Man of the Year?

Sir:

FOR HIS MAGNIFICENT VICTORY AGAINST ALL ODDS I NOMINATE AS THE MAN OF THE YEAR HARRY S. TRUMAN.

S. J. GORCHOV

Philadelphia, Pa.

Sir:

. . . Harry S. Truman ... Or should the honor go to John Q. Citizen, who stumped the experts and confounded the pollsters and reasserted his sacred right to vote as he saw fit?

EDWARD T. MCNAMARA Danbury, Conn.

Sir:

. . . Senator Arthur H. Vandenberg, the man most responsible for our bipartisan foreign policy. 1948's most important news was the European Recovery Program, without which France and Italy would have fallen to the Communists. Without Senator Vandenberg, an adequate Marshall Plan would never have been passed by the Neanderthal Wing of Congress.

CLAUDE MORTER Stevens Point, Wis.

Sir:

. . . With all (but one) of the forecasters lying writhing around, I nonetheless unhesitatingly predict that your readers will be astonished again if your 1948 Man of the Year isn't President Truman.

CLARENCE K. STREIT Washington, D.C.

Sir:

The Man of the Year in 1948 is a guy named Joe . . .

Joe Communist is the man who says "no" and walks out of United Nations meetings. He is the Guerrilla in Greece and the General Striker in Italy. He closes coal mines in France and ... is bringing about the economic creeping paralysis of Berlin's Western zones even while the dramatic airlift is in progress . . .

I nominate for the Man of the Year, the guiding spirit and planner behind the motivations and machinations of Joe Communist, one Joseph Stalin of the U.S.S.R.

BERNARD K. FRANK Portland, Ore.

Sir:

. . . THE MAN OF THE YEAR IS UNDOUBTEDLY, UNQUESTIONABLY AND INDISPUTABLY HARRY S. TRUMAN.

THEODORE R. SAKER Warren, Ohio

The Facts of Life

Sir:

TIME, NOV. 8, SAYS THAT "ROSS . . . NEVER REALLY BELIEVED THAT HIS BOSS HAD A CHANCE OF ELECTION." THIS STATEMENT IS ABSOLUTELY FALSE . , . TIME ALSO PERSISTS IN CALLING ME; "OLD CHARLIE ROSS." IT HAPPENS THAT I WILL BE 63 YEARS OLD IN A FEW DAYS. SO WHAT? ANYWAY, I AM NOT "TIRED." COME DOWN TO WASHINGTON AND LEARN THE FACTS OF LIFE.

CHARLES G. Ross

Secretary to the President The White House Washington, D.C.

P: TIME readily acknowledges that it is in no position to argue the facts of life with an inhabitant of the White House.--ED.

Validity Ltd.

Sir:

Your one flat statement of Msgr. Sheen's, that analysis was based on "materialism, infantilism, hedonism and eroticism" [TIME, Oct. 25], was unjust and unfair. In his address delivered Feb. 15, 1948, entitled "Psychoanalysis and Confession," he said: "Psychiatry is a valid medical science absolutely necessary for the curing of mental diseases. Psychoanalysis is a valid method of bringing some mental disorders to the level of consciousness, and it has been known for centuries. Both the science of psychiatry and the method of psychoanalysis are outside our province, for it is not the business of a spiritual director to treat mental diseases. We limit ourselves exclusively [in rejecting Freudian sex-psychology] to those who have ventured out of their domain to deny God, morality, conscience and guilt, and in a particular way to affirm that psychoanalysis is a substitute for confession."

So let's keep the record straight and say that a certain kind of analysis is based on materialism, infantilism, hedonism and eroticism.

L. JOSEPH CONNORS

Elmhurst, N.Y.

P: TIME read the record too fast, and thanks Reader Connors for setting it straight.--ED.

The Heart of the Problem

Sir:

Your brilliant reporting of the plight of the British middle class [TIME, Nov. 1] goes to the very heart of Britain's great social problem.

A Gallup poll earlier this year showed [that] over 50% of the young middle-class people would like to leave the country. My wife and I, who came to live in the States one year ago, found it impossible to maintain old standards [in England] . . . We totaled $45 weekly between us, of which $20 went in apartment rent and income tax. We dipped steadily into savings. As a young ex-service couple we were unwilling to struggle for an indefinite time without hope of family or home of our own. Emigration was our best course.

JOHN N. ROGERS Portland, Ore.

Eye Popper

Sir:

We are writing on behalf of ourselves and each of the seven executives of the Washington Times-Herald to whom the late Mrs. Eleanor Patterson bequeathed the newspaper. The stories which appeared in the Sept. 27 and Oct. 4 issues under the headings "The Disinherited" and "Thickening Plot" contain statements which are untrue. We refer particularly to those portions of the stories which, either expressly or by necessary implication, infer that Charles B. Porter, formerly treasurer of the Times-Herald, was murdered and charged one or more or all of us with having offered a $50,000 bribe to Mr. Porter if he would support a phony $500,000 claim against Mrs. Patterson's estate and having threatened Mr. Porter.

WILLIAM C. SHELTON

General Manager

FRANK C. WALDROP

Editor-in-Chief

Washington, D.C.

P: After reviewing the facts, TIME agrees that its account was unfair to Readers Shelton, Waldrop & friends, regrets that it reported this "eye-popping tale."--ED.

Dead End

Sir:

While TIME'S ho-hum reviewer of MGM's The Three Musketeers was enjoying the Technicolor "enough to deserve a special mention" [TIME, Nov. 1], he might have stolen a glance at the plot.

"In the end," he writes, "D'Artagnan gives up skewering his enemies to settle down in the country with a seamstress at the court (June Allyson)". . .

"In the end" Miss Allyson has been dead for reels, and Mr. Kelly (D'Artagnan) accepts Richelieu's invitation to stay on in Paris, presumably for further skewering.

JOHN T. KELLEY Chicago, 111.

P: A skewering to TIME'S Cinema Editor for violating the first rule of picture previewing: Keep Awake.--ED.

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