Farewell to Mink & All That

Sir: Your Feb. 16 story on Attorney General Brownell was like a deep breath of fresh air, on emerging from a fetid basement. As I know one of the new Cabinet members quite well, I asked if I might put a case of . . . bourbon in his suite . . . for the inauguration, for the refreshment of his guests. The offer was declined very graciously and very courteously. Shades of the Deepfreeze and mink era! . . .

LEON BRIN New York City

Sunrise on the Gold Coast

Sir: I am a subject of the Kingdom of Ashanti, the Gold Coast, British West Africa. Your Feb. 9 article vividly describes the home I left some 8,000 miles away in order to study in American universities . . . It is my fond hope to return to my homeland and work towards improving the conditions of my people . . .

Thank you for your frank . . . report on the Gold Coast, and thank you, also, for your excellent cover portrait of Kwame Nkrumah. He is our Man of the Year . . .

JOHN ALEXANDER ARTHUR (Family name: Kofi Amanfi-Atta) University of Notre Dame Notre Dame, Ind.

Sir: . . . Your article . . . is scornful in its tone, contemptuous in its language, and generally derisive in its intention . . .

M. OYAWOYE Pullman, Wash.

Sir: Your informative presentation of Africa . . . enlightens many of us. We in America need the light . . . not only Kwame Nkrumah but scores of other students like him . . . have looked to the U.S. as a great land of democratic freedom . . . But in democratic America they have encountered discrimination often enough to know that they were wrong. They are hurt and disillusioned . . .

HENRIETTA VAN NOY Washington, D.C.

Sir: Your coverage is marvelous, but I . . . think we have heard enough of savagery, cannibalism, illiteracy, paganism, etc., in Africa. We would like to see Africa and its peoples presented to the world a bit more objectively . . . As an Ibo, I object particularly to the statement "ex-cannibal Ibos" . . . It would be most unfair if I went home and told my people that the U.S. was a land of Oregon cavemen, G-men, swindlers, rich Communists and the like . . .

CHUKA NWANZE University of Manitoba Winnipeg, Canada

Sir: . . . The most amicable and the first unbiased article ever to appear in your magazine on Africa's current political and social problems . . . Because of such rapid progress that is being made toward self-government by the Gold Coast . . . unification of the self-governing countries, of which the visit of Prime Minister Nkrumah to Liberia is an impetus, will result in the liberation of the entire continent--regardless of Malan's unscrupulous racial laws . . .

P. CLARENCE PARKER JR. of Monrovia, Liberia Ohio University Athens, Ohio

Sir: . . . After perusing your very fine set of pictures . . . we wondered whether U.S. Ambassador Edward R. Dudley is [a] Negro?

GORDON DONNELLY Hamilton, Ont., Canada

P:Yes, he is. Edward R. Dudley was appointed by President Truman in 1948, succeeds two others of his race in the Liberian post. Ambassador Dudley went to public schools in Roanoke, Va., graduated in science from the Johnson C. Smith University (N.C.) and in law from Brooklyn's St. John's University.--ED.

Madame Ambassador

Sir: Clare Boothe Luce as the President's Ambassador in Rome or its environs is as much against the standard of our civic morality as was C. E. Wilson in the Cabinet . . . No person can serve two masters . . . As a Catholic, Mrs. Luce must direct her efforts to establishing the right of freedom for the Catholic church alone . . . The morality supported by authoritarian religions, which is permeated with expediency and to which members must submit, is incompatible with the superior and secular morality inherent in and established by our Constitution.

KARL HAARTZ Andover, Mass.

Sir: . . . Mrs. Luce is an unusual woman, but she just hasn't the stature for this important post, which should have gone to a man . . . There's no religious bigotry here, for I too am a Catholic.

THOMAS C. MORAN Pittsburgh

Sir: As a non-Catholic, I wish to applaud Ike's choice of Clare Boothe Luce for the very important post . . .

F. WM. FREEZE Denver

Sir: . . . Has it occurred to anyone that objections might also be raised to the appointment of Secretary of Agriculture Benson? . . . Benson holds a position in the Mormon Church comparable to that of a cardinal in the Roman Catholic Church. Why no howls about that?

DONNA ROBINSON Otego, N.Y.

Sir: As a woman writer born in Montmartre but now living in London, may I record the immense happiness that fills me at the appointment of Mrs. Luce? . . . Women who, like myself, are feminine rather than feminist, read into it a possible changing structure of society . . .

There is great inspiration in the thought that it is to an American woman that so many women in Europe, especially in the world of letters, look with affection and hope.

MRS. ROBERT HENREY London, England

New Sports Car

Sir: In the Feb. 2 issue of TIME a photograph appeared of the "Woodill Wildfire," a new sports car. The caption states: "The car will be stocked by Willys dealers some time in April. Cost: $3,263. For an extra $350, the engine will be souped up to 135 h.p., increasing top speed to 125 m.p.h."

Willys-Overland Motors, Inc. has made no arrangements with Mr. B. R. Woodill, of Downey, Calif., the builder, regarding this automobile, and we have made no agreements with Mr. Woodill that it will be marketed through Willys dealers. The "Wildfire" has been misrepresented in numerous instances as the product of Willys-Overland Motors, Inc. While this racy sports model is, in fact, built on a Willys chassis, and is powered by a Willys engine, the truth is that Willys-Overland is in no way the car's sponsor . . .

GERRY E. LYONS Vice President, Sales Willys-Overland Motors, Inc. Toledo, Ohio

Breakfast at the White House

Sir: Correspondent Allie Knobel should stop worrying about the "poor type of breakfast" the Eisenhowers eat [TIME, Feb. 16] and consider, rather, a possible connection between this fact and the rather nice figures both Eisenhowers have, considering their ages, and the amount of energy they appear to have.

A. H. PERON Chicago

What Comes Naturally (Cont'd)

Sir: . . . For hundreds of years, woman reminded her man of his guilt and his debt to her. Nothing he was able to do could possibly equal her sacrifice in undergoing the agony of childbirth. Then came scientists and doctors, working their ears off trying to find some way in which to relieve her of "the dread pangs of childbirth"--and they found it. Does woman appreciate it? No. She now accuses obstetricians [TIME Letters, Feb. 9] of officiously taking over childbirth to their own glory. Ah, well. Unhealthy, maladjusted drab that I am, I bless the nosy obstetricians, the scientists and all the shameful drugs which have made childbirth interesting rather than harrowing . . . I consider modern confinement a greater boon than the mechanical dishwasher.

MRS. RICHARD C. WATTS Olympia, Wash.

Sir: . . . After reading the letters of Mrs. James Bowes et al, and their views on natural childbirth, I felt a curious mixture of anger and nausea . . . [They] seem to feel that it is to their credit that they experienced pain . . . Let's cut out the "heroics," girls . . .

JUDY STOCKLER San Antonio, Texas

Sir: . . . My real complaint with the article by Drs. Mandy & Co. is that it makes it so much more difficult for girls like me who prefer to have their babies without drugs (or with a minimum of drugs) . . . With both of my babies I had a terrific battle, not with Mother Nature, but with doctors and hospitals. I did all the studying and exercising oh my own, with the encouragement of my husband, and with all possible discouragement from my doctors, who laughed at me . . . In both cases I was almost frightened to death by the nurses, who were rude and bullied me like a two-year-old, and I shudder to think what it must be like for a girl who is alone and already frightened enough to begin with . . .

VIRGINIA MCFARLAND Houston, Texas

Sir: We have been the first to acknowledge the value of Grantley Dick Read's contribution. What we have condemned was not natural childbirth or Dr. Read, but those who would attempt to regiment a nation of women into a technique suitable to the needs of only a portion of them . . .

ARTHUR J. MANDY, M.D. Baltimore, Md.

Sir: Twenty-four hours of labor pains to Drs. Mandy, Mandy, Farkas and Scher! After which I am sure they would give serious consideration to natural childbirth, which they obviously have not done . . .

ELIZABETH PATTON Woodbine, Md.

Sir: To those hardy women who reveled in the pangs of childbirth I would like to say: You can have a tooth pulled without novocain, but who wants to?

MARGARET CUSHENBERY Austin, Texas

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