Exciting Reading

Sir:

. . . Recently I went to the U.S. for medical treatment. It was there that I first made my acquaintance with your excellent magazine. While I was there in hospital I read it regularly every week, and when I left, I made it a point to subscribe to your International Edition so that I could enjoy TIME here in India too . . .

As a matter of fact, I think that with the world going at the rate it is today, TIME makes more exciting reading than a detective story or a western.

However ... it seems to me that India, although it is one of the most potentially powerful, vastest and fastest moving countries in the world, does not get nearly enough coverage in your magazine . . .

KARANSINGH Prince of Kashmir Jammu-Tawi, India

Qualifying Clause

Sir:

You say: "Not all of this shakeout in employment was caused by a cut in production; nor was it necessarily damaging to the economy. The years of manpower shortages had brought into the labor force inefficient marginal workers (older people, housewives, etc.) who would not normally have been there. They were being weeded out along with the sluggards" [TIME, May 16].

. . . Not only TIME [it appears] but the vast majority of our citizenry have little or no knowledge of the socalled "seniority clause" that infests almost every union contract . . . The "seniority clause" requires that the last to be hired must be the first fired; and the last hired includes some mighty fine young men, while the old "sluggards" remain to foment trouble, harass management and keep up costs . . .

WALTER E. IRVING

Long Island City, N.Y.

Education for Life

Sir:

Upon reading Bernard Iddings Bell's rather brutal condemnation of the educational shortcomings in the American Common Man [TIME, April 25], I was seized with the thought that here is a situation for which a remedy must be found . . .

It is obvious that all children are not imbued with the same desire to learn, nor are they equipped with equally potential learning capacities. Would it not be feasible to alter the radius of the learning circle by attempting to inject in all of them the existent truths of life, rather than forcing facts . . . upon them? . . .

MELVIN C. WULF Lowell, Mass.

Sir:

. . . Bernard Iddings Bell . . . [is] entirely right in his arguments, but where does his educational program get me?

I know that when I start college in 1950 I shall have to specialize. I asked myself many times if I shouldn't just become a "Nature Boy" and study life, man, behavior patterns and such, but I can't feed or keep a family on culture...

This thing goes far beyond American educational systems. America is a land of specialists today; woe be to the intellectual.

EUGENE H. WURMSER Yokosuka, Japan

Sir:

Your review of Crisis in Education brought such definite opinions from my junior class, that I suggested a few letters to the editor [three herewith] . . .

MARGARET NEWELL

Enumclaw, Wash.

Sir:

... I am glad to see that someone has got the nerve to stand up and say our educational system has degenerated. The fault is that of both teachers and pupils . . .

JIM KIME

Enumclaw, Wash.

Sir:

... I do agree with Dr. Bell that the schools have "geared our standards to mediocrity . . ."

MICKEY REISE Enumclaw, Wash.

Sir:

. . . Today's world is one of specialists and technicians ... I think we should keep our emphasis on vocational training, and fill in with the arts, family relations, history, etc. where possible.

TOM BARRIE

Enumclaw, Washington

Refreshing Treatment

Sir:

It is quite apparent from the tone of "Fundamental Fundamentalist" [TIME, May 16] that in your eyes it has now become a crime to belong to a "splinter sect." . . . Were not Luther, Calvin, Huss, yes, Jesus Christ Himself, members of "splinter sects?"

I am proud not to be identified with this type of negative fundamentalism. But I cannot consistently condemn Mr. Mclntire for breaking away from a denomination which he evidently conscientiously believes he cannot support . . .

TIME is to be congratulated on its consistent campaign against the Communist Party . . . This is a service to democracy. Now, how about a campaign against totalitarian religious groups who are equally determined to overthrow our form of government and are much more likely to succeed? . . .

L. BROWN

New York City

Sir:

After months of reading in your Religion column about the Federal Council of Churches of Christ in America, it was a very refreshing surprise to read a treatment of one of its opponents, the Rev. Carl Mclntire . . .

HOMER G. BENTON

Lindley, N.Y.

Entertaining Exaltation

Sir:

Your description of the art of Milton Berle [TIME, May 16] reminded me of the chapter on comedians in Alain Rene'e Lesage's Gil Bias, in which the author more than two centuries ago portrays the actor Baron who belonged to Molieere's troup. He writes: "He quit the theater because of a whim, and has since regretted it, because of his common sense. He knows by heart a limitless number of good stories, which he has told so many times as if they were his own invention, that he has come to believe they really are . . ."

I have never heard or seen Milton Berle . . . but I was glad to meet in your pages one who appears to be a good scout and a grand fellow, if not a great artist.

HARRY KURZ

Professor of Romance Languages Queens College Flushing, N.Y.

Sir:

TIME wrote a brilliant . . . story on Milton Berle-- illuminating one aspect of a diseased civilization on its road to imbecility. The exaltation of the entertainer and clown is a significant indication of the aimlessness, emptiness and fundamental despair of Modern Man . . .

FREDERICK COLORADO

Monmouth College Monmouth, Ill.

Sir:

First came the Rivera cover, then Dennis, and now Berle . . . Is no respite to be offered for the pain being inflicted upon us hapless fanciers of the pinup girls which render a magazine cover so pleasant to behold?

Surely there must be some worthy successors to Betty Grable and Jean Simmons, two lovelies who graced your cover . . .

W. R. TAYLOR JR.

Lincoln, Neb.

P: Let Reader Taylor keep his roving eye peeled; it won't be long now. -- ED.

The Basis of Morality

Sir:

What are these "psychological laws of human behavior" [TIME, April 11 et seq.] upon which Professor Stace et al. claim morality can be based? Why cannot these laws be altered by the individual to suit himself, if they themselves are not grounded in a deeper reality? If charity has no reality except as a pragmatic mode of behavior, an individual could logically devise his own morality when his good appears to conflict with society's good. It then becomes a matter of who has the best opportunity and the most power . . .

JOHN S. SIEGER New York City

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