Battle Over Bizerte

Sir:

From the glory that was De Gaulle's, the outrage of Bizerte takes preeminence. Sadly, I have lost a hero.

JOANNE DUNAGAN

Chicago

Sir:

Why all the tears over Bizerte? The French have asked the Tunisian government for years to stop sending aid to the F.L.N.

So now I think the Tunisians received just what they deserved. Just what (if we had any guts) we would give Castro.

BILL J. BLOOMY

Goldsboro, N.C.

Sir:

France has played the outlaw in Tunisia, and should be treated accordingly until she makes amends, by paying reparation and by commencing the orderly abandonment of the Bizerte naval base.

MALCOLM H. BELL

New York City

Sir:

I only hope that our marines will defend Guantanamo as valiantly as the French have defended Bizerte.

ADAM ROTTER

New York City

Sir:

In reference to your remarks on President Habib Bourguiba of Tunisia [July 28] "that the West would never look at him with the same confidence again": I feel I ought to put the record straight that if France refuses to quit Bizerte and the U.S. is content enough to only issue statements of regret, then not only Mr. Bourguiba and the Tunisian people but the Afro-Asian countries as a whole will lose confidence in the West.

Such acts of vandalism only reflect the decadence of France and the West.

SYED SULTAN ANWER

Karachi, Pakistan

Railroad Crisis

Sir:

Congratulations on the fine job of reporting not only the problems, but also the progress and potential of America's railroads [Aug. ii].

A. C. KALMBACH

Publisher Trains Magazine

Milwaukee

Sir:

If a TIME reporter had spent as much time at the presidential railroad-commission hearings in Washington as with D. J. Russell of the Southern Pacific, he would have classified locomotive firemen as "useful" and would have realized that the $500 million "featherbedding" figure is fictitious.

H. E. GILBERT

President Brotherhood of Locomotive Firemen and Enginemen

Cleveland

P:If As TIME reported, the estimate that $500 million a year is lost to union featherbedding was made by the railroads. It is not surprising that President Gilbert uses a different set of numbers.--ED.

Sir:

Shame on Railroader Russell for his attitude toward California wines. He should know that here in America we have some of the finest wines in the world!

He just hasn't given our wines a chance. And like most militant religionists, he is inconsistent in that he permits slot machines in his Reno stations . . . Phooey!

RUDY VALLEE

New York City

Come Life Eternal

Sir:

I am sure that the few remaining Shakers are grateful, as we here are, for the national recognition your article on Hancock Shaker Village [July 28] gave to our efforts to preserve for the public some of the fruits of this unique people's way of life. We are just beginning, and we have a decade or two of work ahead of us.

Only two of our 17 buildings have been opened to the public, but as money comes in as it has been from many areas, we will be opening others. The key structure of the village is the Shakers' round, stone barn, world-known for its size and functional design (see cut). The barn has been a mecca for tourists, architects and builders since it was built in 1826.

While we do have many generous patrons, as you indicated, our nonprofit corporation is scarcely confined to "well-off summer residents of the Berkshires." Our board of directors and donors of money and Shaker articles include scholars, museum personnel from many areas, and dozens of not-so-well-off permanent Berkshire residents.

MRS. LAWRENCE K. MILLER

President

Shaker Community, Inc.

Hancock, Mass.

Sir:

Your story of the Shakers reminded me of an account of a Shakers' meeting in the memoirs of my late father-in-law, when he was a boy in Maine a hundred years ago. He went with his grandfather, a Freewill Baptist, more out of curiosity, I gather, than anything else. He always remembered the men's guttural voices and the women's shrill and squeaky as they came on the dance floor suiting their actions to their song:

Come life, Shaker life,

Come life eternal,

Shake, shake out of me

All that is carnal.

I'll take a nimble step,

I'll be a David.

I'll show all the world

How he behaved.

The account concluded, "They were an industrious and frugal people and were known to be honest and reliable."

FLORENCE PATCH WHITE

Cambridge, Minn.

Looking Back

Sir:

Your article on the Nisei relocation plan [Aug. n] certainly put a dent in my image of our American heritage. How we, as Americans, could ever have permitted this is beyond my young mind.

Jo BETH KLOPMAN

Holly, Mich.

Sir:

What a disgraceful memory to look back on! I read with deep mortification our treatment of the Japanese-American community during World War II. It proves that in panic our normal feelings are transformed into unreasonable forces. We must all bear the shame of our ignorant doings.

MARILYN SHOWSTACK Boston, Mass.

Sir:

Where but in this democratic country of ours would a magazine be able to publish historical notes such as the evacuation during World War II of more than 110,000 West Coast Japanese, a majority of them citizens, and to admit the injustice of it.

A realization and understanding of wartime hysteria permitted Nisei to go along without undue trouble, as an all-out war effort on our part. Every loyal American sacrificed in one way or another. We Nisei did a little more than some others.

FUKI ODANAKA

Chicago

Sir:

It appears to be appropriate in these days of the Eichmann trial and the Freedom Riders to publish your article on Historical Notes. There is a great need to fight for both humane and national dignity.

Personally, I prefer not to open up an old wound; just bury it and forget it.

MITSUE TANAKA Los Angeles

Dead to the world

Sir:

I am opposed to fallout shelters, as a form of militarism that increases the probability of nuclear war. I write to object to the following statement in TIME'S article about fallout shelters [Aug. 4]: "In a full-scale nuclear attack, as many as 50 million [Americans] might die." It is true that in the 1959 hearings before the Joint Congressional Committee on Atomic Energy the estimate was made that about 50 million Americans would be killed if there were to be a nuclear attack involving 1,446 megatons.

A full-scale nuclear attack on the U.S. would without doubt be many times the size of the 1,446-megaton attack that is estimated to kill 50 million Americans. A full-scale nuclear attack would probably kill everybody, whether or not fallout shelters had been built.

LINUS PAULING

Pasadena, Calif.

Sir:

Blast shelters can be built for only a fraction of what it would cost to put a man on the moon, and I for one would certainly rather have my money go toward the preservation of this planet before exploration of another.

JOAN DUNN PROFILET

Newport, R.I.

Mirrored Whims

Sir:

Your succinct article on operatic scores [Aug. 4] refers to my discovery of 27,000 "errors" between Verdi's finished manuscript of Falstaff and recent editions. I prefer to say "differences." for who knows exactly which are the errors? Should we call the posthumous changes, which rise to over 200 on a single page, revisions or falsifications? In Rigoletto, La donna e mobile began pianissimo in 1912 and forte in 1954, although Verdi died in 1901.

Only if the manuscripts are freed for public use will we know whether he wrote either of the two signs, and against which instruments of the orchestra.

Evidently the whims of interpreters have been mirrored in the printed scores, and Toscanini's lifelong struggle for accurate texts, now supported by Stravinsky, Walter, Serafin, Monteux, Gui and many others, will be much advanced not only by your article but by the response of your readers.

Beyond releasing the Verdi and Puccini manuscripts, the Italian government is considering obtaining an international agreement, welcomed by many publishers, to standardize critical editions of music, printed with a distinguishing type to show any editorial alterations to the composer's text.

DENIS VAUGHAN

Rome, Italy

Short Speech

Sir:

In the July 28th issue of your magazine, the cinema reviewer, in commenting on my film, Francis of Assist, stated that I would have been capable of filming a biography of Abraham Lincoln without mentioning the Civil War.

The reviewer made the statement because he felt that I forgot to tell the story of St. Francis.

Anyone who, after studying his life, can state that the incident of St. Francis and the birds was equally as important to Francis' life as the Civil War was to Lincoln's, must have a very strange judgment. So strange, that I can imagine if a man with the same mentality as your reviewer's had been sent to cover Lincoln's Gettysburg Address, his main comment would have been that Lincoln gave a very short speech.

PLATO SKOURAS 20th

Century-Fox Film Corp.

Beverly Hills, Calif.

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