Hope

Sirs:

Having just finished the Jan. 6 issue of TIME, I am moved to send this tribute to its editors.

With its selection of the Man of the Year and its story on "Report from the World," it has raised the hope of this Mainstreeter from Podunk to its highest ebb since the era of Wendell Willkie's "One World." . . ,

MILO B. MITCHELL Linton, Ind.

A Pair of Winners

Sirs:

May I offer an amended possible slogan to Mr. Allen K. Phelps's "possible slogan for the 1948 presidential campaign" [TIME, Jan. 6].

"Put things right--with Doug and Ike!" Douglas MacArthur and Ike Eisenhower, of course. Who else?

What a pair of winners! Don't make much difference which is first. The party that can put it across will have the 1948 presidential election in the bag.

J. J. BURNSIDE Lewistown, Mont.

Agents of Hell

Sirs:

Your reciprocal pat on the pagan back of the godless editor of McCall's Magazine [TIME, Jan. 6] seems to be a race to see who can be the most daring, the boldest, and the most shocking to moral standards, Christian conduct, and American tradition.

As soon as many leading churchmen wavered, let down, hemmed, hawed, compromised, beat about the bush about adultery, and remarriage of adulterers and adulteresses, contrary to Holy Writ, the secular, more appropriately called the pagan press, let loose with all caliber guns.

Why do people like to read stories and books that reek with sin, that shame the cities of Sodom and Gomorrah, that shock and insult high heaven? It is because millions in America are honeycombed with impurity, vice, adultery and moral rot. When they read popular books and magazines that sanction this . . . they feel less guilty about their own sins. ..."

The same is true of the movies. People love to see people get by with, get paid for, the very sins they do in secret. The secular press and the movies are doing more to hasten the downfall of America through moral bankruptcy and spiritual blackout than all other agencies of hell combined. . . .

MEROLD WESTPHAL. Kendall Community Presbyterian Church Portland, Ore.

Dictatorship of Mediocrity

Sirs:

Please extend my congratulations to Miss Elliott, the British schoolteacher who told us [TIME, Jan. 6] what she thinks of U.S. schools. I absolutely agree with her. After five years of high-school teaching, I gave it up for a less well paying job where the strain was less and where I could lead a normal adult life.

Our American idea that "youth is always right," or "don't be too hard on them, they'll outgrow it," are responsible, along with lack of home discipline, for the unnecessarily loud and crude behavior of high school youth today. .. .

MRS. KATHRYN CONNELL Fort Deven, Mass.

Sirs:

Thank God for Teacher Alice Elliott. Thank God for any one teaching in an American school who has the guts to "call" our so-called "modern" educational system for what it is--a complete failure to produce a well-informed, self-disciplined adult. . . .

EMILY LINDEN PORTER Berkeley, Calif.

Sirs:

... A few more such candid comments as this may help to do away with the dictatorship of the mediocre which has long passed for democracy in American education.

PHILIP B. SULLIVAN Madison, Wis.

Man of the Year

Sirs:

Congratulations to TIME in the selection of the Man of the Year, and to deserving Mr. Byrnes for having attained this honorable distinction.

CARRINGTON HUDSON Hoxie, Ark.

Sirs:

Well, TIME, you did it again--a new low for Man of the Year--a visionless man playing blindman's buff--a parochial politician belligerent in substituting shallow ineptitude for a plan to create markets of good will and mutual trade outlets between the nations of the world, which alone are true basis of peace among peoples. . . .

E. t. MAGUIRE

Berkeley, Calif.

Sirs:

I was quite suddenly filled with gratitude to TIME when I saw Mr. Byrnes's picture on the cover. Not that I had given a thought to who should be chosen the Man of the Year. It is just that I felt it was so right that you had chosen him. . . .

ELFRIDA L. WARNER

Brookline, Mass.

Art & Admiration

Sirs:

I like very much your story on Marian Anderson [TIME, Dec. 30] and the Negro spirituals. . . . These people and their religious philosophies ... their music and poetry have done much to enrich my own life. This has been the source of many of my paintings, and I take this opportunity to thank you for your intelligent and dignified use of my painting Swing Low, Sweet Chariot. I was especially pleased because at times there has been much criticism of the subject matter of these paintings. Your use of this picture contradicts much of this criticism. . . .

I have done these works with great admiration for these people and with a realization of their daily struggles for equal opportunity and a better life. I have at times in my painting laughed with these people, but never at them and at no time has there been any ridicule.

I feel that music is the art closest to the heart, and that the spiritual is most serious and inspiring, and I agree that it has enriched American culture and has been this country's only religious art.

. JOHN MCCRADY New Orleans, La.

Trouble in Paradise

Sirs:

With the requirement of passports and visas newly abolished, the Haitian Government put down the largest welcome in the history of this Caribbean land, hoping to attract a lucrative flow of tourists from many foreign lands, primarily from conveniently nearby, pleasantly wealthy United States of America. The prospects were beautiful. Since the appearance in TIME [Nov. 4] of "Paradise 1946," a story describing the Utopian life Haiti affords its foreign visitors, there had come an unprecedented flood of letters to the Chamber of Commerce in Port-au-Prince and to the U.S. Embassy, from people wishing to come to Haiti.

Last week, the rosy prospects were greying. . . . Following upon the TIME article "R: Daily Bath" [Dec. 2] on the prevalence of the tropical disease of yaws in Haiti, there had come an unprecedented flood of letters from Haitian consuls saying that the tourist trade had been knocked in the head, that foreigners were afraid to visit Haiti, thinking they might contract the disease.

The facts: yaws is confined entirely to peasants in the rural areas of Haiti, is never in the towns. There is no danger of tourists contracting it.

EDGAR BROOKE

Port-au-Prince, Haiti

Justice-- in 1951?

Sirs:

Nobody could possibly disagree with the sentiments and principles expressed by ten former members of the German Reichstag [TIME, Jan. 13]. Sentiments and principles, however, are not enough. The German people and their Nazi leaders took 5 1/2 years to devastate the European Continent and their own country. Surely they should have the decency to wait at least that long --or till the end of 1950 -- before they raise the cry of "Justice for Germany." Moreover, if the pledges of German leaders in this country are to be taken seriously, they ought to be couched in concrete terms rather than in generalities. . . .

KURT BLOCK

New York City

Sirs:

I read with interest, yet with the uncomfortable feeling that I had heard it somewhere before, the eloquent appeal of the former members of the German Reichstag.

Then I recalled that the same sort of appeal had occurred in our press after the First World War: an appeal. ... for the amelioration of the terms of what they called the Versaillesdiktat. We ameliorated those terms, to the point where Germany received more financial aid than she actually paid in reparations--and got Hitler. . . .

HOWARD MORRIS

New York City Sirs:

THE EX-MEMBERS OF THE GERMAN REICHSTAG IN "A DECLARATION FOR GERMANY" OBVIOUSLY CONTINUE TO BELIEVE THE NAZI CONTENTION THAT THE AMERICAN PEOPLE ARE MORONS AND OSTRICHES.

IN THIS LATEST GESTURE WE SEE THEIR CHARACTERISTIC BOOTLICKING APPEAL FOR MERCY, AND THE PSYCHOLOGY AND PHRASEOLOGY OF THE HITLER-TEUTONIC "TODAY GERMANY TOMORROW THE WORLD," "DEUTSCHLAND UBER ALLES" PHILOSOPHY. THE FOLLOWING EXCERPTS FROM THEIR ARTICLE "UNDENIABLE RIGHT," "WITHOUT DELAY," "SHALL BE ENTITLED TO NEGOTIATE," "MUST CEASE TO BE IMPEDIMENT," "GERMAN PEOPLE MUST HAVE FREEDOM," AND OTHERS ARE UNALTERED PASSAGES DIRECT FROM MEIN KAMPF. . . . THEY CONTINUE TO MIMIC THE FUHRER EVEN NOW. . . .

I. J. BERK, M.D. Dallas, Tex.

Soap Opera Montage

Sirs:

Discussing American radio, Observer Hermien Dommisse spoke a sapient scriptful [TIME, Jan. 6]. However, what tweaked my imagination mightily was her statement: "Our [South African style] montage transitions are something to hear--well-thought-out mixtures of sound effects that tell a story in themselves."

Should this terrifying technique be filched willy-nilly by soap operas, I forecast some stupendous drama, to wit: 1) John's Other Wife --between crises--happily snapping a too-tight Form-Flo; 2) Young Doctor M alone, rum-dumb from chloroform, merrily crooning into his stethoscope; 3) Just Plain Bill, breathlessly erasing his myriad complexes--with an art-gum; 4) and Stella Dallas (bless her!) noisily thumbing a Rand-McNally--looking for the Derned Place on the map.

Won't American women simply be thrilled!

NORRIS GRADY GRUBBS

Greensboro, N.C.

Invitation to Learning

Sirs:

In the item "St. Paul's Nash" in the issue of Jan. 6, TIME has erred. . . . We [faculty members] invite TIME's attention to the following fallacies:

1) The impression that the school group consists of stagnant sentimentalists, to whom any change in "the grand old place" is anathema, and that a leader of Norman Nash's stature is considered a busybody.

2) "St. Paul's and its headmaster could part with some relief. . . ." This clause could not have been written by one even moderately acquainted with the facts. . . .

3) The notable lack of impressions from the one possible authentic source--the school itself.

Not TIME's fault is it that its reporter missed the spontaneous ovation that greeted Dr. Nash on the morning following his election as Bishop-Coadjutor of Massachusetts, when the president of the school council voiced the hope of the student .body that St. Paul's might not lose its rector. . . .

St. Paul's likes its Nash--TIME notwithstanding.

BEN DAVIS CHARLES DENNISON

Concord, N.H.

P:TIME likes Dr. Nash too, wishes him success in his new job (Bishop of Massachusetts.)--ED.

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