Prayer for Patience

Sir:

General Alfred Gruenther is to be commended on the use of a most appropriate prayer regarding patience in dealing with allies [Dec. 12]. It should be mentioned, however, that substantially the same prayer was offered in the U.S. Senate on May 14, 1947, by the late Peter Marshall, then Chaplain of the Senate.

(THE REV.) RICHARD F. ICE Ridgecrest Community Baptist Church Seattle

P: Says Author Catherine Marshall (A Man Called Peter) of her late husband: "I'm not sure that the two lines * were original with Dr. Marshall. I've been trying to track down their origin myself, with no success so far."--ED.

The Prose of Presidents

Sir:

I noticed in your Dec. 12 issue two letters criticizing President Eisenhower's use of the pronoun "I." I often stand in amazement, and wonder just what keeps these disgruntled English teachers alive. These letters of criticism show bad taste and poor timing.

BILL THIGPEN Austin, Texas

Sir:

Poor, pedantic schoolmarms! The language vehicle to them is more precious than the freight it carries. Their small world consists in parsing a sentence.

CLYDE H. BURROUGHS

San Diego

Sir:

So what if Ike misused a pronoun? What about the language Harry Truman uses when referring to Dick Nixon? The very idea!

MORT MILLER Vermillion, S. Dak.

Sir:

I agree with the man who said that Harry S. Truman "is a man of letters." Those letters are p.h.e.w.!

F. GLENN OTIS Washington

Lower Tariffs

Sir:

It was refreshing to read your Dec. 5 expose of the foreign chicanery that accompanies "leadership" toward free trade. Your article certainly illustrates that it is a lonely leadership with few, if any, foreign nations joining the parade. Thank you for the concluding paragraph: "The popular cry has been that the U.S. is hamstringing free trade. Actually, the U.S. has steadily lowered its tariffs, while most other nations have raised theirs."

EDWIN WILKINSON

National Association of Wool Manufacturers Boston

Sir:

No wonder the average tariff rate on U.S. imports from Canada is low. These imports are mainly raw materials that are duty-free, or have low tariff rates because the U.S. requires them. However, the duty on Canadian manufactured goods is so high that they are prevented from competing with your domestic industries. Thus, since these goods do not become actual imports, their tariff rates do not enter your calculation.

GORDON LESLIE Ottawa

Sir:

The U.S. has made tremendous efforts in helping to save the world from aggressive tyranny, and in building up at her own expense destroyed or backward countries. How tragic it is that the gratitude of the free world, which should flow to the U.S. in consequence, is being weakened by the apparent failure of U.S. trade policy to admit that in the arithmetic of international trade two and two make four.

J. GRAEME WATSON Toronto

Sir:

I have never seen the basic facts of the tariff situation as it exists in the world today so lucidly set forth in so few words.

JOHN H. HENSHAW President

Pittsburgh Plate Glass Export Corp. Pittsburgh

Man's Eye

Sir:

Let the sleeping dogs of Mr. Selden Rodman's disagreement with my views of art and beauty lie [Nov. 28]; I am flattered by the attention he has paid me. There is someone, however, to whom I believe he has done a grave injustice in his book [The Eye of Man] --an artist not here to defend himself. I speak of the Pole, Jan Styka, close friend of Paderewski and one of the great men of his day, creator of the 200-ft.-wide painting Crucifixion at Forest Lawn Memorial-Park in Glendale, Calif. [TIME, April 2, 1951]. If Mr. Rodman's book is on sale a decade hence, I hope he will not be embarrassed by the pages in which he makes fun of the Crucifixion. Can Mr. Rodman be quite sure, in spite of the fact that it reminds him of a DeMille picture with crowds of "extras" in it, that some of the millions of people who view this painting are not genuinely moved by it, or that they do not even consider it, as I myself confess to doing, one of the seven wonders of the modern world?

HUNTINGTON HARTFORD New York City

The Couch for Miss Muffet

Sir:

Your Dec. 5 review of The Oxford Nursery Rhyme Book would seem to indicate that children's verses follow the temper of the times. My contribution:

Little Miss Muffet

Sat on a tuffet

Dreaming of princes and palaces.

Along came a spider

Who sat down beside her

And started a psychoanalysis.

DON KREGER New York City

Governor & Judge

Sir:

I believe that most of America was shocked by the attitude of Georgia's Governor Marvin Griffin to the Sugar Bowl game in which a Negro will be on the team opposing Georgia Tech [Dec. 12]. For once the students demonstrated that there is nothing wrong with our youth, that the nation would be better off in their hands than in the hands of some of these peddlers of hate.

HAROLD KROMREY Black Creek, Wis.

Sir:

I am a Southerner, and I say Judge Brady, author of Black Monday [Dec. 12], is for the birds, and is a pompous windbag to boot. It is not the N.A.A.C.P. which we true Southerners, both white and black, have to fear but men like Brady, whose statements make us sound like a bunch of "hold my magnolia, while I beat my slave" fools.

MARGARET LESTER Memphis

Marx & Picasso

Sir:

TIME'S Dec. 12 cover story on "Toycoon" Louis Marx is a pip. I have an anecdote that involves Mr. Marx: several years ago, at Vallauris, France, Irving Berlin and I met Picasso; he'd been making abstract statues--incorporating broken bits and pieces from his children's toys (one creation had a tin washbasin in its stone stomach and a toy propeller imbedded in its navel). We promised to send the children some new toys and asked Louis Marx to ship a few and bill us (which he never did). Santa Marx sent a huge crate of toys, but it took two years for the children to finally receive them, because French customs officials were wary of the consignment. Because of the vast number and varied assortment of the toys, they wanted Picasso to take out an importer's license! Picasso and two friends fought French red tape, finally managed to convince the authorities that the toys were gifts for Picasso's children, and Picasso wasn't opening a French branch of Louis Marx & Co.

IRVING HOFFMAN Rome

Administration Lift

Sir: I agree with Douglas McKay that the cost of bringing the Cabinet members to Camp David was probably "too much" [Dec. 5]. I was very much upset by such extravagance.

LILLA THORSBEY Oakland, Calif.

Sir:

The idea continues to fascinate me that some anonymous wag designated it "Operation Banana" because it brought together the whole bunch.

WAYNE HENDERSON Los Angeles

3-D Views

Sir: I have read the Nov. 28 article about Dr. Edwin H. Land and the Polaroid Corp. Dr. Land has proved himself to be a brilliant scientist, and he has my great admiration.

However, he and Polaroid Corp. have not been alone in this field. Alvin M. and Mortimer M. Marks became interested in the polarizing field in the late 1920s . . . You erred in stating that Polaroid Corp. was the only maker of 3-D viewers through the 3-D movie boom of 1953 and 1954. Licensees under patents of Alvin M. Marks also sold millions of such viewers.

BEATRICE MARKS Marks Polarized Corp.

Whitestone, N.Y.

The Oldtime Religion (Contd.)

Sir: The excellent Dec. 5 article is the best piece of reporting on the Baptists that I have ever read. I appreciate very much your frank and fair appraisal of our work.

LEON MACON

Editor Alabama Baptist

Birmingham

Sir:

At the annual meeting of our 191-member executive board, the secretary was authorized to write you on behalf of the entire membership, thanking you for the article . . .

FORREST C. FEEZOR

Baptist General Convention of Texas Dallas

Sir:

There are millions of people in this country who cannot accept the antiquated ideas of the "oldtime religion," but who do not know of Unitarianism, a faith led by men with the courage and intelligence to try to free men's minds from the myths which permeate most of today's religions . . .

RICHARD RIDENOUR Falls Church, Va.

Sir:

Baptists everywhere, I'm sure, agree with the pastors of our city's 44 Baptist churches when they recently voted to commend you highly for your excellent coverage . . .

(THE REV.) C. DEWITT MATTHEWS Vineville Baptist Church Macon, Ga.

Life Is Hell

Sir: Granted, Poet Donald Hall has some noble lines to his credit; TIME'S Dec. 5 august dispenser of "sweet praise" picked a sour line to hold aloft and admire: "Like most good poets, Hall knows that 'Life is hell, but death is worse.' " There will be a moment of silence while we strike from the list of "most good poets": Shakespeare -- "O, amiable lovely death"; Whitman -- "Lovely and soothing death"; Shelley -- "How wonderful is death."

FRED DE JAVANNE Hightstown, N.J.

P: And Keats--"I have been half in love with easeful death."--ED.

German Rearmament

Sir: Seeing the new German generals [Dec. 5] brings back the realization that Russia has some justification for wanting Germany separated. I believe you have jumbled the story titles, "Return of the Pig" and "An Army Is Born." They should read: "An Army Is Returned" and "The Pig Is Born." CHARLES S. ALLEN Norman, Okla.

Luther in English

Sir: Your Nov. 28 coverage of "Luther in English" is much appreciated. However, there were two important omissions: the St. Louis Concordia Publishing House is an arm of the Lutheran Church-Missouri Synod; Professor Jaroslav Pelikan, associate professor of historical theology in the federated theological faculty of the University of Chicago, is general editor for the volumes being published by Concordia.

H. T. LEHMANN Muhlenberg Press Philadelphia

* When we are wrong, make us easy to change. When we are right, make us easy to live with.

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