Man of the Year
Sir:
Congratulations . . . Few will disapprove of your choice of Man of the Year [TIME, Jan. 4]. Brave old Konrad Adenauer has shown us, by his determined stand against the twin evils of Communism and Naziism, that he is truly one of the greatest men of our age.
JAMES D. HAGAN
Pittsburgh Sir: Your choice was a logical one. Only a man with such driving spirit and high ideals could have lifted a nation from the doldrums of depression and put it in the forefront of a struggling world--truly a great man.
GEORGE B. GOMES Georgetown, British Guiana
Sir: Allow me to congratulate you on your cover ... To my mind it transcends in force, symbolism, and warning the famous "Dropping the Pilot" cartoon of Bismarck's time.
In 1909 ... I married a beautiful but dumb member of one of Germany's best cartel families--pure bourgeois and pure Prussian. Contact with the average middle-class German mind was such a shock that I was practically forced to make a study of history and of international relations. At that time the average German people suffered from a fanatical inferiority complex owing to the fact that, historically, they came on the scene too late to grab choice colonies . . .
It was obvious then (and it is still true) that though they can stoop to conquer, they will hate the whole world till they can dominate it ...
While shuddering for my children, I am, at 65, glad that I shall not live in the shade of that newly sprouting oak on your cover.
DOROTHY CABOT BEST Encino, Calif.
Sir:
... I missed treatment of the subject of the moral rehabilitation of Germany. Before we can affirm or negate that the re-emergence of Germany during 1953 has changed the world picture, we have to assess whether some of the fundamental issues have been met by Adenauer's Germany . . .
KURT R. GROSSMANN
Kew Gardens, N.Y.
Sir:
. . . Adenauer has the nerve to declare publicly that it was the German army and not the German people that capitulated, adding somewhat sinisterly, "and the world had better remember." The last time we heard that tune was when the man no German ever mentions nowadays proclaimed to a hysterical following that in 1918 it was the German people and not the German army that had surrendered . . . Don't let us in for a fit of collective amnesia again like after 1918.
CHARLES MARGRY Paris
Sir:
I am one of the foreign students in the U.S. from Nigeria, West Africa ... A statement made by Chancellor Adenauer runs thus: "We are not an African tribe, but a Central European nation proud of its country" . .
Who taught the Chancellor that the African tribesmen are not proud of their country? ... I know that Chancellor Adenauer will make a good leader in Germany, but I suggest he minds how he uses words when he is in an angry mood . . .
MATTHEW CHINENYE NDUKA Iowa Wesleyan College Mount Pleasant, Iowa
Business in '53
Sir:
An Oscar to your review, "Business in 1953" | TIME, Jan. 4]. An economic masterpiece, well within the grasp of the ordinary layman. A concrete answer to the perpetual peddlers of panic, who continually attempt to sell America short. . .
DICK COFFIN
Winthrop, Mass.
Occupational Bugaboo
Sir:
... I am cited [TIME, Jan. 11] as making a statement not in fact made and, by implication, as supporting a viewpoint not in fact supported. Nothing that I said while at the meetings of economists in Washington came close in sound or meaning to the statement attributed to me: "The bigness bugaboo took a licking here." I did remark, in an off-the-cuff discussion with one of your reporters, that many economists have apparently come to consider monopolistic business as much less widespread and important in the American economy than they had formerly believed. I suggested that this change of attitude was traceable in part to recent empirical studies, but probably in much larger part to the impact of Schumpeter's thesis of "creative destruction." I hastened to dissociate myself, however, from the followers of Schumpeter. as I also did in a paper delivered at the meetings . . .
I should like to be put on record as denying that bigness is a "bugaboo" and that the "bugaboo" took a licking at the hands of professional economists.
G. WARREN NUTTER Yale University New Haven, Conn.
P: TIME regrets that Economist Nutter considers himself misinterpreted, denies that he was misquoted.--ED.
The Missing Links
Sir:
Even college presidents couldn't evaluate the integral as printed in TIME'S Jan. 4 article on advanced courses designed by educators for high-school students. Two signs are missing in the numerator of the indefinite integral.
JOSEPH DE FATO Massachusetts Institute of Technology Cambridge, Mass.
Sir:
. . . Calculus at best is difficult, I recollect ... Do you insist that it be made impossible ?
DONALD F. ALEXANDER Dayton
P: TIME (and the educators) have found the plus signs they were minus. The integral, correctly written:
\int x^3+4x^2+3x-1/x-2 dx --ED.
Facts Forum Forum
Sir:
The sensational yellow journalism which you circulated in an attempt to smear the Facts Forum program of Texan Hunt [TiME, Jan. 11] is itself proof of the inadequacy of TIME'S and Reporter Bagdikian's phony charges . . .
The giveaway on the slanted reporting of Mr. Bagdikian came with the story's conclusion. Facts Forum is spreading "fear [and] suspicion" ... It is also "divisive." This, of course, is the routine jargon of the left-liberals to describe anyone or any organization that fights Communism, collectivism or blind one-worldism . . .
MARGARET S. LEHR New York City
Sir:
. . . [The] attack on Mr. Hunt and Facts Forum was without reason and without foundation . . .
ALEXANDER HARPER Dallas
Sir:
It is high time a reputable . . . magazine with a national circulation told the facts about Facts Forum. Well over a year ago I took this truly incredible voice of the Rabid Right off the air, refusing to carry it as a sustaining "public service" program. At that time I was program manager of KRIC [in Beaumont, Texas], and it was my contention that I would have to give equal free time to the Democratic National Committee or to Norman Thomas should either ask for it ... The program was snatched up by another local station the following week, where to the best of my knowledge it still spouts hate, bigotry and reaction every Monday night . . .
KARL VON LEUWEN
Los Altos, Calif.
Rapping the Tappers
Sir:
Bravo to TIME for a masterful piece on wiretapping [Jan. 4], but in a democracy there can be no "middle way" in allowing such un-American practice (just as there cannot be a partially pregnant woman). An Oriental proverb says, "To catch a rat a man need not himself enter the trap," and that's what we would be doing if we used one of the vilest of Communist methods to fight Communism. Few realize that wiretap evidence tramples on four Articles of our Bill of Rights! . . .
It would abridge freedom of speech (Article I), impinge on the right of the people to be secure in their houses (IV), compel, by trickery, a man to be a "witness against himself" (V), and take from the accused the "right to ... be confronted with the witnesses against him" . . . (VI) . . .
ALLEN KLEIN Mount Vernon, N.Y.
And No Easter Bunny
Sir:
We are amazed by your story in Books [Jan. 4] which declares that there was no Victor Appleton.
This article is typical of the literary cynic. It is not unlike the argument that Bacon wrote Shakespeare's plays. It is like trying to tell Santa Claus there is no Virginia . . . F. RAFFETTO
President
A. DUCKWORTH
Tom Swift Fan Club Secretary
Dallas
New Prognosis
SIR:
THANKS FOR YOUR USUAL ACCURATE COVERAGE IN HANDLING STORY OF MY PURCHASE OF LOS ANGELES DAILY NEWS [TIME, JAN. 4]. I OFFER THIS SUBSTITUTE INSERT RE YOUR ". . . WITH THE PAPER STILL AT DEATH'S DOOR . . ." IN JUST SEVEN DAYS THE UNDERTAKER HAS
BACKED UP TWO GIANT STRIDES AND THE PROGNOSIS IS FOR A STEADY, GAINFUL RETURN TO ROBUST HEALTH.
CLINTON D. MCKINNON
PUBLISHER LOS ANGELES DAILY NEWS LOS ANGELES, CALIF.
Big Time
SIR:
WHILE ELGIN NATIONAL WATCH CO. IS WILLING TO RESPECT BULOVA WATCH CO. AS A WORTHY AND AGGRESSIVE COMPETITOR, WE ARE SCARCELY WILLING TO CONCEDE THE STATEMENT [TIME, DEC. 28] THAT "BULOVA IS THE
BIGGEST U.S. MANUFACTURER OF JEWELED WATCHES."
ELGIN ALONE IS MANUFACTURING FROM TWO TO THREE TIMES AS MANY WATCH MOVEMENTS IN THE U.S. AS BULOVA, AS WELL AS PRODUCING THE MAJOR PART OF THE CASES AND ACCESSORIES NEEDED FOR ALL THE MOVEMENTS IT SELLS . . .
J. G. SHENNAN
PRESIDENT ELGIN NATIONAL WATCH CO. ELGIN, ILL.
Dufy's Mural
Sir:
The publisher responsible for the Raoul Dufy lithograph mural La Fee Electricite [TIME, Dec. 14] was La Palme, Paris. This great work may currently be seen at the Minneapolis Institute of Arts, or at Pierre Beres, Inc. New York.
VERA COLESCOTT
New York City
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