Dulles & the Treaty

Sir:

Those who firmly believe in the Christian approach to perplexing foreign and domestic problems are deeply indebted to TIME, Aug. 13 for the assuring, enlightening article about John Foster Dulles.

Could the atheists, the revengeful, the cynics or the skeptics begin to devise a more practical and rational peace treaty?

EDGAR H. HENDLER

Elmira, N.Y.

Sir:

. . . I hope I am one of the first to recognize the fact that Mr. John Foster Dulles would be the presidential choice of 1952--by both Republicans and Democrats--should the Republican Party have the good sense to nominate him.

NORMA KING

Tucson, Ariz.

Sir:

. . . It is a real contribution to the cause of a just and durable peace. For Mr. Dulles, the Japanese Peace Treaty is the height of a brilliant career, marked by a keen intellect and a deep sense of real moral and spiritual values. His brilliance, his honesty and his understanding of humanity mark him as a giant among a host of midgets in our government.

(REV.) CHARLES E. HURST Clyde, Ohio

With Mother Bloor in The Jungle

Sir:

... It is not true that Ella Reeve Bloor "helped Upton Sinclair investigate the horrors of Chicago's stockyards, which he dramatized in his novel The Jungle [TiME, Aug. 20]." My investigating was done in the autumn of 1904, and E.R.B. had nothing to do with it.

In the spring of 1906, when President Theodore Roosevelt asked me to go out with his investigating commission, I sent E.R.B. and her husband, paying their expenses, to help the commission meet the workers. A year later, when the New York Herald asked me to go and make another investigation, I again suggested E.R.B., who went with a Herald reporter, and the report they brought in was suppressed by James Gordon Bennett, owner of the Herald . . .

UPTON SINCLAIR

Monrovia, Calif.

God & Scientists

Sir:

Most scientists, reiterates TIME, Aug. 13, believe in God. It would be interesting to know if these learned men could say, as did the eunuch baptized by Philip: "I believe that Jesus Christ is the Son of God." If they can say this, I argue, then this country is on the verge of the greatest spiritual awakening in history. If they cannot, we are plunged once more into a sterile pantheism, Fatherless and cold.

LEWIS WILLIAMS

Philadelphia

Sir:

Scientists who believe in God are simply exposing dark, untidy corners of their minds. Those who say they cannot accept chaos probably mean they cannot accept the ignorance which they humbly offer as a promise for their belief . . .

A scientist, of all persons, should be able to stop where knowledge stops, namely with Nature, and be bold enough to confess and to live with the great gulf of the unknown which lies beyond . . .

JOHN P. CAMP

Lake City, Fla.

Sir:.

. . . The trouble with such articles and others like it is the support they lend to a belief that scientists are beating a retreat to some more or less anthropomorphic god, Catholic, Protestant, Hebrew, etc., and it just ain't so.

R. S. TOMAN Chicago

Hearst Obit

Sir:

As a daughter of Morrill Goddard, mentioned in your Aug. 20 obituary of W. R. Hearst as an employee of his, I wish to commend your fair and objective description of Mr. Hearst.

Unfortunately the New York newspapers seemed to feel that they should glorify Hearst's accomplishments at the expense of his serious failings. It is important that a man of this caliber should not become an American legend. You have helped to keep the record straight.

ROWENA GODDARD THACHER

New York City

Sir:

As a onetime Hearst reporter let me thank you for your honest, factual and unbiased review of the career of the late and ineluctably great publisher . . .

TOM LENNON Santa Monica, Calif.

Sir:

In closing "The King Is Dead" you said, "At long last contentious, vigorous William Randolph Hearst found tranquillity."

If you have a man on your staff who is sure that tranquillity is the word for Mr. Hearst's state of mind now, he should be acclaimed a theologian . . .

(REV.) HENRY T. MILLER Farmland, Ind.

On the Hook

Sir:

Your Aug. 13 story about the German crane appropriated by the British, then sold to the French, only to be sunk in transit, inspires several cynical conclusions: 1) the French probably paid the British for this German crane with U.S. E.C.A. dollars; 2) the French will receive a new crane from the E.C.A. bottomless sea to replace the one sunk in the Kattegat; 3) the Germans, whose crane was requisitioned by the British, will also receive a new replacement crane from the E.C.A.

The only group who will lose anything on the deal will be the U.S. taxpayer, whose largess knows no depths and no boundaries--and who will never miss the price of a crane, or two, or three.

SIGMOND MOROH Johnstown, Pa.

From One and Holy

Sir:

In the Aug. 20 issue of TIME you quoted at some length from an article by Karl Adam in the Aug. 10 Commonweal. You omitted to mention that this article was one chapter of a book by Karl Adam (One and Holy; $2) which we are publishing this month.

PATRICIA MAC GILL Sheed & Ward, Inc. New York City

Reassurance

Sir:

I have been greatly distressed by a photograph in your Aug. 6 issue entitled "Winner Poling & Friends" over the caption, "Liquor dealers were reassured," in which my picture appeared.

You can readily imagine my acute embarrassment by the fact that I am a lifetime worker in the field of temperance and alcohol control, and interested in the National Foundation for Aid to the Alcoholic, and the wonderful work of the Pennsylvania Temperance League . . .

Inasmuch as I am a member of the Boy Scouts of America (commissioner), I have been deluged with letters and my telephone has been made an alarm clock of, asking me my position in the matter. I must ask that you give me a retraction in your magazine ... so that temperate people throughout the country may be reassured of my stand . . .

EDWARD J. LA VALLIN Philadelphia

P:TIME regrets any embarrassment caused Reader La Vallin who, as the picture showed, was one of some 20 congratulating friends of mayoral nominee, the Rev. Dr. Daniel Poling. TIME'S caption referred to an incident in the campaign, not to the individuals in the picture.--ED.

Pass the Culture

Sir:

Your Aug. 13 article on the book clubs is deplorable. It typifies the snobbishness of a literary clique that wants to keep its claim to superiority. [The critic] resents the fact that books are popular, that they are written for anyone who can read. Just let someone outside the proper circle read a book, and the critic gives him a good, swift kick. Let the presumptuous offender be a woman . . . and he puts her in her place and calls her a "little woman." Contrary to your opinion, the book clubs show a healthy trend . . .

Culture is a free, living, vital thing and not a pet kept by literary critics.

L. WILLISTER Woodstown, NJ.

Sir:

Your remarks on the troubles of the publishers and book clubs make it obvious that the time is ripe to give literature back to the authors. Businessmen who must devote their organizations to publishing books on flying saucers, colliding worlds, divining rods, dcg books and historical whores for the edification of 35-year-old women can hardly be expected to advance American literature . . .

The only solution is to have university presses or noncommercial organizations set up a "Preliminary Edition Press," and publish all mss. (except illiterate or obscene ones) cheaply by electric typewriter and offset, and sell paperbound copies at cost. The commercial publishers can then pick out the ones that will make money and publish them conventionally, but the public will at least have had an opportunity to read the work of new writers.

W. K.UPPER Beverly Hills, Calif.

The West Point Dismissals

Sir:

The recent public agitation regarding the cheating cadets at West Point seems to me to overlook the possibility that the incident is being judged by inappropriate standards. Is it not of the essence of competent military training to learn how to circumvent, cheat, and outwit the enemy? . . . Should not this sort of thing at West Point be regarded rather as unsuccessful laboratory work, and since the cadets showed defective technique (they got caught), should they not simply be flunked in whatever course or courses deal with techniques of circumventing the enemy ?

GEORGE A. LUNDBERG Seattle

Sir:

Many of the outraged admit that similar disclosures at any other school would not be nearly so shocking or unexpected. Except for the West Point myth, why should it be supposed that young men choosing the Army as their profession are inherently more honest than those who choose science, law, education, agriculture, or art?

JOSEPH H. LEDERER New York City

Sir:

. . . It is the nation en masse that is disgraced by what has happened at West Point. Men just don't apply there like any other college. They are appointed, which supposedly means they have to be the cream of American youth. It is about time that every American should realize that the very materialism we have been fostering contains in its grasp the seeds for our own degeneration. Materialism, not Communism, is our deadly enemy . . .

HERBERT OSBER

West Hartford, Conn.

Up from the Ashes

Sir:

Congratulations from a German reader for TIME Correspondent Enno Robbing's sober and precise Aug. 6 report "Germany: Up from the Ashes." However, let us not underestimate the influence of the "noisy nationalists," who might jeopardize Germany's newly developed good relations with other countries.

DIANA VON BUGGENHAGEN

Wiesbaden, Germany

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