Japan's New Women

Sir:

Kudos for your timely cover story on Miss Michiko Shoda [March 23] and for the fresh, unsentimental report on women in Japan. It is the best I've seen.

MALCOLM F. REED

Director

Japan Scholarship Foundation, Inc.

Westfield, N.J.

Sir:

It seems to me that Kipling could never be more wrong than when he wrote "East is East, and West is West, and never the twain shall meet." The meeting of the twain reaches its full fruition in the marriage of Michiko Shoda and Crown Prince Akihito, by Western standards a storybook romance in a storybook land.

RICHARD P. PETTY

Plainview, Minn.

Sir:

I was stationed in Japan as a naval officer, and I found that the charm of Japanese women revealed American women to be what many of them really are: domineering, gross cows. Unfortunately, in this age of irrationality the "liberated" Japanese girls are now imitating American barbarians.

RICHARD J. LINDSTROM

Louisville

Sir:

With Japan's increasing mimicry of the U.S., let us pray that this is not an impetus for the dissolution of traditionally strong Japanese familial bonds. It would be a pathetic thing indeed if American-style marriages led to a proportionate number of American-style divorces.

P. A. DAVIS

Miami University

Oxford, Ohio

P: The U.S. divorce rate is almost three times that of Japan.--ED.

Sir:

As a reporter for the New York Herald Tribune, I journeyed to Tokyo just after the war with a group of newsmen, and even then we could sense the profound postwar change coming over the Japanese people. What we could not see in our limited visit we learned directly from General MacArthur, who invited us to lunch at the American embassy. The farseeing general predicted to us then--in 1946--that the Japanese traditional way of life would soon become a thing of the past. How true his prediction was, and how well TIME has shown this in its pages.

LEO CULLINANE

Washington

No Farce in Durango

Sir:

In your March 23 story, "Epic in Durango," you misrepresented the facts concerning the near drowning of Audie Murphy. I know because I was visiting Audie in Durango at the time the incident happened. The people involved--Inge Morath, Bill Pickens and Audie--are my personal friends.

Inge, familiar with peril, wandered to the lake [at the time Audie and Bill were struggling in the water] and immediately recognized an emergency. Not standing on ceremony, she stripped quickly to her bra and shorts before diving into the lake. She was no more exposed than had she been wearing a two-piece bathing suit. The sprint through the chilly water exhausted her too. But the three, acting as a team, took turns in holding each other up at intervals until they made the shore.

I assure you the incident was no farce, but your reporting put three heroic people in a ridiculous light.

DAVID MCCLURE

North Hollywood, Calif.

Sir:

A truly heroic deed. We would appreciate it if you would print a picture of Miss Morath so if we ever chance to meet her, we could look for a possible place to drown.

GEORGE W. SCOTT JR. '59

DONALD A. TOCHER '59

Princeton University Princeton, NJ.

P: See cut.--ED.

Another Chamber Editor

Sir:

I dispute your statement of March 23 that Erwin D. Canham, editor of the Christian Science Monitor and newly elected president of the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, is ". . . the first newspaperman in the Chamber's long line of 32 presidents."

My grandfather, the late John H. Fahey, was a leader in forming the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, was president in 1914 and 1915. He was editor and manager of the Associated Press in Boston, and later superintendent of the A.P. in New England. He was editor and publisher of the Boston Traveler, president and publisher of the Worcester (Mass.) Post and the Manchester (N.H.) Mirror, president of the Clark Press, and publisher of the New York Evening Post. He was also second vice president of the Associated Press.

MRS. ARTHUR F. LITTLE JR.

Needham Heights, Mass.

P: Quite a newspaperman, and quite a president in the Chamber's long line of 32.--ED.

Of Tillich & God (Contd.)

Sir:

Philosopher Paul Tillich [TIME, March 16] has done the greatest service to the meaning of Christianity since Albert Schweitzer's commentaries on the same subject.

LAURA JANE MUSSA

Little Falls, Minn.

Sir:

Celsus, Voltaire, Ingersoll, Paine et al. had the honesty to attack Christianity from outside the church. Tillich, Niebuhr, Bultmann and company promulgate their infidelity as "theologians" and "clergymen." Tillich's religious vaporings--a kind of 20th century Gnosticism--would rob Christianity of its Christ, its Bible, its God, its salvation and its sense. Tillich lights matches in the dark instead of opening the windows of his mind to let in the sun of righteousness. The miracle of the church is that it survives both open enemies like Voltaire and Trojan horses like Tillich.

(THE REV.) GEORGE SCOTCHMER

First Presbyterian Church

Galveston, Texas

Sir:

If God is as complicated as Paul Tillich says he is, I'm joining the devil pronto.

NICK SAMA

Palisade, N.J.

Under New Management

Sir:

In your March 23 issue you report that Alexander L. Guterma "won a round in his battle with the Securities and Exchange Commission when it rescinded the ban on trading in Bon Ami, a Guterma company." The [trading ban] was removed on the petition of this company [which emphasized that] the present management has no association whatsoever with members of prior management, including Alexander Guterma.

R. PAUL WEESNER

President

The Bon Ami Co.

New York City

P: Reader Weesner is right. Alexander Guterma resigned from Bon Ami in May 1957.--ED.

More Talk

Sir:

I want to thank you very much for giving my father a title [TIME, March 16]. I'm sure he deserves it, and I can't think how the Queen came to be so careless as to overlook this fact.

I want you to know that James's hearing aid is a myth born of my imagination. He hears perfectly well but is too smart to let on.

As for Oscar's comment--that I am just this side of vulgarity--it is a pleasure to be this side of it, and I wish he would come over and join me some time.

PAMELA MASON

Beverly Hills, Calif.

For Whom?

Sir:

Fie to your TV reviewer of For Whom the Bell Tolls [March 23]. Bravo to John Frankenheimer for preserving the craftsmanship of Ernest Hemingway, whose use of the spoken word conveys both a poetic simplicity of character and a depth of emotion.

(MRS.) JUNE W. BRAY

Washington

Sir:

To a presentation that attempts to rise above the one-dimensional "package series" should be attributed a certain amount of esteem even if it falls short of its goal. Mr. Frankenheimer and the splendid cast may have lacked in many respects by your reviewer's Utopian standards, but they brought a rare spark of beauty, truth and creativity to a usually insipid television schedule.

MARY JANE MUNDIPARE

Latham, N.Y.

Sir:

If for 364.99 days a year the arena is rented out to cowboys, clowns and corn peddlers, does the drama-starved aficionado still throw garbage at the only bullfight to come along?

HARRY F. WATERS

Eastchester, N.Y.

Sir:

The most absurd objection was that "the story itself seemed dated." It is fantastic to try to imagine eliminating novels and plays from our literature on the criterion of datedness. Oedipus Rex and Hamlet, to name only two, would have to go immediately.

The language in the production did not bother me at all. I was prosaic enough to take the "Did the earth move?" dialogue as gypsy lore. Let's just assume that your critic has neither been a gypsy nor ever made love on a mountainside. I've never been a gypsy either, but I have made love on a mountainside. Could this have helped?

D. WAGNER

Chicago P: It must have.--ED.

Sir:

I somehow got the impression that your reviewer would have preferred a more "modern" locale for the story--perhaps Cuba just prior to the collapse of the Batista regime. I can just see the mountainside love scene. Jordan (Errol Flynn would be perfect in the role) leers at Maria and wheezes: "Baby, this really swings."

MARY HOLTE

Evanston, Ill.

Sir:

For Whom the Bell Tolls--it tolls occasionally for you.

VELMA M. BOAZ

Head of English Department

St. Anne's School

Charlottesville, Va.

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