Apocalyptic Visions

Sir:

Lilienthal's picture was timely (TIME, Aug. 4), but your attempt to gild this pink lily was a flop. "He brought power to 700,000 users, through 140 cooperatives." Stalin approves the process used, and also believes in "strong government," like Lilienthal. This man is a bad mistake -he doesn't stand for sound economics, free enterprise or American fundamentals. . . . This man will hurry us down the same socialistic path England is descending.

LLOYD L. PETERSON

Cl'nton, Iowa

Sir:

The austere grandeur of your Lilienthal "peaks" and "ranges" was cheering. . . .

It was good to be reminded that human dignity and greatness still exist and are still newsworthy. It was wood to have the curtain withdrawn for a little on our newest troubled probings into the unknown, the terrifying vistas and apocalyptic visions of the Atom Age.

Congratulations on another brilliant sample of constructive journalism.

W. L. KEENE Richmond, Ky.

School of Opportunity

Sir:

I was happy to see your notice and mention of Starr Commonwealth, and to find Uncle Floyd's picture in the Aug. 4 TIME . . . but I wish the school had been presented in a somewhat different light.

Your article states: "He wanted no boys of good reputation. . . . Most were sent by judges, after being tried for such crimes as robbery, assault, attempted murder and rape. The rest were problem boys whose parents could no longer handle them."

We, who are alumni, like to feel that our alma mater is not a place to reform "bad boys," but a school of opportunity for boys who need a chance. . . . Maybe I am quibbling with words but the shift of emphasis is important to me and to my fellow alumni. Most of us are proud of having been connected with such a worthwhile school. . . . W. E. STEPHENSON Chicago

Missing Link

Sir:

TIME'S usually keen sense of history seems to have slipped a cog in its story (TIME, Aug. 4) on Liberia's 100th anniversary. You tell us that Liberia was founded by the American Colonization Society "as a home for freed slaves from the U.S."; and you tell us that Liberia's current President is named Tubman; but you never tie these two facts together. If you did, you might find they had an exceedingly interesting background.

All I know is this -- and I'm hoping TIME can supply the rest: in the middle of the last century there lived in Maryland a Negro woman, a slave, who felt so strongly on the subject of human bondage that she started an "underground" movement of slaves across the border into free Pennsylvania . . . and later to Canada. ... As her fame grew, Northern Abolitionists supplied her with funds and advice. She became, in time, the most famous Negro woman in U.S. history. . . . Her name was Harriet Tubman.

That to me is a pretty fascinating story. And why, 100 years later, has the President of Liberia the same name? Is President Tubman a descendant? Or did one of the freed Negroes who went to Liberia take the name of a woman who must have been to them something of a saint? Whatever it is, TIME should supply this missing link. . . .

DAVID DRUBLUH

The Bronx

P: This missing link is not to be found, only surmised. According to the records, Harriet Ross Tubman bore no children and lived out her years in Auburn, N.Y. Long before that, in 1821, the U.S. Government and the American Colonization Society joined forces in founding an African colony of freed slaves, the colony that later became the Republic of Liberia. Among the first of the big slave owners to free their slaves so that they might return to Africa was a man named Tubman, who not only paid his liberated slaves' passages, but gave thousands of dollars to the Society for its work in Africa. In gratitude to him many of the former slaves adopted his surname, and it is still a fairly common name in Liberia. -- ED.

Null & Void

Sir:

In the Aug. 4 issue of TIME is a statement that the Roman Catholic Church sometimes "annuls" a previous marriage. This is not true. The Church never annuls a marriage that ever actually existed. It does declare marriages to be null if the presumed marriage never was valid. If your writer thinks the circumstances to be "elastic," let him tackle some of the many cases in my files which are stalemated because we cannot get the evidence to prove them invalid.

H. G. RIORDAN Pastor

St. Joseph's Church Fond du Lac, Wis.

German Gratitude

Sir:

It has been brought to my attention that TIME published an Associated Press dispatch according to which I was quoted as havirg said "We Germans don't want to sell ourselves to either side, not for the Potemkin promises of Marshal Zhukov nor for the CARE packages from America" (TIME, June 16). I did not say that; in fact, I said: "We Germans don't want to sell ourselves to either side; on one side we have the Potemkin promises of Marshal Zhukov, on the other the Potemkin figures of calories." I should be grateful to you for correcting the wrong impression made by that misquotation; like all decent Germans I am profoundly grateful for the official as well as private help extended to Germany by the United States.

DR. KURT SCHUMACHER

Hannover, Germany

Reappraisal

Sir:

In TIME, June 23, under Press, you say: "Editor Norman Cousins last week pulled the sheet over his projected leftist Collier's-type magazine to be known as USA. . . ."

First, while the future of USA is uncertain, the final decision as to actual publication will be made this fall after a reappraisal of production problems. . . . Second, very specific damage was done by the unjustified, unfair and inaccurate tarring of the project as "leftist" -- which it certainly is not. Third, the projected magazine is not a "Collier's-type" -- whether with respect to format, content, or frequency of publication.

I know that no retraction by TIME can offset the original misstatements, but it may have some cathartic value. . . .

THOMAS K. FINLETTER Member of Editorial Board USA New York City

P: TIME takes its three teaspoonfuls, wishes middle-reading USA a cool, comfortable vacation. -- ED.

This file is automatically generated by a robot program, so reader's discretion is required.