Cleaning Up

Sir:

Why doesn't the older generation stop worrying about us "teenage rebels" and start cleaning up its own backyard? I just got through watching a Senate investigation committee questioning Dave Beck, and it really turned my stomach. This clown is making a farce out of the committee, the Government and the American public. How in the world did a man like Dave Beck ever get in the position of president of the Teamsters in the first place ?

DICK GILBERT Oswego, Ore.

Sir:

Here's an advance nomination for your Man of the Year: Senator John McClellan. By the end of this year the facts that McClellan's committee will have dredged up will have pointed the way for legislation and means to clean up the dirty corners of the labor movement. For most Americans, big business, big politics, big unions are beyond our ability to resist. How encouraging it is to see someone of strength, persistence and ability fight for us. That's one of the things Senators are supposed to be for. We see it too seldom.

GRIEG ASPNES Minneapolis

Inside the Heart Sir:

Your March 25 article on heart surgery was the most heart-warming story I could ever hope to read. My five-year-old son must undergo heart surgery in a few years. Your article has given me so much more courage.

HINDA TANINBAUM

Mount Vernon, N.Y.

Sir:

A remarkable article.

M. OURY Jerusalem

Sir:

I am in my last year of high school and intend continuing my education at medical college. I found the article very clear and informative, even to one such as myself who knows little about the human heart--as yet. The pictures were also clear and very fascinating.

VIRGINIA GOAD

Vancouver

Sir:

Your article was pretty bloody. The photographs served no purpose except to promote, in my case, a definitely queasy feeling inside, and a growing conviction that they should not have been printed in color.

W. D. G. LEWIS Kingston, Jamaica, B.W.I.

Sir:

Your extensive medical section was most excellently prepared and written. Your photographers are certainly deserving of commendable recognition for their skill.

SUSAN BUSHING

Great Neck, N.Y.

Sir:

Your pictures disgust me. It is not necessary to show operation pictures except in doctors' books. My father agrees with my opinion and so do my mother and my brothers. PAUL GOULD

New burgh, N.Y.

Sir:

Dr. Bailey's face (on your cover), with its sternly chiseled features and cold, probing eyes, is a haunting one. Here is a man who has looked--literally--into other men's hearts; yet it is hard to conceive of his yielding to the more tender emotions, such as love and compassion, commonly supposed to spring from that most mysterious of human organs. Why don't you print a picture of him in a business suit, or doesn't he ever wear anything but his surgeon's trappings ?

ANDREE MAITLAND Babylon, N.Y.

P: For a more relaxed view of Surgeon Bailey, see cut.--ED.

Sir:

Congratulations on the way in which you explain intricate subjects to the average reader.

E. D. LECLUSE Nijmegen, Holland

Sir:

A pox upon you, sir, for enticing the reader into your excellent article on the heart by means of a cover picture, and then not explaining the purpose of that weird, quasi-spaceman-type accoutcrment adorning Bailey's eyeglasses.

ROBERT G. DOTY Canby, Ore.

P: The device is a pair of special magnifiers snapped onto the surgeon's regular eyeglasses, to be lowered into position when needed.--ED.

Houses for Veterans

Sir:

In your March 25 article on veterans' homebuilding, you say "The American Legion backs the increase in the VA interest rate." This reads like a lie to this legionnaire of W. W II. But after all, I forgot that some legionnaires of W.W. I ,are now the fattened money lenders of W.W. II. They deserve the Purple Heart for the wounds they suffer at the rate of 4 1/2%. Did anybody ever stop to think that the prices of houses are too damned high?

EDWARD H. JOHNSON

Philadelphia

Dr. Freud & Mr. Allison

Sir:

Hope I am just one of the many Roman Catholics who will take time to write and express their anger after reading the March 25 review of Heaven Knows, Mr. Allison. Has your editor been seeing so many bad movies he doesn't like them to be decent anymore?

MRS. JO ANN BRONSON Altona, 111.

Sir:

Your review of this truly fine motion picture is not only repulsive; it's insulting--not to Roman Catholics, but to all human beings. Contrary to your movie critic's beliefs and those of the late Dr. Freud, the universe does not revolve around sex.

AL BAGGIANI San Francisco

Sir:

It was without doubt a superb job of ridiculing the enormous amount of garbage that Hollywood throws our way. Your review's last comment (in the form of a question) was wonderful.

KERMIT L. KENLER Boston

The Spirit of the East

Sir:

As a traveling lecturer on Eastern philosophy and yoga in America, I was deeply impressed with your splendid March 18 article on Indian art. Heartiest congratulations. You have made a lucid presentation of the lofty spirit of Eastern civilization. Your exposition of Hindu philosophy shows not only understanding but deep insight.

ALY WASSIL Borger, Texas

Sir:

Your picture selection of Indian sculpture is interesting, but TIME sees more than meets the eye. To my knowledge there is no "Four-Faced Siva-Linga." The sculpture of this Hindu god has three faces, representing the three aspects of Siva as creator, preserver and destroyer.

WALTER H. PEYER Manila

P: Only three faces show in relief sculpture, but in this case Reader Peyer has seen less than meets the eye. The Siva-Linga shown by TIME has four faces (for his four aspects, including his peaceful, feminine one, which faces north). In addition, there is traditionally a fifth (signifying the Cosmos) on top, but invisible to mere mortals.--ED.

The Press & Politics

Sir:

In amplification of your reference to the Jersey Journal in the March 25 Press section: when I notified the staff of the Jersey Journal that I would take disciplinary action against any member who accepted employment as political pressagent, I was not inaugurating a new policy for the paper. I posted my notice and wrote my letter to all known candidates in order to reaffirm a policy which had been in force since Mr. S. I. Newhouse acquired control of the paper in November 1951. Since that time, no staff member of the Jersey Journal has handled campaign publicity with our consent. As a newly appointed editor arriving in a year of great political activity, I thought it desirable to let the staff and all interested politicians know that the new editor had no intention of changing the paper's policy on this point.

PAUL A. TIERNEY

Editor

The Jersey Journal Jersey City, NJ.

Peale's Progress

Sir:

Reading the excerpts from Dr. Norman Vincent Peale's latest burst of synthetic sunshine, Stay Alive All Your Life [March 25], I grew nauseous at first, and then alarmed to find that sales of all his books "have vaulted over the 4,000,000 mark." He is, I fear, the prophet of a new religion, the end of which is the conscious attainment of quiet desperation via self-administered brainwashings.

JOHN F. RISDELL Richmond Hill, N.Y.

Sir:

Just reading about these pseudo-altruistic purveyors of mental nostrums brings on a queasy feeling. Books of this nature should definitely be reviewed in the Business section of TIME.

ROBERT JAMES Houston

Sir:

If I did have a spiritual problem, I'd be hanged if I would take it to Proponent Peale. Why should I let him cash in on my personal difficulty and use it as an anecdote in the next issue of the power of positive prophetic peregrinations?

(THE REV.) ALEX ORR

First Presbyterian Church Armstrong, Iowa

Sir:

Either your so-called literary critic hasn't read the Overstreet books or is incapable of understanding them. The Overstreets' writings are based on sound findings in psychology and psychiatry. They aren't filled with quasi-religious pap.

GERSON FADEM, M.D. Ebensburg, Pa.

Sir:

You forgot one small detail--that the Joshua Liebman opus, Peace of Mind, was the grandpappy of them all. Any corny tendencies of the books you named were to be found in embryo on that old cob. Also, why not direct your diatribes at the voracious public appetite for junk?

A. M. MOORE Atlanta

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