General Twining's Dimension
Sir:
I salute the . . . people involved in your Feb. 8 article, "The New Dimension." I am sure that General Twining has no more pride in leading this progress than we have had in following--however small our respective parts may have been. To look ahead means to look to the Lord and to the Air Force.
LESTER C. MAZE
St. Louis, Mo.
Sir:
Congratulations on your excellent article ... As a professor of air science, it was gratifying to see in print the story we have been trying to put across in the classroom for the past several years. Needless to say, the article is "required reading" for all of my students.
EARLE A. GOODRICH
Lieutenant Colonel, U.S.A.F. Department of Air Science and Tactics
Boston University
Boston
Sir:
Your well-cropped, well-colored cuts and well-cropped, well-colored story about Nate's Air Force can hardly be found at fault in its facts . . . However much the Air Force, in its so-called Year I, may hope to hold onto its skilled personnel in larger numbers, it faces a single, simple, unchanging attitude toward re-enlistment in its enlisted ranks--freedom v. institutionalism. Civil life or the same old saluting crud for another four years. We are the freest enlisted men in the world--and even among U.S. services. But . . . not quite free enough. You can re-enlist some of the enlisted men some of the time, but not all of them forever. At least not until Year XXX--1984, that is.
S/SGT. DONALD NEWLOVE
McGuire Air Force Base
Trenton, NJ.
Sir:
. . . Instead of constantly calling for more pay--it is liberal now, by civilian standards, except where risk is involved--let the military prune out the marginals, alcoholics and incompetents. Let them see that industry is rewarded and lack of it punished . . . [Thus] respect for the uniform will be restored . . .
DOUGLAS W. EVANS
Madison, Wis.
Nocturne Plus 800 Bulbs
Sir:
How come the U.S. Antietam "glows?" I refer to your color spread on U.S. air power. You owe the millions of photographers of the country an explanation of what lit up a carrier so brilliantly that you can take a night color photo, obviously from an airplane. Are those lights on the side standard gear on the new carriers?
RONALD W. CHANAUD
Encino, Calif.
P:The Antietam's glow came from specially mounted 25-foot poles holding 800 flashbulbs which were synchronized with a camera mounted in a Navy blimp.--ED.
Dear James
Sir:
I'm pained to learn that Romelle and Jimmy Roosevelt are splitting [TIME, Feb. 8]. I still think it a perfect marriage, for they so deserve each other.
JOSEPHINE KEGLEY
Greenwood, Ind.
Sir:
I read the fantastic James Roosevelt explanations and see no reason why he should not seek office . . . After all, somebody must like him.
MARJORIE STOREY
Toledo, Ohio
Sir"
Do we really have to be ashamed to be American women? Will not somebody have pity on us and assure men in this country and abroad that most of us are not like the Mrs. Romelle Roosevelts, the Mrs. Bobo Rockefellers and the others whose private affairs invade our radios, our papers and the minds of our young ones? . . .
H. D. MAYER
New York City
Pity the Poor Pol
Sir:
Your Feb. 8 "One Shrill Call," belittling the efforts and motives of political campaigning, is an old, popular, sadistic sport . . . Why should not politicians seek office by proclaiming they are needed for it? After all, they have to eat, too. Certainly no one belittles the butcher or the plumber for seeking their jobs. Why must the politicians be given such a roasting? It is fortunate indeed that there are enough good American men and women with courage enough to undergo the siege of insults thrown at their efforts, the cries of incompetence, the insinuations of graft, and the snickering at their proclaimed ideals.
Of course there are rogues among them, but American politicians need not be ashamed of their station in life nor of their efforts to seek it; for it is they, from the village councilman to the President of the U.S., who have built and sustained the American Government in its present eminence . . .
JOHN A. MACDONALD
Corona del Mar, Calif.
Just to Pass the Time Away
Sir:
Re your Feb. 8 picture captioned "Prizewinner Fraley Has Her Wish": when you inform the world that Mrs. Walter R. Fraley is ... running a "manually operated handcar," you commit mayhem and drag railroad jargon about by the ears. As boy and man I've functioned as a boomer on 86 pikes as brass pounder, shack, tallow pot, gandy dancer, hoghead* and so forth, from Alaska to Cape Horn; and because I've worked on the Denver & Rio Grande Western Railroad a short hitch, I am sure that a velocipede or "speeder" is not called a handcar on that streak of rust . . .
EDGAR YOUNG Big Stone Gap, Va.
Familiarity Breeds Content?
Sir:
Your report of the "fiasco" of The Rake's Progress in its second season at the Metropolitan Opera [TIME, Feb. 8] underlines a circumstance that has long been obvious: Met audiences are not responsive to novelty, good or bad . . . The audiences, for the most part, prefer to listen to Carmen or Traviata for the hundred-and-umpteenth time. Or do they actually listen, even to their favorites? Isn't it rather a matter of going to the opera house to be pleasurably stroked, as it were, by a succession of familiar sounds? . . .
COURTNEY B. LAWSON
Detroit
Circulation
Sir:
In TIME'S Feb. 15 Press section, you speak of ". . . two big national magazines, monthly Coronet (circ. 3,565,122) and biweekly Collier's (circ. 2,818,003)." You have credited Collier's with what appears to be Coronet's circulation . . .
SHEPARD SPINK Vice President
The Crowell-Collier Publishing Co.
New York City
P:TIME transposed the circulation figures, regrets its error.--ED.
Pomp & Consequence
Sir:
When you reported that I had identified "an obscure melody" as Mendelssohn's War March of the Priests [TIME, Feb. i], I must say I was flattered by the inference that my musical knowledge was so eclectic and vast. Dear me, the reason why I knew the name of that tune was because I had marched to it to get my high-school diploma and had for years confused it with Pomp and Circumstance. But once somebody called my attention to the error, and, thank heaven, I profited by the correction--or at least, Brooklyn's Norwegian Children's Home profited.
PEGGY WOOD
New York City
The Poisoned Honeymoon
Sir:
TIME [Feb. 8] pictures the "awesome statistic" of America's annual coffee consumption by stating how long it would take to go over Niagara Falls (American side). Very appropriate. The Niagara is fast becoming coffee-colored, and the State of New York seems willing to let it go at that, as the Water Pollution Control Board proposes to classify Niagara's east branch as "C Special" --unfit for drinking or swimming. Citizens along the river are delighted to have TIME choose the Niagara as a readily recognized symbol; we are trying to convince the state that the world's most famous river can and should be cleansed of industrial pollution. Drinking, swimming and fishing are almost as suicidal as barreling the Niagara. Only honeymoons here are still as wonderful as anywhere else.
HUGH MCLEAN 3RD
North Tonawanda, N.Y.
Luther & the Molehill
Sir:
Your abbreviated item on the proposal to the National Lutheran Council for a "fullscale spiritual invasion of the Roman Catholic countries of Latin America" [TIME, Feb. 15] is the result of an unfortunate misquotation which, I regret to admit, originated as a molehill in our own news bureau and has become a mountainous misrepresentation of my report. This report was concerned principally with the gathering of our own scattered and unchurched Lutherans who . have gone to South America as refugees and immigrants . . . This is a work of the Lutheran World Federation, which is not authorized to establish missionary enterprises, but stands ready to help the whole Lutheran constituency in Latin America (estimated at 750,000 souls) in any way that we can . . .
STEWART W. HERMAN National Lutheran Council
New York City
Kuddly Kinsey (Contd.)
Sir:
My goodness, do you realize what you have done? Don't you know by now that the mere mention of Kinsey's name calls for a flock of prejudiced letters? [TIME, Feb. 22]. And what of those poor parents who are concerned with bringing up their children as average, normal, well-adjusted citizens (heaven forbid!); think of the worries you have heaped upon them! It seems to be the general trend, even for laymen, to call all energy nothing but sexual drive--and if that is true, I say let us have a few more frustrated people . . .
MRS. FRED FREEBURNE
Waco, Texas
Dancing Master (Contd.)
Sir:
... I have seen most all the leading ballet companies since the first Edinburgh Festival, and say, without hesitation, that the Sadler's Wells Ballet beats 'em all. Except, perhaps, ballet the other side of the Iron Curtain. In fact, I would bracket the New York City Ballet and the Monte Carlo Ballet as the poorest that have appeared in Scotland, bar none.
COLIN GRAHAM
Toronto, Ont.
*Translation: Reader Young has been a migratory railroad worker, telegraph operator, brakeman, fireman, section hand and engineer on 86 railroads.--ED.
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