The Vice President

Sir:

Now that Nixon has stated he will accept the nomination for the vice-presidency, squeals of anguish are arising from the Democrats in anticipation of what they call Nixon's unfair and vicious campaign speeches. Yet little Harry has long boasted of his ability to "give 'em hell." In the months to come, he will no doubt go up and down the land doing just that--to the great delight of his party. It's all very puzzling. But perhaps it is more blessed to give than to receive.

LOUISE SPRING Long Beach, Calif.

Sir:

In the Eisenhower-Nixon combination are Republicans going to find they've bought a round-trip ticket? Some people seem to fear our President will ride right out of office on our Vice President's coattails.

BARBARA MCEURANN FOBER

Tuckahoe, N.Y.

Sir:

Nixon's greatest sin appears to be his anti-Communist attitude. Let me hereby nominate in his place a man who can squelch all opposition to Nixon--Alger Hiss.

JOHN K. HASS Santa Barbara, Calif.

Doing Something

Sir:

We are told by Harry Truman, a willing protege of the corrupt Pendergast machine, that President Eisenhower is a do-nothing President. If refusal to investigate Alger Hiss and Harry Dexter White and passing laws favorable to pressure groups . . . constitute the do-somethings, then give me those who "do nothing."

LEONARD D. ENGEL New York City

B. &K.

Sir:

Your May 7 coverage of B. & K. in England was exceptionally fine. The true picture, minus the rose-colored glasses, is what more of us sheltered domestics need.

TOM KNIGHT Providence

Sir:

Eden with that situation-in-hand expression and Bulganin looking crestfallen could be the picture of the year [April 30]. A few copies sprinkled around Moscow, Peking and Delhi might easily have Bulganin keeping company with Beria.

P. C. WALLER Davenport, Fla.

Sir:

Sir Anthony's expression seems to say, "Man! What a guy has to be nice to these days." This picture makes up for the gall you have for putting a Commie on the cover.

(T/ScT.) JAMES J. KISTNER U.S.A.F.

Blytheville, Ark.

Ring Out, Red Bells

Sir:

Artzybasheff has surpassed himself with his wonderfully discerning April 30 cover of Khrushchev trying to tame a rather skeptic lion.

THOM R. BROWN New York City

Sir:

Trying to figure out the clock beside Khrushchev on the cover gave me the bends. We know what makes TIME tick, but the weird works of Artzybasheff's timepiece raises several questions. For instance: Why 3 o'clock?

R. ROBINSON

New York City

P: The clock is atop the Spassky Tower, the main entrance to the Kremlin. Its chimes, which originally sounded Russian hymns and the German folk song Ach du lieber Augustin, were converted after the Revolution to play excerpts from the Internationale at 12 and 6 o'clock and the Russian Revolutionary Funeral March at 3 and 9.--ED.

Nice Wake

Sir:

I used to hear a superstitious rumor to the effect that a favorable article in TIME was the Kiss of Death. If this is true, we had a wonderful "wake" at Pereira & Luckman after your Feb. 27 story appeared. We signed agreements for a guided missile research center, two new department stores, a major office building, an atomic energy installation, an electronics research laboratory, and a major naval installation. These construction projects total $77 million, and geographically range from Boston to the far Pacific. What a nice way to die!

CHARLES LUCKMAN, A.I.A. Los Angeles

Old School Ties

Sir:

Your April 23 piece on Mukyokai (the "nonchurch" movement) was the more interesting because it is a stepchild of New England influence which owes much to Amherst College. Recently I have discovered that Kanzo Uchimura, the founder of Mukyokai, was sent to Amherst on the introduction and strong urging of Joseph Hardy Nee-sima (1843-1890), the first Japanese graduate of a Western institution of higher learning (Amherst 1870), after he had escaped from "closed" Japan six years previously. Neesima came back to found Doshisha University where there have been Amherst men on the faculty ever since except for the years of World War II.

In a recent series of stamps, put out commemorating twenty cultural leaders of modern Japan, both Neesima and Uchimura are represented (and on this envelope). Is it not extragovernmental ties like these which help the free world go round?

OTIS GARY Assistant Professor Amherst House, Doshisha University Kyoto, Japan

P:For Reader Gary's stamps honoring two Amherst men, see cuts.--ED.

Marty

Sir:

TIME April 2 erred in stating [Harold Hecht and Burt Lancaster] made Marty because we "needed a flop to write off as a tax loss." Indeed, had Marty failed, we'd have had nothing to write it off against, because it was optimistically made by a specially organized Marty partnership, which owned no other properties.

HAROLD HECHT New York City

The Big Bad Americans

Sir:

It looks as if TIME'S book reviewers would realize that they are confirming C. Wright Mills's suspicion that America is well on its way to hell when they give, in the April 30 issue, nothing but cheers to Franchise Sagan's "tale of extramarital fun" and nothing but sneers to Upton Sinclair's "temperance tract." How can the American people be other than "morally bankrupt" when the men who help to mold opinion (such as TIME'S book reviewers) operate under the code that naughty is nice, good is glum.

Lois BLANCHARD Gainesville, Fla.

Sir:

You condemn The Power Elite on the ground that "it will surely be read with great glee by anti-Americans everywhere." A great many honest American books contain criticisms of American society, and no doubt can be misused to make anti-American aropaganda. A great many stories in TIME lave been read "with great glee by anti-Americans everywhere." Anything in and about America can be misused for such purposes, and often is. Since when has this danger ever kept American writers from saying what they think, and since when has it kept intelligent American readers from judging such books on their merits? Any day that we have to judge American books ay this one criterion--whether they will be read with "great glee by anti-Americans"--will be a sad day for American books, and for America too.

ALFRED KAZIN Amherst, Mass.

Visiting China

Sir:

Out here in Taipei your April 23 Pacific Edition brought the first news to me of the passing of Dr. Paul Hutchinson. Because of his appeal for the youth of China, at the Methodist Centennial in Columbus, Ohio in 1919, I went to China as his assistant; my first summer there was spent with Paul and Agnes and their three youngsters in the mountains of Fukien. As long as they lived in Shanghai, their home was open to me. After reading "Happy Man," one happy woman reflects that except for Paul Hutchinson I might never have gone to China, might never have met George Fitch,*might never have found myself a mother of six and grandmother of 14.

GERALDINE FITCH Taipei, Taiwan

Sir:

I do not know who authored the article about Paul Hutchinson, but to one of his family--a sister--it was a singularly sensitive appreciation. Please accept my thanks.

MARGARET H. COMAN Elmira, N.Y.

And Rising

Sir:

In your April 23 "End of the Rope," I am sure Albert Pierrepoint would be flattered by your statement that he is 45, and, in fact, he looks no older. But he is 50. Not so flattered is the Empire News and Sunday Chronicle when you quote its circulation as 1,961,230. The audited and published average net sales show a circulation of 1,994,311 in July-December 1954 and 2,532,540 in December 1955. The circulation is still rising.

G. GRAFTON GREEN Editor

Empire News and Sunday Chronicle London

Dollars & Dams

Sir:

I do not see any harm in anyone liking to build dams and wharfs; they are just as necessary in Turkey as they are in the U.S. For the first time we have a Prime Minister [Adnan Menderes--April 23] with initiative, who thinks of the future, and your magazine never misses a chance to pick on him. If Mr. Adnan Menderes had waited for his safes to be overloaded with cash before he started acting, stagnancy, which has been Turkey's misfortune in the past centuries, would have continued and prevented any improvement. Turkey needs more and more American aid.

TONY TOPUZ

Bornova, Turkey

*Onetime secretary of the International Committee of the Y.M.C.A. in China, who now lives on Formosa, is helping to relocate refugee intellectuals from the China mainland.

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