The Music Makers

Sir:

A bellowed "Bravo!" for your Dec. 23 roundup story on music. I'm glad you stressed the country's community orchestras; they are doing a whale of a job. More than 2,250,000 people have attended the Los Angeles Bureau of Music's late spring, summer and early fall band concerts. The community-sing attendance is well over the million mark, despite the once-crippling inroads of television. We sponsor a citywide "Artists of the Future" youth voice contest and an avocational civic "pops" orchestra. Dig under the films, TV, radio and records, and the blandishments of the big names--the city of Los Angeles provides better citizenship through music.

C. SHARPLESS HICKMAN Los Angeles

Sir:

Kudos to TIME for a fine understanding piece on music. Selfishly wish we had been mentioned. We have commissioned and recorded on Louisville Orchestra label, and also recorded in the "still" country (bourbon, that is).

RICHARD WANGERIN The Louisville Orchestra Louisville

Sir:

As president of the largest local union of professional musicians (30,000 members), I naturally read with great interest your comprehensive review of the state of music in America. The one individual who has made this picture possible is the professional musician, and he is, as you point out, its worst victim. There should be a change in our copyright laws to permit the musician a voice in where recordings and other mechanical reproductions are used, and an equitable share of the profits therefrom.

AL MANUTI President, Local 802, A.F. of M. New York City

Sir:

Without the side man, composers, directors and leaders would be dead.

PIERSON TUTTLE San Jose, Calif.

Flying Sorcery

Sir:

Re those organization abbreviations in your Dec. 16 NATO article: just imagine a flying SACEUR slipping into SHAPE!

GEORGE A. BUSH Bellevue, Ky.

Why Mothers Go Grey

Sir:

Regarding the "Incident at Sasebo" letters [Dec. 16]: The Moms of America realize all their sonnies aren't darlings, but after months of uncomfortable pregnancies, hours of agonizing births, years of self-sacrificing and rearing, they are reluctant to turn over their offspring for lessons in proper human behavior to sadistic bullies who criticize parental upbringing in an attempt to justify their own unlawful and undignified antics. I'm no softie; the rod is well worn around our house.

MRS. J. H. MCCARTHY JR. Montreal

The Old & the New

Sir:

The magnificent work of Bruegel, so beautifully reproduced in TIME, Dec. 2, is unique, inspiring, exciting and understandable in meaning--and is ART. The smears, the dribbles and scribbling of some contemporary American art are pitiful, really. Why are these things dignified by the title of art? Why are they flaunted before intelligent people as samples of modern expression?

MORTIMER H. STOLNICK Eastchester, N.Y.

Sir:

I hope that your reproduction of Robert Motherwell's I Love You--placed close to Bruegel's reproductions--will become an eye-opener to many confused people.

ARTHUR KAUFMANN New York City

Sir:

It's a shame Peggy Guggenheim's collection is going to Venice [Dec. 16]. All modern art should be in America.

MARTIN FROBISHER New York City

Sir:

It was delightful to see in your Dec. 16 issue the art treasures from Korea. The country, which is known and talked about so much for its suffering in the Korean war, is so little known for its art.

H. W. PAK Chicago

Sir:

Concerning your Art spread and the Korean Mounted Horseman: I am sure that John Tenniel used it as a model for his illustration of the White Knight in Lewis Carroll's Through the Looking-Glass. It looks as though it has the "bunches of carrots and fire-irons and many other things" hanging from the saddle.

HAROLD J. ISAACS New York City

P:For Sir John Tenniel's (1820-1914) White Knight, see cut.--ED.

Who's Who in the Cameroons

Sir:

Your Dec. 2 report on the French Cameroons called "Jungle Terror" conveys an erroneous picture of the situation. I should like to protest against your characterization of myself as "Red-trained." I am not a Communist, but a Presbyterian, and my desire is simply to see my country free and united. I also wish to protest against your calling our organization, the UPC [Union of the Peoples of the Cameroons], Communist, and against your calling our secretary-general, Mr. Ruben Um Nyobe, a Communist.

FELIX-ROLAND MOUMIE President of the UPC New York City

Sir:

So far as the legal government of the Cameroons is concerned, the UPC is a Communist-front party that aims to establish by force a Marxist "popular republic" in the Cameroons. Most of its leaders, including Um Nyobe and Felix Moumie, have been indoctrinated in Communist countries. I have a copy of a letter written some years ago by Moumie to Molotov (when he was Foreign Minister), in which Moumie admits that he is a Communist. Like all Communist-front parties, the UPC poses as a truly democratic party fighting "colonial suppression," but in fact its methods are totalitarian.

ANDRE-MARIE M'BIDA Premier of the French Cameroons Paris

The Fenced Grave

Sir:

Your story of the failure to bury a child at the Jewish cemetery in Israel [Dec. 16] might have created an impression that the rabbis in Israel were heartless. In our religion, burial in a Jewish cemetery is a religious rite reserved to those who profess our faith. Since Aharon Steinberg was born of a non-Jewish mother, he was considered a non-Jewish child. The Catholic priest who refused the burial because the child was not baptized as a Catholic was following the tenets of his religion. Needless to say, it is natural for a religion to abide by its own tenets.

RABBI MORTON S. BAUM Memphis

Sir:

"The Fenced Grave" is a horrifying example of man's inhumanity to man. This is religion? This is the charity taught to the savages, who respect the grief of the bereaved and who bury their dead with pagan ceremonies ?

HILDA GIROUX Lansing, Mich.

Sir:

As an orthodox Jew, I am thoroughly ashamed of some of my brethren in Israel who tried to prevent the burial of a half-Jewish boy in a Jewish cemetery. Because of your stirring article, I will rewrite my will to state that when I die I would like to be buried at Arlington Cemetery, to lie side by side with my Christian brethren, and I dare anyone to put a fence around my grave.

JOSEPH GIFTER Jewish War Veterans of the U.S. Baltimore

Sir:

Is Israel to become a disgruntled, petty, bickering, rabbi-ridden little nation?

WILLIAM H. LEES Winslow, Wash.

Looking Backward

Sir:

The actor Tony Perkins (Look Homeward, Angel) is doubtless quoted correctly in stating, "I've never studied acting" [Dec. 9], if he meant the formal study of the art. However, your readers will probably be interested to know that in his three years as an English major at Rollins College, he appeared in many plays under the very able direction of Professor Howard Bailey.

JOHN O. RICH Rollins College Winter Park, Fla.

The Choice in New Guinea

Sir:

Thank you for your Dec. 16 report on the happenings in Indonesia. As usual, the facts are admirably presented, although the occurrence is a tragic one.

JULES H. MARCKMANN Florham Park, N.J.

Sir:

You quote a top Washington diplomat as saying that it is a hard political choice between Indonesia and The Netherlands (in the West Irian dispute), since Indonesia has threatened to go Communist if they don't get things their way. It must be encouraging for the Western allies to realize that the U.S. has become so weak that it is at the point of allowing blackmail. If the U.S. has to make a choice, why not do it on its presumed high moral standards, of which it so frequently boasts?

J. VAN DER HEYDEN Toronto

Sir:

The "top Washington diplomat" may be right about Indonesia's going Communist in the Dutch-Indonesian conflict. Ever since Sukarno has been president in Indonesia (1945), nationalism has been equivalent to opportunism. After Dutch West New Guinea, Indonesia's next targets will be British West Borneo, Portuguese Timor and Australian East New Guinea.

HANK R. POETIRAY Glendale, Calif.

This file is automatically generated by a robot program, so reader's discretion is required.