Bad Old Days Are Here Again

Sir: The sign in the Liquor & Tobacco Shop in Moscow [News in Pictures -- Oct. IQ] also reads Priem posudy proisvoditsa vo dvore, which, freely translated, means that the "empties are picked up in the backyard." . . .

The fact that the sign also warns that the place is closed on Tuesday reflects the probability that the joint is overcrowded on Sunday, attended by drunks on Monday who must sober up and who collect strength on Tuesday to start it all over again on Wednesday. This is an encouraging sign. It was so in the "bad old days of the Czar," when the empties were also thrown all over the back yards of Russia until the time came to throw them through the shop windows.

J. A. STEKOL Glenside, Pa.

P.S.: Report Card Sir: Your article on New York schools [Oct.

19] was excellent ... I thought I knew something about education, having taught at each level from kindergarten through post-doctoral research (I'd been in private schools, public colleges and large universities).

But a New York woman schoolteacher stopped me dead. When I asked her to give a map demonstration, she stood in a most awkward position, and I told her to move over to the other side. "I wouldn't dare to work myself into a corner so far away from the door," she said seriously . . . "First thing a woman teacher learns in our school is never to get too far away from the door.

Otherwise the big boys might trap her in a corner 'and beat hell out of her." Later, when I visited this teacher in New York, I found that her students had chopped down all the classroom doors on the first floor. I concluded there was a lot about education that I didn't know.

JAMES A. MICHENER-Tinicum, Pa.

Sir: A magna cum laude for your article on the New York City public schools. It is an intelligent and moving insight into the tortuous process of adapting education from its aristocratic traditions into an instrument of service to a democracy . . . By faith, the public schools are trying to move cultural mountains . . . Some of the trigger-happy your critics article, should be and then required to take ' do a homework on postgraduate course at the feet of Principal [Margaret] Douglas and other devoted members of the system.

STUART M. STOKE Mount Holyoke College South Hadley, Mass.

Sir: . . . Our democratic system . . . has laid down the premise that every American boy and girl is entitled to a secondary education.

This is good . . . [But] not all children are capable of absorbing secondary schooling.

In fact, there is a fairly large percentage of our population that is basically uneducable.

Teachers have always recognized this fact . . . Today, due to our compulsory school laws, we are required to keep these chil dren in school until they are 17 or 18 years old. The teacher, in her effort to cope with these uneducable students, must of necessity neglect the brighter ones . . . The British are far more practical . . . They guarantee every child an elementary education, but at the end of this period they separate the sheep from the goats. The brighter students are sent on to secondary schools; the duller ones are sent to trade schools.

Basically, this is the real trouble with U.S.

education. In our sincere efforts to educate all children, we are not doing a very good job with any of them.

JOEL D. WROTAN Principal The South Park Public Schools Beaumont, Texas Sir:

Your story . . . has done me good . . . God love the frustration-ridden schoolteachers ! They are the soldiers of the line in this tremendous fight to lift society to a better level . . .

AN ANABEL S. MILLER Connellsville, Pa.

When Austin Hall Was Young Sir: Re the Greenlease story [Oct. 19]: the grandfather of Kidnaper Hall was one of the eleven victims of the historic Marais des Cygnes massacre near Pleasanton, Kans. on May 19, 1858.

Grandfather Hall was one of six "snatches" who survived the fire of the Missouri bush whacker execution squad/- . . . John Brown rushed over from Osawatomie and built a fort near the scene of the massacre . . .

John Hall, the respected father of the kidnaper, pointed out to me the massacre site . . . back in July 1930, when his fateful son Carl was a harmless lad of twelve . . . His father had pointed out to him every house from which the bushwhackers took their victims . . .

THOMAS M. GALEY Owensboro, Ky.

Crime & Punishment Sir: I am in complete agreement with Columnist O'Donnell's recommendation [for the type of punishment needed for the kidnapers of Bobby Greenlease.] I think also that serious consideration should be given to his recommendation as to pardons or commutation of sentence of criminals with a police record . . .

(MRS. F. L.) MARY LEWIS Charleston, W. Va.

Sir: For New York Daily News Columnist John O'Donnell, whose bestiality in words nearly matches the new standard in fact set by the Greenlease murderers, I recommend totally unanesthetized vivisection, performed by a deranged butcher in the lounge of the Overseas Press Club . . .

DOUGLAS GRAHAM Beacon, N.Y.

Turk & Ataturk Sir: It was with a great deal of anticipation that I started reading the Oct. 12 article on Turkey . . . However, it is regrettable that the founder and first President of Turkey, Kemal Ataturk, should have been de scribed in such terms . . . Your magazine has many devoted readers in Turkey, where every Turkish heart will be hurt on coming across the debunking adjectives, which I need not reiterate here, used in reference to the man whom the whole Turkish nation . . .

idolizes . . .

NURI EREN Director Turkish Information Office New York City

Sir:

. . . You have done a gross injustice to the character of Kemal Ataturk ... I have been on one of his drinking parties . . . and I can say there could have been no finer discussions on cultural and educational topics . . .

NECDET ERZEN Ankara Sir: . . . I'm enormously impressed and pleased by the fidelity of obviously intensive research and the depth and genuine perception of the [article]. As a Texan, an adopted Turk and a correspondent of twelve years' close study, travel and genuine living among the Turks --in Istanbul, Ankara and the boondocks (the wilds) -- I've known them through . . . their ruggedest period as peoples of a Republic . . .

Mustapha Kemal emerges as the colossus he was (and is) ... Of course, there will be hell to pay for the outraged apologists for Kemal . . .

RAY BROCK New Fairfield, Conn.

Ends & Beginnings Sir: Allow me to offer some comments on "The Domino Player," which appeared in the Sept.

14 issue, and I should like to do so beginning at the end and ending at the beginning.

It is stated that Mexico, "proud of its mestizo origins, without need either to brag or apologize for them ... is visibly experiencing some of the creative results of having found itself." This statement is true and I likec it. It was with real satisfaction that I read the well-merited praise of President Ruiz Cortines and the just evaluation of his high virtues. But there are statements which I would dispute. It is obvious to those of us who know our country intimately that such assertions as "In the Mexico of the past, graft and corruption in high and low places was government," accounted and part of "In the the very highest system ranks, of public office was private opportunity . . ." are but unjust generalizations, whose origin --in Mexico -- is to be found in rumors, mostly of a political nature, in personal resentments and in the age-old habit -- indulged only in countries where real freedom exists -- of mocking and belittling public officials.

I strongly resented the criticisms or implications leveled against President Aleman, who served his country with untiring enthusiasm and absolute faith in the Mexican people. I am convinced that history will rectify the opinions that, in this respect, TIME has presented.

MANUEL TELLO Ambassador Mexican Embassy Washington, B.C.

Sir:

I am profoundly shocked at TIME'S statements and innuendos with respect to my administration as President of Mexico . . . The statements and inferences contained in your article which reflect upon the honesty and integrity of my administration are completely false. I can only conclude that your article was concocted by reporters who listened only to malicious rumors circulated by politicians and opportunists, instead of ascertaining the facts from responsible people in Mexico who are in a position to know the truth. At the appropriate time and in a manner which will afford adequate protection against distortions and falsehoods, the scurrilous and fantastic nature of these statements will be clearly established.

Without going into detail here as to the numerous errors and falsehoods ... I wish to protest particularly against your publication of the assertions concerning my administration by two discredited politicians at the Mexico City meeting and by means of the placards mentioned in the article. These charges, made for selfish political purposes, are not only false but are vicious and absurd. Many of them are obviously beyond the realm of possibility.

I must, therefore, request you to publish my denunciation of those charges.

Lic. MIGUEL ALEMAN V.

Mexico City P: TIME, in reporting the political atmosphere in the new Ruiz Cortines administration, necessarily included a sketching of the charges -- as charges-made in Mexico by Francisco Aguilar and Leon Ossorio against the adminis tration of President Miguel Aleman.

TIME is glad to publish ex-President Aleman's denunciation. -- ED.

Tu Quoque, Fowler

Sir:

Anent Lexicographer Fowler's disapproval of the Long Variant [Oct. 12]: if we should avoid using "wastage" for "waste," how come Fowler's rather unique use of "usage" for "use"? BEN F. MEYER, SJ.

Bellarmine College Preparatory San Jose, Calif.

-Tales of the South Pacific, The Bridges at Toko-Ri. -- ED. - /- A band of pro-slavery men, headed by one Charles (Border Ruffian) Hamelton, took eleven Free State men of Linn County, Kans.

to a ravine near the Marais des Cygnes River and shot them down. Grandfather Hall and five others survived, through the inefficiency of Hamelton's riflemen. -- ED.

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