1950 Artist

Dear Sir:

... I happen to have been a reader and subscriber to TIME since Vol. 1, No. 1, and r March 27 story on Artist Henry Koerner is the most interesting article I have ead in it ...

JOHN S. VAN GILDER

New York City sir: ... I was surprised and disgusted to find those sordid paintings . . .

MRS. S. F. SIMPSON

Monrovia, Calif.

Sir:

... It was magnificent. Here is a 1950 artist who does not incite me to murder! . . .

IRENE POLAN Mullins, S.C.

Sir:

I think I know what Henry Koerner's barber-shop picture means: it is what happened to the Jews in Germany. The rabbi should never be in the barber shop at all. He sits pale, immobilized, and with eyes fixed on the barber, who is "fiddling while the Jews burn"--only it is a funeral dirge. The barber's costume is like a butcher's. Soon the rabbi will be in the position of the customer in the other chair, horizontal . . .

Why does not the rabbi run? He cannot move; the chained Beast in the corner has entangled him. The mother under the drier, seen in the mirror, is already being burned . . .

Why does Koerner say that the barber might be himself . . . ? He feels guilty of the death of his parents--he alone escaped . . . The tiles, etc. represent German efficiency and attention to detail. I have not counted them, but they represent six million murdered Jews. They are clean, like in a butcher shop . . .

BETTY K. SACHS

Baltimore, Md.

Legalized Larceny

Sir:

In your March 27 issue you show a photograph of a bisected Indonesian five-guilder note, and call it "an ingeniously simple new method . . . for letting the air out of ... currency . . ."

This very same form of legalized larceny was perpetrated in Greece in April 1922. I was an accountant in Athens at the time. It may interest Indonesian Finance Minister Sjafrud-din Prawiranegara to know that Greek Finance Minister Protopapadakes, who put this smart idea across, was effectively cut in half by an ingeniously simple machine gun, along with the rest of the Greek cabinet, some six months later . . .

FRED C. ELLS

Islamorada, Fla.

Tough Bird, Still

Sir:

Two hours before leaving Tucson for a visit to Tombstone, Arizona's hell-roaring town of the early 1880s ... I read in TIME of April 3 that I was dead. ("Among the bylines Weyer has snared: Lowell Thomas, Vilhjalmur Stefansson, Donald Culross Peattie, Oliver La Farge, the late Roy Chapman Andrews and Hendrik Willem van Loon.") It was an interesting discovery, but one to which I am not unaccustomed . . .

This is the third time that my demise has been reported in the public prints. For the benefit of those who may not rejoice that I have departed on the last Great Expedition, I repeat my words as reported in TIME two years ago: "I'm a tough old bird. The next time, it will be a rumor too."

ROY CHAPMAN ANDREWS Tucson, Ariz.

P:TIME'S thanks to Explorer Andrews (66) for a lively correction of a morbid mistake.--ED.

Each for They

Sir:

If Economist Sumner Slichter really did say that our economy will continue to be "run, in the main, by tens of millions of consumers, each buying what they prefer" [TIME, March 27], he put a shrewd and sly finger on what makes America's wheels go round. The rise & fall of bubble gum, miniature golf, the New Look and the yoyo, among a thousand other glories of the passing hour, can be traced to the eagerness of the sheeplike each to emulate the mystical, infallible they . . .

JACK KILPATRICK

Richmond, Va.

Still, Small Voice

Sir:

... Your cover story on Atlantic Union's Clarence Streit [TIME, March 27] bids fair to do more for the preservation and growth of human freedoms than any event within my memory. May God grant that your readers, by the thousands, will hearken to this "still, small voice Crying in the wilderness" . . .

G. W. MURDOCK

Meriden, Conn.

Sir:

I read with great interest your story on Clarence Streit--and thought it a most creditable job of exposition.

I was, however, struck by your repeated use of the words that Streit's voice was a 'voice in the wilderness." I wouldn't want to argue with TIME'S editors about what constitutes a wilderness, but I would like to point out these facts:

In 1936 only 30% of our people thought we should join some future "League of Nations."

In 1941 only 34% of our people thought we should participate in international affairs in any one of three ways: 1) take a lead in organizing world peace but form no actual ties" with any country; 2) form a union of democracies, giving each member votes in proportion to its population; or 3) form a union of democracies but only with North and South American participants.

In 1945, however, 75% of the people thought we should take an active part in some sort of an international organization.

By 1948, 51% of our people thought we should do everything possible to make the U.N. work, and 24% thought we should start to organize, an actual world government in which we would become a member state . . .

Maybe Clarence Streit was really a voice in the wilderness in 1936 . . . but in the meantime, an awful lot of people have heard his voice and liked what it said.

ELMO ROPER New York City

Sir:

. . . You say: "Atlantic Union was in some ways the most practical . . . The decision lay solely with the seven democracies."

Of what "practical" use would it be to the U.S. if seven states (let's say, for the sake of argument, seven Northern states) decided to get together? Can one possibly approach the problem of world organization without considering all men? I think not--and so do the other proponents of United World Federalism.

TRACY SAMUELS New York City

Sir:

. . . Atlantic Union alone offers some assurance that a supranational government would not degenerate into a supranational dictatorship . . .

MARIEANNE GREENOUGH New York City

Sir:

. . . What are we waiting for?

GEORGE HOPKINS

Eugene, Ore.

Familiar Phrases

Sir:

In reading the excellent and interesting article on T. S. Eliot [TIME, March 6], I came across a number of lines and phrases that seemed familiar. By the time I finished the article, I had the distinct impression that TIME had made rather extensive use of our recently published book T. S. Eliot: A Symposium. This is a Festschrift gathered together on the occasion of Mr. Eliot's 60th birthday by Richard March and Tambi-muttu . . .

[For instance], the incident of the firecrackers exploded at a board meeting of Faber & Faber is fully described on pages 69-70 of the book.

It is, of course, quite possible that this is a coincidence, but if it isn't, and if your writers did use our book, I am rather surprised that no mention was made of the fact . . .

HENRY REGNERY

Henry Regnery Co., Publishers Chicago, Ill.

P:The Symposium was indeed one of the hundreds of sources, many of them duplicative, for TIME'S cover story on T. S. Eliot.--ED.

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