream and superfection strawberries?" Can he find a poor speller among those same children, who, doing his homework, writes "kar-pokits" or "kon-veen-yunt?" If so, the cross-pollenating Madison Avenue ad men would turn handsprings

KAY GROVE Colorado Springs, Colo.

Sir:

. . What Father Davis calls "verbal bacilli" seem to be signs that the old "language of Chaucer and Churchill" still has plenty of life in it. They may seem vulgar to some delicate minds, but to me they are interesting, hilarious, and even educating . . . sure signs that American culture is still far from stagnation. It doesn't make any difference whether the birth of a word is midwifed by a learned lexicographer or a slapdash advertising man . . .

ANDRE BAIDINS New Brunswick, N.J.

New Esophagus

Sir:

Re TIME'S Jan. 17 story on young Mike Stansberry's operation: the Molly Mayfield Foundation, which was established as a nonprofit trust fund by our columnist on the Rocky Mountain News, heard of a little boy in Sterling, Colo, whose esophagus had been seriously burned by lye. The foundation [arranged] for payment of all fees involved in the rare type of surgery necessary. The operation was performed successfully and TIME published an excellent piece, [but] there was no mention of the Mayfield Foundation or of the Rocky Mountain News. We had hoped . . . that our role would be noted . . .

JACK FOSTER Editor Rocky Mountain News Denver

Sir:

Please keep us posted on young Mike's progress.

C. R. ROUGHGARDEN JR. Bellerose, N.Y.

P: Mike, still in hospital, is doing fine, taking all food through his new esophagus. Favorite drink: chocolate milk. -ED.

For Marilyn Karenina

Sir:

Re Director Billy Wilder's suggested sequels to Marilyn Monroe's proposed movie, The Brothers Karamazov [Jan. 24]: Would Wilder care to collaborate on a song for Marilyn called Just Write Me Karamazov, Baby, 'Cause That's Where I Will Be ?

ROBERT D. KEMPNER New York City

The Senators from Oregon (Contd.)

Sir:

With reference to your Morseberger story [Jan. 17]: You relate that President Roosevelt, on a trip to Puget Sound (during the senatorial campaign in 1944), gave me a verbal message to relate to Republican Candidate Wayne Morse. This story is completely false. I never met President Roosevelt. Moreover, I probably was persona non grata with him, for he knew me to be a disciple of the late Major General Charles H. Martin, former governor of Oregon, who was purged for his anti-New Deal crusade . . .

EDGAR W. SMITH Portland, Ore.

P: TIME had the right story but the wrong Democratic candidate; it was Democrat Willis Mahoney.--ED.

Social Climbing Rose

Sir:

Re the proposal by Senator Margaret Chase Smith and Representative Frances Bolton to make the rose our national flower [TIME, Jan. 24]: Why should the rose be chosen as the national flower, when it is not even indigenous to the U.S.? . . . Perhaps Mesdames Smith and Bolton are not up on their botany and world horticulture. Let's not make ourselves ridiculous in the eyes of the world! . . . And why a national flower ?

A. E. SMITH New York City

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