What You Can Get from a Dollar
Sir:
Re Adlai Stevenson's remarks carried in TIME, Feb. 23: Mr. Stevenson may have been amusing, but he was not very logical when he charged our Republican Administration with "dollar and bully-boy diplomacy." The Democratic Administration sent $38 billion abroad after World War II before being voted out of office. If this was not dollar diplomacy, what, may one venture to ask, was it? It is one thing to contribute arms and money in the hope of winning friends and allies, but it is quite another thing to contribute wisely, with due consideration for advantages to be gained (pressed) or lost ... Mr. Stevenson's "we want not sullen obedience, but friendly cooperation from our allies" was neither sporting nor germane. We have no abject servants abroad, and we seek none. We have friends, brothers in arms, allies and potential allies . . .
Let Adlai Stevenson be worthy of his best and most charming utterances, contributing nothing less than honest cooperation or honest criticism. In short, let us close ranks.
MARJORIE CAREY
Tulsa
The Eyes of Texas
Sir:
I have just read your Feb. 9 article about the Texas airport dispute. Please in the future refrain from using the words Dallas and Fort Worth in the same article. It has been my pleasure to live in both cities and I can honestly state that Dallas is just a mass of brick and concrete compared with the beautiful city of Fort Worth ... If Dallas should pave Love Field with gold bricks, it would still not have the beauty or value of the Fort Worth airport.
It is about time that the people of Texas and the 47 smaller states realize that the land of opportunity is "west of the Trinity."
J.B. WOODS
Fort Worth
Sir:
Re the Dallas-Fort Worth air war: Isn't [it] all rather childish? Surely some better use could be made of the money which has been and will be wasted in a senseless rivalry . . .
If this is what they mean when Texans boast that their state does everything bigger and better, then other states should thank goodness that they are not doing things so "big" or so "great."
DOUGLAS C. JOHNSTON
Ocean City, NJ.
Sir:
... In the U.S., people are accustomed to hearing about the asinine antics of Texans, can regard them in their proper light . . . If anyone could tell me how to answer foreigners who laugh at such irresponsible conduct as displayed between the authorities of two large cities in the most powerful country in the world ... I should be grateful . . .
SHERMAN SIEGEL
Geneva, Switzerland
Taste & Consequences
Sir:
Your Feb. 16 article "Sermon on the Air" is enough to sicken anybody familiar with the modern radio-TV method of doing "good work" while enriching the sponsor. It serves notice that Ralph Edwards and his kind will continue until they have successfully catalogued, price-tagged, and exploited every human emotion.
HAROLD BULLIS
Dayton
Sir:
Why should anyone complain that the Ralph Edwards TV show is in doubtful taste? They ain't seen nothing yet. This town changed its name from Hot Springs three years ago, and celebrated the change with a three-day Ralph Edwards fiesta. The new name . . . was to boom the town . . . This year, a fiesta will be started on Good Friday ...
Some of the early missionaries who slowly crossed the dread Jornada del Muerto across the Rio Grande on their way to the Royal City of the Holy Faith of Saint Francis (Santa Fe) may stir a bit in their graves, but who cares?
JOHN P. WELCH
Truth or Consequences, N. Mex.
The China Blockade
Sir:
I do not see why we should be considerate of England's feelings in the matter of blockading the China coast. They have done the same to us in times past, with no better excuse. The idiotic fiction that we are not at war with China should be disposed of ...
D. J. HAMM
Anatone, Wash.
TV in Japan
Sir:
Your timely [Feb. 16] story on the inauguration of television broadcasting in Japan was much appreciated as the most welcome sort of publicity for our struggling start . . . Please allow me, however, to point out two erroneous statements . . . The equipment used by us is not "largely British-made"; we are using British and American equipment in about equal proportions, for purposes of study and comparison . . . and we are not "government-operated." At the end of the Pacific war, government control on radio was lifted. Since June 1950, when a new broadcasting law was promulgated, Japan has two types of radio stations: privately owned commercial companies, and the NHK network, which functions as a public enterprise, entirely free from commercial ties, and which is financed by public contributions (collected through a small monthly charge payable by owners of receiving sets). All decisions of policy are promulgated by an independent board of governors. The organizational system is close to that of the B.B.C. . .
TETSURO FURUKAKI
President Broadcasting Corp. of Japan
Tokyo
Wear & Tear of a Royal Lady
Sir:
Re the effigy of Anne of Bohemia [TIME, Feb. 16]: May I come to the rescue of Anne? Five hundred years of culver wear & tear could do strange things even to the best of us. [Historians] described this Queen as fair.
Be that as it may, the King [Richard II] gave her no rival in life. When she died at 28, his grief was as deep as it was long enduring. In tribute to her gentle graciousness, the people of England bestowed on her the appellation of "the good Queen Anne."
BETTY FRENCH
Blawnox, Pa.
P: For a more flattering portrait, see cut.--ED.
The World & Thomas Merton
Sir:
In your Feb. 2 article "Benedictine v. Trappist" I was very much impressed by the criticism of Thomas Merton by Dom Aelred Graham. I do not imagine that Father Graham has read Ascent to Truth by Merton; if he has, let him notice Chapter 14. Here are some excerpts: "He pours out His joy upon the whole world through the chosen," and "they all recognize in practice that infused contemplation is a gift of God and the best way for a man to dispose himself for this gift is renunciation and humility." This hardly seems to mean advocating ascetic monasticism for the masses . . .
RALPH N. KHOURIE
Columbus, Ohio
Sir:
... It seems to me Benedictine Graham has entirely missed the point of Thomas Merton's teaching where lay people are concerned. Far from advocating that we turn our backs on the world, "letting it go to the devil in its own way," Father Louis shows us how to reach greater faith, serenity and courage to live in the world of today.
LOUISE ROBINSON
San Juancito, Honduras
Sir:
Thomas Merton's language is that of paradox; his readers are trusted to look beyond the symbols to that which has been symbolized. It would seem that Dom Aelred Graham fails to read more than the letter which represents the Word . . . Trappists separate themselves from the world, but their days are filled with fervent prayers for it. Graham seems to mistake this act of love for a sign of suicidal despair; he seems to understand only one side of the Trappist paradox of suffering and joy. If Graham interprets Merton's advice as Cistercian propaganda for a Marxist kind of Utopia, it is perhaps because in the Benedictine Order he has become overly enamoured with a concept of the democratic monk.
CHARLES F. KNAUBER
Glendale, Calif.
Sir:
. . . Visiting Gethsemani Abbey this fall, I spent two hours on the guest house roof watching the Trappists (Father Merton included) "employing energies in direct relation to the needs of the hour," the needs being to harvest a crop of tomatoes. These monks, who would put any union-scale group of laborers (or choir Benedictines) to shame with the zeal of their manual labor, would certainly be startled to hear that to become Trappists they had first to be members of an elite . . .
W. PAUL COLLINS
Merritt Island, Fla.
There'll Always Be an Aspirate
Sir:
A truce to this Anglo-American bickering, and a plague on those who foment it ... I have this to say to la Phillips of Hove [TIME, Feb. 23]: "Cockney" (and I'm a born Londoner) is an unpleasant whine, "Lancashire" murders the Queen's English and "Mayfair" is definitely, but definitely, effete!
WILLIAM HARVEY
Hartford, Conn.
Sir:
It always irritates me to have Americans forever criticizing the English for their speech and voices. Seems a bit odd, when they have always had the language while we have used it and abused it for a comparatively short time. If ever a country displayed ugly speech and voices we certainly do so. . .
L. D. MONTGOMERY
Kalamazoo, Mich.
Sir:
Why this outbreak of sputtering over the mores of our dear English cousins? I'm still looking for the countess who swiped my dog tags from my fashionable South Kensington flat back in 1944 . . .
E. G. TALBOTT
New York City
Orchids to Barbara
Sir:
Orchids to Barbara Brown for her efforts to abolish authorized snobbery at Alabama's Shades Valley High School [TIME, Feb. 9]. Possibly there is some value in the continuing existence of fraternities and sororities in our colleges and universities, but in secondary schools they are simply abominable . . . The unhappiness that is caused by children's being "left out" is particularly poignant at their age . . .
MARTHA BIXLER
New Haven, Conn.
Sir:
More power to Barbara Brown and her campaign against the "snob sisters." ... I am quite sure that I don't want my daughter to be educated to condone dirty politics for the sake of the "right" combination of Greek-letter men, draw only one line in life--the color line, think that a pin serves as the key to every door approached, judge another by her seams instead of her soul, bow to a "beta" but never bend her knee in prayer, or be humiliating but never humble . . .
AMELITA M. MURPHY Abingdon, Ill.
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