Bottleneck to Peace
Sir:
Like so many people, I have been romantic and dreamy-eyed about the Russian problem. It seemed only fair to give Stalin a break; to say that he really was a friendly fellow, that he honestly wanted peace. World developments have proved me to be wrong, but still I dreamed of a benign and misunderstood Stalin.
Your excellent resume of the "Historicus" article [TIME, Dec. 27] has cleared my hazy and confused brain. It has explained Stalin in such clear and concise terms that even a busy housewife like myself should know now where to place the blame for the bottleneck to real peace.
BARBARA KLEMKA
Wenham, Mass.
Crisis in American Letters
Sir:
I didn't know I had been hired and fired by Theatre Arts until I read about it in TIME [Jan. 3]. What else has been happening to me lately that I ought to know about?
WILLIAM SAROYAN
New York City
P:TIME regrets that it is fresh out of Saroyan news. All that the present editor [Charles MacArthur] of Theatre Arts knows about this crisis in American letters is that it occurred while he was in Europe and that he remains as ever Mr. Saroyan's most faithful fan. --ED.
Bops, Kazoos, Blinkers & Toothpaste
Sir:
It was with great interest that I read the article on Bebop [TIME, Dec. 20] . . .
One would think that your music critic would applaud this new and inventive type of jazz, after being subjected to the parade of bleating crooners and corny dance bands that have assaulted our ears in the past few years. In spite of the faddists and the lunatic fringe of juveniles who are always attracted to radical musical ideas, progressive jazz has gathered an ever-increasing coterie of followers who understand and enjoy it ...
EDWARD J. DOYLE
New York City
Sir:
. . . Admittedly, there is a lot of awful stuff being played under the guise of bop, but there is plenty of clean, precise, exciting jazz being played by the better hoppers. Most of the popular bands which play well-arranged dance music (Claude Thornhill, Les Brown, Tex Beneke, etc.) are using bop figures in most of their arrangements.
Saying Sarah Vaughan has a style like a kazoo is like comparing Ellington to the Harmonicats. Take off those two-beat blinkers.
PETER G. BEHR
Stanford University, Calif.
Sir:
Ouch! Toothpaste-smooth voice? I didn't think there were any adjectives to describe that fine Sarah Vaughan. You're so right!
MITZI BECK
La Mesa, Calif.
Insufficient Evidence (Cont'd)
Sir:
Re your story on Bill Button [TIME, Dec. 20]: I would like to tell the [full] story of this gallant gentleman.
One hot day in July 1943, Bill Hutton, walking past "Ginger" Watson [in] Shanghai's Haiphong Road Camp for political prisoners, laughingly offered to buy a pencil which Ginger had in his hand, bargaining as he moved away.
A guard, overhearing this, arrested Ginger and . . . dragged him to the Japanese Gendarmerie Office. There, he accused Ginger of trying to bribe him, and Bill of being an accomplice. However, he had not got Bill, so a parade was held and he identified the wrong man--Dick Ekin . . .
The next day, Dick and Ginger were told that they were going to be taken out of the camp for investigation. This usually meant torture, and Bill Hutton, who by then had time to understand what had happened, went to the Japanese Lieut. Honda, and took Dick Ekin's place.
He left the camp healthy and cheerful. He returned some ten days later, insane, cut, burnt and bruised . . . He died insane, though Colonel Odura, the commandant of the camp . . . got his own Japanese doctor to try to save his life . . .
MILES M. ACHESON
Ganges, British Columbia
Rapid Caption
Sir:
In your Jan. 3 issue . . . you show a picture of President Truman making a speech "in Detroit."
Grand Rapids is a very fast-growing city, but we cannot quite compare it to Detroit at this time, and your picture is definitely a photograph of Campau Square in this city . . .
C. H. ATTWOOD Grand Rapids, Mich.
P:Yes, definitely.--ED.
Mississippi Story
Sir:
. . . The imprisonment of Veteran Davis Knight in Mississippi for intermarriage, following a revengeful relative's disclosure that Knight's great-grandmother was a Negro [TIME, Dec. 27], is a most flagrant violation of democratic spirit. It is a beautiful story for Russian distribution in Europe and Asia . . .
JAMES M. STEWART, M.D.
WILLIAM G. WILT JR., M.D.
The University of Rochester
School of Medicine and Dentistry
Rochester, N. Y.
Sir:
... A disgrace in the eyes of the civilized world.
LEO V. LEVESQUE
Fort Kent Mills, Me.
Pincers of Technology
Sir:
With due respect to all mental giants, I cannot help thinking after reading of Cyberneticist Wiener [TIME, Dec. 27] that we "of mediocre attainments or less" can still provide an insight to the value of the human brain which is fearfully lacking in Professor Wiener's cold analysis.
A tremendous spiritual capacity persists in the simplest of minds, despite the almost overwhelming inhibition of the modern materialistic civilization. It is dangerously past the time when mental giants should use all their ingenuity and resources to develop that capacity, and leave for a later date the development of a conscienceless mechanical brain.
WARREN A. BAKER
Tucson, Ariz.
Sir:
... I make my living writing science-fiction . . . and characters like Wiener are lousing up the racket.
Nuclear fission used to be a subject upon which a writer could simply crank up and let loose, but no longer . . . Space flight is still good for a yarn, but already one university offers a course in theoretical astrogation *. . .
Yes, the pincers of technology squeeze inexorably upon the poor science-fiction writer ...
ERIK FENNEL
Waialua, Hawaii
Pinerolo Secret
Sir:
... As an ex-officer of the glorious Italian Cavalry, I've something to say about your article, "Mexico's Five Horsemen" [TIME, Nov. 15].
Mexicans are very clever horsemen, and we saw them last spring in Rome and in the Olympics -- the best cavalrymen in the world, perhaps, by now. But "the big secret of Mexican riding" isn't a Mexican secret at all: it is an Italian one.
Italians (at the Italian School of Cavalry in Pinerolo) first thought that a horse's movements must be controlled almost entirely through the rider's legs, and not through his hands. Federico Caprilli, an Italian officer of cavalry, was, in the 19th Century, the founder of a new system of riding called equitazione naturale, of which the secret mentioned above is a canon . . .
AURELIO DOZIO Milan, Italy
*Space navigation. TIME (Oct. 21, 1946) reported one such course at the University of California.
This file is automatically generated by a robot program, so reader's discretion is required.