Versailles v. Potsdam

Sirs:

Apropos your "Potsdam Product" (TiME, May 20), you may be interested in a letter of General Tasker H. Bliss [who was one of the five U.S. signers of the Versailles Treaty], July 16, 1920, referring to the Spa Conference:

"The whole trouble seems to me to be that the Allies want, on the one hand, to enforce with the utmost strictness the terms of the Versailles Treaty, and, on the other hand, want to maintain Germany in a condition where she can be a military bulwark against Russian Bolshevism. These two attitudes cannot be reconciled except by the exercise of the most farseeing statesmanship; and I doubt whether the men who are now directing the affairs of Europe are farseeing statesmen."

The Bliss letter is most suggestive considering . . . its analogy to the present.

C. HERBERT LAUB Tampa, Fla.

Negroes & Mister Crump

Sirs:

I have read your write-up on Ed Crump and Memphis (TiME, May 27) . . . and I resent the insinuation you have made at our white men with Negro mistresses, which is [an] insult to our white citizens.

I came to Memphis from Ohio over 50 years ago and have a wide acquaintance, and I do not know of any white man with a Negro mistress, and if one was known he would be socially ostracized, as this is not condoned either in Memphis or any other part of the South with which I am familiar, though in many northern cities lowdown white women are either living with Negro men or married to them, which seems to be perfectly legitimate and respectable. . . .

J. A. RIECHMAN Memphis

Sirs:

. . . Why . . . did [you picture] the Negro king & queen of the Cotton Carnival? Anyone in Memphis five minutes would know the whole carnival centers around the duly selected [white] king & queen. You have done Memphis and the Cotton Carnival an injustice in such distorted reporting.

You delight, it seems, in trying to hold the South up in ridicule. . . . It's rather a pity that the whole country at this sad hour doesn't have more of the sound and conservative fundamentals of Southerners. And, incidentally, I challenge you to find anywhere a finer or more beautiful city than the southern city of Memphis. . . .

FRANKLIN S. KIMBROUGH Memphis

Sirs:

. . . You mentioned that Memphis was enjoying . . . good hospitals, good health! In 1940, the head of John Gaston Hospital in Memphis told me that 50% of the Memphis Negroes (comprising 45% of the population) had syphilis. The medical facilities are hopelessly inadequate, as in all other large cities of the South.

DR. MATTHEW DAVIS Maryville, Tenn.

P: In 1940 Memphis started a venereal disease control program which Surgeon General Thomas Parran of the U.S. Public Health Service has since praised as having "the soundest base of any large city [program] on record."--ED.

News v. Pictures

Sirs:

TIME (May 27) says Barbara Button's shorts would shock the President of France. LIFE the same day says it was the King of Cambodia.

Which is more accurate--news or pictures?

J. WHITNEY BOWEN Fall River, Mass.

P: TIME said: "The President of France was expected shortly. . . ." LIFE said: "The King of Cambodia had just arrived. . . ." The two men were to meet, and the assistant manager, a cautious man, feared that Miss Hutton might shock either or both.--ED.

Power against Whom?

Sirs:

. . . The "free enterprise" capitalists who professed to see the death of the American way of life inherent in Roosevelt's use of the presidential power in the common interest are more than anxious to have that power used unreservedly to bolster their reactionary stand against organized labor.

Unfortunately the nation has not yet been set to "thinking about the powers of a democratic leader," as you put it (TIME, May 27). What has happened is that the nation has been led into approving the use of federal power against the union (as a special interest group) while professing to abhor the use of that same power against the system of finance capital (as a special interest group).

ROBERT COCHRANE Washington

Cloud over Stone Mountain Sirs:

At the risk of inviting a midnight visitation by the K.K.K. [which invited the public to a show of strength in Georgia--TIME, May 20], I suggest that the next atomic-bomb test be conducted atop Stone Mountain while the Klan is swarming over it like flies on a dung heap. . . .

BUDDY SHARTAR Atlanta

Subway Expectorators

SIRS:

CHARGE UP A THEATRICAL ERROR IN YOUR ISSUE OF MAY 27. IT WAS WILLIE HOWARD AND NOT VICTOR MOORE WHO PLAYED THE ROLE OF THE MAN WHO EXPECTORATES IN A SUBWAY, BATTLES A TWO-DOLLAR FINE AND WINDS UP IN THE SHADOW OF THE ELECTRIC CHAIR, AND NOT THE GALLOWS. THIS SKETCH WAS CALLED "PAY THE TWO DOLLARS" AND WAS PLAYED BY HOWARD IN GEORGE WHITE'S "SCANDALS."

BEN F. HOLZMAN Beverly Hills, Calif.

P:Howard played the original role; Moore revived the spit-skit.--ED.

Forgotten Lepers

SIRS:

CONGRATULATIONS ON TIME'S ARTICLE [MAY 27] ABOUT THE HEROIC WIFE WHO CAUGHT LEPROSY AND HEROIC HUSBAND [WANTING TO FOLLOW] HER TO AMERICA'S LEPROSARIUM IN LOUISIANA. [THIS] MAY BE THE BEGINNING OF PUBLIC KNOWLEDGE AND SYMPATHY FOR THE MISSIONARIES, SOLDIERS, ETC. WHO HAVE PICKED UP LEPROSY. USUALLY THEY ARE TOTALLY BANISHED FROM . . . THEIR FRIENDS. WAS DR. RICHARD CABOT CORRECT IN SAYING THAT LEPROSY IS FAR LESS CONTAGIOUS THAN THE INITIAL STAGE OF SYPHILIS? IS IT TRUE THAT DOCTORS AND SISTERS IN LEPER COLONIES NEVER CONTRACT THE DISEASE?

ADA P. McCORMICK Tucson, Ariz.

P: Leprosy is less contagious than almost any other communicable disease; leprosarium workers seldom get it.--ED.

Radio Program Review

Sirs:

I am very glad that you are including under Radio a "Program Review." It's a great convenience to readers who lack the time or patience to hunt for the worthwhile programs among the listings in the daily papers. I hope that you continue to include this feature.

STANLEY S. SWARTLEY Meadville, Pa.

Operation Double Cross?

Sirs:

. . . We--and I venture to talk on behalf of many journalists in many small countries--learn with regret that the Champion of the Free Press, in short, Uncle Sam, is going to allocate only nine of the 150 places on board the press vessel at Bikini to "correspondents from the United Nations pool."

From the scanty information seeping out to us, it is only possible to derive the conclusion that the U.S. press will thus be represented with 141 correspondents.

Are you sure that Uncle Sam wants to hear more than one point of view with regard to Operation Crossroads?

We are not.

HENCK BIERBERG Copenhagen, Denmark

P: Cause of the lopsided representation (13 foreigners out of about 200 newsmen): the U.S. invited only one newsman from each nation on the Atomic Energy Commission, plus two extra from the United Kingdom (in recognition of their special work on the project).--ED.

Parrot Pigeon

Sirs:

Letter on "skvader" [TIME, May 20] reminds me of the way one fellow . . . described [an] animal he asserted was bred by a European Army staff during World War I. The Germans were shooting down all the pigeons carrying messages; so they knew all the military secrets. Some time later the Army staff issued a new kind of flying messenger, called "pombogaio" (in Portuguese). This animal resulted from the union of a pigeon (pombo) and a parrot (papagaio), having the flying capacity of a pigeon and talking the message like a parrot. . . .

E. ALBUQUERQUE Ceara, Brazil

Heart Purity

Sirs:

I was very much interested in your article "Hallelujah! Praise the Lord!" [TiME, May 20]. I believe TIME tried to give an impartial report. However, I detected an element of "poking fun" which you find everywhere the subject is discussed by unbelievers. I wonder if those who poke fun at this so-called emotional religion have ever known the true joy and peace and contentment that we experience in that intimate fellowship with God. I am a member of a church which stresses the doctrine of heart purity or Holiness. I know from experience that it is possible to live every day above the sins of this world.

ED JONES Port Clinton, Ohio

Where Is the Opposition?

Sirs:

. . . It would be useful for Mr. H. Konigsbergen [who said Russia's Communist "night" was no darker than the Czar's--TIME, May 6] to remember that the Russian parliament before the outbreak of the war in 1914 consisted of [nine different] political parties. . . .

The Opposition at that time had many newspapers, and journals existed legally and were distributed freely. Can Mr. Konigsbergen give us the name of any opposition party and its press [which has] legally existed in the U.S.S.R. since 1920? . . .

H. S. ATCKINSON Camborne, England

Moral Re-Armament

Sirs:

. . .The article [reporting Religious Cultist Dr. Frank Buchman's return to England --TIME, May 13] was read with some regret, not for what it contained or even for its general tone, but because of what it left unsaid.

I remember, during the darkest days of the war, reading a statement by a shop steward at a large aircraft factory in the U.S.; it said: "There are bombers in the air today that would not be there but for the work of Moral Re-Armament." That statement impressed us in Canada as we began to see at least one of the factors which contributed to the tremendous production of war materials in the U.S. . . .

M. MacRAE Major, Canadian Army Kingston, Ont.

Sirs:

. . . If I didn't know better, the first two paragraphs of that article would make me think Dr. Frank Buchman was some kind of a glorified Father Divine and that his followers were "impressionable old ladies and idealistic young men. . . ."

It is a matter of record that [M.R.A. has] a very great deal of "big name" support in America and throughout the world. . . . Don't think for a minute that M.R.A. is some crackpot cult that will soon die out. TIME should know that it is the most potent force in the world to settle industrial conflict today.

Don't make the mistake of the Roman historians who were so busy recording the corrupt activity of a decadent Empire that they missed the news of the Christ who was walking the dusty roads of Palestine. . . .

W. K. MERRIDITH Sappho, Wash.

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