Man of the Year

Sir:

. . . There can be only one choice--Sir Edmund Hillary, the man who got to the top.

PATRICK BARNES

Tripoli, Libya

Sir:

. . . It is very difficult to forecast your possible selection this year, because no outstanding figure emerged during the year. Eisenhower, Brownell, McCarthy, Adenauer, Pope Pius XII (he is always in the running because the Roman Catholic Church does most to counteract Communism), Malenkov, Truman, and the ghost of Harry Dexter White are all possible selections . . . Somehow, I can already see Joe McCarthy's face staring at me from your first issue in 1954.

FINBARR M. SLATTERY Asdee, County Kerry, Ireland

Sir:

Nominate anyone--except Harry S. Truman or Joseph McCarthy.

R. N. POWELL

Mobile, Ala.

Sir:

Either of two men deserves the title . . . Chancellor Konrad Adenauer [or] Lieut. General Kodendara S. Thimayya . . .

SANDRA MALLIN Vedado, Havana, Cuba

Sir:

How about the Piltdown Man?

ELLEN ANDREWS

New York City

Sir:

. . . Ramon Magsaysay of the Philippines . . .

WILLIAM MAKINSON

Ellicott City, Md.

Sir:

. . . Mr. Dick Tracy . . . Here is a man

who has contributed his all.

MURRY GORDON

Brooklyn, N.Y.

Sir:

. . . The prisoner of war, both categories: Allied, who in overwhelming numbers, in spite of months of insistent propaganda, demanded repatriation; Chinese and North Korean, who in overwhelming numbers, with no organized program of propaganda, rejected repatriation.

History is likely to show that this is one of the decisive events of modern times. It has given the free world a victory infinitely more important than would have been the reconquest of all North Korea.

(THE REV.) PAUL G. BRETSCHER New Orleans

Smoking Too Many?

Sir:

Cut down to six cigarettes a day [TIME, Nov. 30] . . . Thank goodness I have Blue Cross and kept my G.I. life insurance ! . . .

GEORGE WRIGHT

Chestnut Hill, Mass.

Sir:

All doctors will applaud your courageous and pertinent article on cigarette smoking. This should effectively confound the "unnamed specialists" . . . who report via TV and radio that there are no harmful effects to the cigarette smoker . . . Cancer is but one of many possible results under present investigation by groups throughout the country . . . While it is probably true that suburban or city dwellers are in general heavier smokers than those in rural areas, no true conclusion can be reached until a frank appraisal of the grave problem of air pollution can be made.

ROBT. B. MARIN, M.D. Montclair, N.J.

Sir:

. . . You ask--what to do about it? You fail to mention the obvious way . . . Stop smoking! . . .

TIBBS MAXEY Louisville, Ky.

Sir:

. . . The American Cancer Society through its volunteers is undertaking the most extensive survey ever envisaged in this field. The complete smoking histories of more than 200,000 males throughout the U.S. between the ages of 50 and 69 will be recorded in detail . . . The health histories of each of them will be followed for at least five years. At the end of that time, or possibly before, we should be able to correlate the relationship between their smoking histories and the extent of lung cancer among the smokers and non-smokers . . .

CHARLES S. CAMERON, M.D.

American Cancer Society, Inc. New York City

Scrambled Geography

Sir:

A most interesting map of the U.S.S.R. in the Nov. 30 issue. When did Norway annex Sweden? . . . The Swedes won't be happy, and I doubt very much that the Norwegians will be . . .

ROBERT W. HAYS

Stockholm

Sir:

How is TIME going to redeem itself in the eyes of my Norwegian wife for moving Norway over into Sweden, as shown by R. M. Chapin Jr.? . . .

DAVID G. KUNZ

Huntingdon, Pa.

Sir:

. . .Junior's mistake? . . .

W. SMITH

Montreal

P: A slip of the peninsula.--ED.

The Muzhik Master

Sir:

A philosopher is one who is capable of making distinctions. TIME can well be placed in that category [with] its article on Vydvizhenets Khrushchev [Nov. 30], which brought to light a distinction that the Ukrainian people staunchly and vigorously uphold . . . You have rendered these people great justice by rightly acknowledging them as a nation not to be" confused with Russia . . . a distinction which surpasses the attention . . . of many a statesman. TIME alone . . . has understood precisely that the Ukrainians . . . are truly "proud of their mother tongue, and do have a national pride that centuries of conflict . . . have not dimmed but glorified." The Turks were not able to root out this national pride, neither were the Poles, nor the Germans, and neither will the Soviet (much less Khrushchev!) . . .

ANATOLE LESYK Montreal

Sir:

Re your picture of the Soviet leaders lined up on the Lenin-Stalin mausoleum: How could anyone--such as many liberals, artists, intellectuals, and so forth--be so gullible as to think that that line of fat porkies . . . could be sincerely and conscientiously interested in the welfare of the masses of people on the earth? . . .

BURKE McGINTY

Terrell, Texas

Ruffled Hens

Sir:

For lively, accurate, terse presentation of the news, TIME is, unquestionably, the most. But why does your otherwise astute editor persist in using the word "newshen" to identify feminine members of the press? That innocuous but distasteful little noun suggests a fusty old dodo, a far from true description of the hardworking, able newswoman . . .

JEAN SHRYOCK The Evening Bulletin Philadelphia

Sir:

I'd like to have a little talk with you about that coined word "newshens" . . . It brings to mind a picture of a lot of scratching, much of it useless, accompanied by considerable clucking. (Maybe women do talk a lot, but I know newspapermen who do most of the talking in an interview, too.) In a small survey conducted by myself (and therefore not authoritative), I found no newspaperwomen who liked being called newshens.

Also, if newshen is supposed to be female for newshawk--well, you should call the fellow in charge of hawks at the Museum of Natural History. He says . . . the word falcon once was the English term for the female hawk. However, falconry now covers a family of hunting hawks, and a female hawk is simply called a female hawk. So futurely, if male reporters are to be known in TIME as newshawks, let's refer to the opposite species as female newshawks . . .

JANE C. GRANT

New York City

P: Fie on Readers Shryock and Grant (married name: Mrs. William B. Harris), president of Manhattan's Lucy Stone League,* for such an unflattering picture of the female of the species.--ED.

Rubens' Dove

You have given us a most beautiful picture in Rubens' "Holy Family with the Dove" [Nov. 30]. In ancient paintings of religious life the dove represented the Holy Ghost, and the Bible says: "And whosoever shall speak a word against the Son of Man it shall be forgiven him; but whosoever shall speak against the Holy Spirit, it shall not be forgiven him, neither in this world, nor in that which is to come . . ." Yet in this wonderful painting we see the Christ Child and John the Baptist fighting over the dove, and John has pulled a handful of feathers from it! . . . Joseph and Mary look on approvingly; indeed, Joseph appears delighted . . .

JOHN KENNY

Victoria, B.C.

A Tired Portuguese

Sir:

I would like to add a few remarks to your objective report on the Portuguese elections [Nov. 16]. Salazar is not an admirable man. His success lies in a simple method: he is benevolent to his big boys in their big business (a necessary evil, he thinks), uses much of the national revenue in the maintenance of the elements of the system's machinery--the army, the state police, censorship, the Catholic Church, the corporative agencies, the Uniao National (Government's Party) and the propaganda bureaus. With a few hundred thousand collaborationists, dependent on the regime, he keeps the other part of the people impotent. But this is his "victory": in exchange for fiscal stability, the Portuguese people have lost much of their vitality and personality. As a result of 27 years of well-masked dictatorship, the Portuguese people are now tired and skeptical and would adapt themselves to a reactionary king or a Communist dictator. For this "victory" we democrats will never forgive him . . . Like many other Portuguese youths trained by Mocidade Portuguesa, (Portuguese Youth State Organization), I was supposed to be an obedient servant. If I am not one, it is thanks to TIME and a few foreign books that helped me in my search for truth . . .

JOAO SILVA

Mozambique

* Whose married members, faithfully obeying the rules set down by their 19th century leader Lucy Stone ("the morning star of the woman's rights movement"), never use their husband's names.

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