Dewey

Sirs:

Your great article on Thomas Edmund Dewey (TIME, Nov. 1) is so good, so unbiased, so illuminating it will make most people think, who have been groping for the right candidate on the Republican ticket. We feel that you have unraveled the knot and that Tom Dewey might be our next President if he could be drafted.

FREDERICK J. WALTER, M.D. San Diego

Sirs:

Let me commend you on your article on Thomas Dewey. However, I think that Mr. Dewey, although a sincere and honest gentleman, is not fit for the office of President any time during the next twelve years.

In the next decade will be decided the fate of the world for many a year to come. America is now beginning to shake off her isolationism and while doing so a great man has arisen. That man is Wendell L. Willkie.

DAVID H. HALL

President

Independent Jeffersonian Democrats for Willkie Wellesley Hills, Mass.

Sirs :

Despite TIME'S highly laudatory and painstakingly absolving article (Nov. 1), Tom Dewey remains a politico of the Harding or Coolidge type -- albeit more virile and ebullient -- and one of the darlings of Old Guard Republicanism. . . .

ROBERT MITTELMAN

Philadelphia

Hyperthyroid

Sirs:

Your issue of Nov. 3 quotes "aristocratic" Leverett Saltonstall's reference to the "stinking" article in PM and his apologetic explanation a few days later that he had "had a rude awakening on Monday."

And what sort of rudeness moved TIME to call PM "hyperthyroid" and refer to its "characteristic shrillness" in the very same press review, despite your admission that PM's reporter "Beichman was right?" Is it fair and in good taste to sling muddy insinuations at another publication without provocation? . . .

MARCUS BACKER, M.D.

Bridgeport, Conn.

Let Reader Backer stop wearing PM's heart on his sleeve. Wrote PM's Managing Editor John P. Lewis in an editorial: ". . . The TIME report . . . nailed down the situation and our role in it better than we had been able to do ourselves. . . . 'Hyperthyroid' (take it from TIME) PM . . . appreciates the 'vim' tag but mildly denies 'characteristic shrillness.' Or -- maybe I could, be wrong." -- ED.

Rare Day

Sirs: In ... TIME, Nov. 1, relating Cordell Hull's arrival in Moscow appears the phrase "in the sunlight of a rare October after noon." When were October afternoons "rare?" The Russians have been able to do everything short of the supernatural ; not yet, however, have they -- or anybody else -- been able to reduce the number of afternoons in a month. . . .

JOHN A. CARTER 2nd Lieutenant

Fort Sill, Okla.

>>Rare indeed are some October afternoons, some days in June and some steaks (Webster: 3. Of an uncommon quality; unusually excellent). ED.

Interpretation

Sirs: This war is fantastic enough without making bomb craters (TIME, Nov. 1, p. 23) look like igloos.

THOMAS O. MCCRANEY

Ann Arbor, Mich.

Sirs:

Many people looking at your excellent picture of the much-bombed Focke-Wulf plant (TIME, Nov. 1) may pause to wonder. Notice that the bomb craters appear as small round mounds of earth and the W-shaped blast walls appear as zigzag trenches.

Here at the Infantry School we teach officers and embryo officers that to interpret correctly an aerial photograph it must be held so that it is between the observer and the source of light and so that "shadows stab stomach" (i.e., shadows point toward interpreter)....

LEONARD C. BRIGGS

2nd Lieutenant Fort Benning, Ga.

>> Hereafter shadows stab stomachs --ED.

Sirs: We of Butte, Mont. are laughing at the irate citizen of Lynchburg, Va. and his worries about the "irate citizens of Butte, Mont." in the Letters column of Nov. 1.

Lieut. Beckstrom . . . notwithstanding, most of us in Butte enjoyed not only Copper Camp but TIME'S review of it (Oct. 4). . . . My boss, Ed Craney of KGIR, liked the book (and TIME'S review) so much he sent a copy of each to 60 advertising agencies as a promotion.

ROBERT N. PINKERTON Butte, Mont.

Not Too Dry, Not Too Burnt

Sirs:

In the issue of Oct. 25, you refer to "the typically dry, burnt-toast style of BBC news-casting." This phrase conveys a totally wrong impression.

After a stay of 14 months in this country, I still yearn for the news bulletins of the BBC, whose announcers do not, as American speakers do, subject the bulletins they read to any potent processes in order to gain the maximum dramatic effect. British announcers' voices are friendly, very individual, and carry an impression of sanity and authority, well suited to newscasting. . . .

JOHN A. EEDLE Sub Lieutenant, R.N.V.R. Squantum, Mass.

>> All honor to BBC for its sane, authoritative, dry newscasting--ED.

Security?

Sirs:

... It seems to me that the enemy would have but to subscribe to any of our popular magazines to find information. . . .

A good example of such generous data is your article "Vertical Sharpshooter" (TIME, Nov. 1). In this article, you state that the Air Forces are now using a few selected bombardiers to do the aiming for the entire group. . . . Don't you believe that such information should be kept secret?

MILTON KAY CONVER 1st Lieutenant, A.C. Dalhart, Tex.

>> TIME does not; neither did Army Air Forces, which read the story in advance of publication.--ED.

Man of the Year

Sirs:

For Man of the Year: Henry A. Wallace, who, right or wrong, declines to sacrifice principle to expediency. . . .

STUART CUTHBERTSON Boulder, Colo.

Sirs:

For Man of the Year--the Unknown Soldier of Russia.

ROBERT W. SEAMAN Kansas City, Mo.

Sirs:

. . . Under General MacArthur's leadership the Army & Navy have worked as a unit. I nominate him for Man of the Year--and Commander in Chief of all Allied Operations in the Pacific.

CHARLES A. MILLS

Miami

Sirs:

I second the nomination of Douglas MacArthur for Man of the Year. . . .

W. W. STEVENSON Groton, Mass.

19th-century Robeson Sirs: Concerning the review of Robeson's Othello (TIME, Nov. 1), Paul Robeson may be the first Negro Othello to play Broadway, but he is not the first American Negro to achieve fame in the role.

About 100 years ago, a certain Southern American Negro . . . crossed the Atlantic and did several plays on English and Continental stages.

He was enthusiastically received, especially in London, where one of the city's leading actresses played Desdemona to his Othello. . . .

JAMES BINDER Redondo Beach, Calif.

>> The "Southern American Negro" was Frederick Ira Aldridge, the date 1826. Among his Desdemonas: Ellen Tree, whose husband, famed Charles Kean, played Iago. In Europe's capital Actor Aldridge also played other Shalespearean roles (e.g., Lear, Shylock, Macbeth.) He married a Swedish baroness (by whom he had three children), died as he was about to return to America to set the record that had to wait 76 years for Paul Robeson.--ED.

Sirs: ... I think Americans should all be ashamed of themselves for having lost out on all the years of Mr. Robeson's "exile." . . . While convalescing at an Army hospital after my return to the U.S., I struck up a casual acquaintanceship with a young Negro private. I asked him: "How did you feel when the doctors told you you were coming home?" ... He replied: "This may sound awful to you, but I hated the thoughts of coming back to my home and having to resume living among people who hate us colored people so much." ... He had been in England and then, later, in North Africa. During all this time the people he met treated him humanely.

They were courteous, kind and considerate.

Most of all, he praised the Army nurses who ministered to him as a sick patient, and not just as a "nigger." . . .

I feel very much ashamed of any American who could cause any American soldier to feel he hated to return home. . . .

(SGT.) R. W. ZOLLER, A.A.F.

Westover Field, Mass.

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