Chromium-Plated Madness

Sir:

I am a regular reader of your magazine. Each week I am amazed by your overbearing conceit. Your country has inherited all the idiotic pomp of 19th Century Britain. You are beyond doubt the greatest country in the world, but it is the "Bomb" and your material power that gives you this claim. Your material power has far outstripped your intellectual ability, and you are bereft of moral and spiritual values. . . .

You wish to remove the Veto because it is the stumbling block in the way of your American Century crusade. . . .

That the fate of Palestine, and the starving peoples of Europe, hangs on the 1948 presidential election is proof of your egocentric, chromium-plated madness.

LEON G. HINDLE

Warrington, Lanes, England

Sir:

If I know Americans, I suspect that your correspondent Jim Chambers [TIME, Sept. 29] writes with such sorrowing regard for the British and urges a ten-billion loan just for the pleasure of seeing the words "Britain is broke" in print.

It's time someone told you that the average Briton, if he had any say in the matter, would much prefer to starve quietly than see our loathsome, contemptible politicians conniving with you to tie us up for generations with the dollar loans (and attached conditions) you hurl in our faces with such howls of sneering derision.

Don't think, too, that we aren't well aware that the chief reason you lend us money is because you hope to hold us in front of you (as before) in your coming war with Russia.

Another million British dead while you make leisurely preparations to rush in, when everyone else is exhausted, and save civilization. . . .

ROBERT YATES

London, England

Hits, Runs & Errors

Sir:

In your Oct. 13 issue you state . . . that "no team since 1921 had ever lost the first two games and won a [World] Series."

In 1925, I believe, Pittsburgh lost the first three to Washington and then went on to win the next four and cop the Series. I was ten years old at the time and won "two bits" on Pittsburgh. . . .

DANIEL V. MCCARTHY

Roslyn Heights, N.Y.

P: This time Reader McCarthy wins the fur-lined booby prize: Pittsburgh won the second, fifth, sixth and seventh games in the 1925 World Series.--ED.

Whoa!

Sir:

A short time ago, a friend of mine flew over New York City in what he considered a reasonably fast plane. Everything was proceeding normally until he passed over the TIME & LIFE Building. Glancing earthward, he was astonished to see that he actually appeared to be flying backward. He immediately came to the conclusion that he must have exceeded the speed of light. . . . He was quite disappointed when I explained to him--a little patronizingly--that around the TIME offices, light travels.at only about 186 m.p.s. [TIME, Oct. 13]. ...

ROBERT LEOPOLD

Ann Arbor, Mich.

Sir:

This is perhaps the smallest error ever called to TIME'S attention. A period has taken the place of a comma in the . . . speed of light, reducing the true value (186,285 miles per second) to its one-thousandth part.

HANOR A. WEBB

Nashville, Tenn.

P: TIME'S Chicago printer thinks things are moving too fast these days.--ED.

Revelations with a Purpose?

Sir:

The alleged revelations of Soviet deserter Gulishvili-Chaparidze, reported by NANA and summarized in TIME of Oct. 13, are truly amazing. . . .

Seizure of the oilfields of Persia and Iraq would be an obvious Soviet goal, but why should they make North Africa and the Suez Canal--after Britain has practically abandoned that "lifeline of empire"--priority targets? And why should Russia consider conquest of China as her supreme goal, since she might gain control over China without war ? The ultimate goal of any war is to break the enemy's will and ability to resist: seizure of France, North Africa and China, however injurious to our national security, would certainly not finish the U.S. as a world power--but why should the Russians even hypothetically think of war with anything less in mind?

The general's line of reasoning reminds me ominously of the defeatist propaganda in France, 1939: "We do not want to die for Danzig." Might not many Americans be inclined to think "We do not want to die for France, the Suez Canal or China," once they have accepted those countries as the ultimate limits of Soviet expansion? Could it be that the "desertion" and the "revelations" of Gulishvili-Chaparidze were staged in order to promote such defeatist or isolationist moods among us? Unless we hear more about the background of the talkative general, about the motives and circumstances of his desertion and the Soviet action that must have followed, we had better weigh the whole story with utter distrust.

HENRY C. SUTTON

Kew Gardens, N.Y.

Disservice to Debs

Sir;

(TIME, Oct. 6) had a reference to Irving Stone's book Adversary in the House that rather peeved me. Since then I have read the book and now know you were mild in your criticism.

I knew Eugene Debs and the entire family from 1900 to his death. . . . I was a guest in the Debs home some dozen times, spent many, many hours in his company on railroad trains. . . .

Never in their home, or traveling, did I see or hear one word to justify pulling these two people out of their graves to make a bestseller. . . . That Gene and Kate Debs lived in different intellectual worlds is possible--that Mrs. Debs would have wished more of Gene's company is possible, as with any wife whose husband's calling takes him away for long periods. . .-.

Some day someone will write a real book, about Gene, and all those thousands of his day who day & night gave of themselves arousing the people. . . . In my humble opinion, those years of education forced on the people, in towns big & little (from pulpit, platform and soapbox, by voice, leaflet and books), saved this country from civil war in the depths of depression, and gave Franklin D. Roosevelt . . . the understanding public and trained workers for the immediate job he had on taking over.

Mr. Stone's purpose may be good--his performance, to me, is a great disservice to the memory of a man whose heart was bigger than his body--who lived all that Christianity presupposes.

GEORGE H. GOEBEL

Daytona Beach, Fla.

Exclusive Designs

Sir:

Your splendid article on Sophie Gimbel was not only a tribute to a great personality and a fine designer, but to the independent creative talent of many other American designers.

For your information, however, Harriette Harra, one of the designers you cited, is not Seventh Avenue's, but Stein and Elaine's [New York City]. Like Sophie of Saks's, Harriette Harra's clothes are made exclusively for one store. Like Sophie, she is married to her boss.

ELEANOR LAMBERT

New York City

Kentucky Justice

Sir:

This letter is in reference to the item in your Oct. 6 issue concerning 13-year-old Crawford Casebolt of Pikeville, Ky. being sentenced to life imprisonment for armed robbery. . . .

If that is the minimum sentence possible under Kentucky's armed robbery law, it is high time Kentucky's citizens demand a revision. . . . A child of 13 . . . should not be governed by the same laws which apply to adult citizens. . . . We [have written] a letter of protest to the Kentucky state legislature, and hope that other decent citizens will do the same, to help protect our country's children from such medieval laws.

MR. & MRS. ROBERT M. HERMAN

Santa Monica, Calif.

P: Mr. & Mrs. Herman and many other protesting readers will be happy to hear that Crawford Casebolt has been paroled and is now at Boys Town.--ED.

Bullitt & Bullets

Sir:

[Bullitt's] "Report on China" [TIME, Oct. 13] is diabolical and absurd. . . .

Veterans of the China Theater will certainly get a good laugh out of the statement . . . "The essence of the problem is the ejection of every armed Communist from the soil of China"--as probable as Stalin becoming President of the U.S.

Please, Americans, don't fall for this warmongering report. China does need our help quick, but bullets or Bullitts aren't the answer.

LEONARD F. NEWTON

Boston

Sir:

... I failed to find a single sentence concerning the interest of the Chinese people. China is in a bad spot all right, but still the people's sentiment against the U.S. foreign policy in the Far East for the last two years has clearly shown that any attempt to make China a colony run and operated by MacArthur Inc. is doomed to fail. . . .

K. H. LEE

Wooster, Ohio

Sir:

. . . "Report on China" put a neat price tag on a pro-U.S. settlement of China's difficulties. To the excellent exposition of the situation and the apparently sound, certainly clear, prescription of the means of bringing about a solution of the problem, there should be added another section: "Where the U.S.S.R. Comes In."

A plan which merely totes up the dollar cost of a solution of the problem as it exists at present--without consideration of the eventuality of Russian countermeasures--is too facile to be completely convincing. This is not to say that the plan does not point in the right direction; it is to say that the plan should go farther, to be thoroughly realistic. Superficially, the elements for a fine foreign-policy snapshot are present; let's keep in mind, however, that the subject in all likelihood won't hold still.

R. L. ETZKORN Cicero, ILL.

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