The Campaign

If the character and intelligence and dignity of Adlai Stevenson had not already convinced me of his superiority as a presidential candidate, I should certainly have come to that conclusion after looking at your April 9 News in Pictures showing silly-faced Estes Kefauver in his campaign antics. If those are the kinds of shenanigans a man has to perform in order to be nominated for the presidency, I can only say that a job more worthy of the character of a man like Stevenson ought to be created for him.

CORINNA MARSH

New York City

Sir:

I was amused reading your article regarding the Democratic hopeful multilemma. By prematurely campaigning with a health issue, the Democrats have burned a bridge in front of Senator Lyndon Johnson, the man best qualified to hold them together. It serves them right.

S. T. CLIFLIN JR. Pittsburgh

Sir:

For high-flown snobbery, demagoguery, pure assumption, suggestion, innuendo, and thinly veneered venom, I can find no equal to TIME'S April 2 story "Democrats."

DOUGLAS BANKSTON

Kansas City, Mo.

Sir:

I was at Adlai Stevenson's house the night of the primary vote in Minnesota. You say it was to be "a black tie dinner." It wasn't. There wasn't a black tie there, and the "red tartan dinner jacket" that Stevenson wore is not a dinner jacket but a dilapidated spare coat. You say "with only his really good friends in politics invited." There were two people for supper at his house that night: Stevenson and a friend from out of town, George Ball. Stevenson's law partner Bill Wirtz and his wife arrived about 10 o'clock; later in the evening Stevenson's sister, Mrs. Ives, and a family friend arrived. These people are hardly described by your language "his really good friends in politics." For part of the evening Mr. and Mrs. Edison Dick, Barry Bingham and I (the three latter being officers of the National Stevenson for President Committee) came to the Stevenson house on our own initiative. Those were the people present, and none of them shared the feeling you reported that "there was doubt whether he could stay in the race." We have just begun.

ARCHIBALD S. ALEXANDER Chicago

P: TIME'S correspondent concedes that he may have misjudged the cut of Host Stevenson's jacket and the color of his bow tie, but the list of "dinner guests" was furnished by the candidate's own office--ED.

Catching the Buss

Sir:

There used to be a saying to the effect that "England never surrenders." Now, just look at those English ladies kissing Malenkov in your April 2 picture--even Judas Iscariot would have hesitated to buss that buzzard.

A. TAAGERPERA Kitchener, Ont.

Limited Travel

Sir:

It is a pity that the nine U.S. Protestant churchmen visiting Russia [March 26] could not extend their route to the nightmarish arctic hell of Vorkuta, where so many of their colleagues are practicing high treason by holding secret religious services. Is this what Metropolitan Nikolai meant when he said, "We must now forgive and forget"?

I. LILLENURM St. Catharines, Ont.

Painter Diplomat

Sir:

Your April 9 article is an interesting piece about a great artist and a great exhibition of his work. As such, it is typical of TIME and welcome to many of your readers. However, the catalogue of the exhibition makes clear that its inspiration is The Letters of Peter Paul Rubens [Harvard University; $10], translated and edited by Ruth Saunders Magurn, of the Fogg Museum.

THOMAS J. WILSON Harvard University Press Cambridge, Mass.

Sir:

We at the Fogg are certainly most thrilled with the way the April 9 Art section looks, with the two-page spread on the Rubens exhibition, which the Fogg Museum and the Morgan Library organized jointly. The colored reproductions came out better than we had hoped, and the text is most informative.

ANNE V. DORT

Fogg Art Museum Harvard University Cambridge, Mass.

Sir:

We are very pleased with the coverage given to our Rubens exhibition. Not only is the story a good one, but I think your selection of illustrations was excellent.

F. B. ADAMS JR. Pierpont Morgan Library New York City

Yoknapatawpha & the U.S.

Sir:

The "I'll Choose Mississippi" statement attributed to William Faulkner [March 26] seems almost incredible. How any man in the U.S., living in the present era of supposed enlightenment, can make such a statement is beyond my power of comprehension. Mr. Faulkner is evidently one of those Americans who neither appreciate liberty, nor comprehend the meaning of it. For my part, I'll choose the U.S. Apparently Mr. Faulkner is politically still living in 1861.

FRANK CLAPP Beverly Hills, Calif.

Sir:

In our troubled times over segregation, it is imperative that no man be saddled with opinions on the subject which he has never held and, for that reason, never expressed. In New York last month ... I gave an interview to a representative of the London Sunday Times, who (with my agreement) passed it on to the Reporter. I did not see the interview before it went into print. If I had, quotations from it which have appeared in TIME could never have been imputed to me, since they contain opinions which I have never held, and statements which no sober man would make and, it seems to me, no sane man believe. That statement that I or anyone else in his right mind would choose any one state against the whole remaining Union of States, down to the ultimate price of shooting other human beings in the streets, is not only foolish but dangerous. Foolish, because no sane man is going to make that choice today even if he had the chance. A hundred years ago, yes, but not in 1956. And dangerous, because the idea can further inflame those few people in the South who might still believe such a situation possible.

WILLIAM FAULKNER Oxford, Miss.

P: Says Correspondent Russell Warren Howe, New York correspondent for the London Sunday Times: "If Mr. Faulkner no longer agrees with the more Dixiecratic of his statements I, for one, am very glad, but that is what he said."--ED.

The Boy King

Sir:

Your April 2 story taught me much about my own country and its ruler. Although the American press is usually misleading when it discusses the Middle East, you have done a good job which, I believe, will help increase international understanding.

Aziz SHIHAB St. Louis

Sir:

It is nice to know that Hussein feels "Israel is probably there to stay." It would probably be appropriate if the boy king would search his memory to recount the many times Israel has offered the Arabs compensation in exchange for a peace pact. To accept refugees in Israel at this stage of the game would be as unrealistic as our country's granting entry to 900,000, or even 960 Communists. As for rectifying "unrealistic borders," Israel has urged that--not in 1956, but in 1949 and on and on and on. Lip service by Arab leaders won't solve the Middle East crisis, but a positive reply to an Israeli peace offering just might do the trick.

FRANK L. SIMONS

Oak Park, Mich.

Sir:

Will you please congratulate Boris Chaliapin on his Hussein cover? The conceited, defiant "look what I've done" on Hussein's face is superb:

G. ADAMS Toronto

Sir:

There is a proverb that "one who eats the flesh of camel inherits its basic temper." I have spent many years in Spanish Morocco, only to learn to respect the Arab temper. The wounds of the Balfour Declaration cannot be forgotten, and the Arabs would attempt to throw the Jews of Israel into the sea. And if Lieut. General Glubb was surprised at King Hussein's orders, I think he is a very small man.

DON SILICEO

London

The Southern Manifesto

Sir:

In the March 26 article, your statement that I presented a call for nullification at the caucus of Southern Senators at which the manifesto was first considered is entirely incorrect. The word nullification was not in the draft I presented and there was no such implication. Another error was in the statement that I elbowed my way back on the scene after writing of the final draft. The truth is I served on the final drafting committee at the request of Senator George, who acted as chairman of the caucus. You also stated that not a Southerner rose in reply to the Northern Senators who attacked the manifesto. I spoke for the manifesto after Senator Lehman had opposed it. Since that time, several other Southerners have spoken out.

STROM THURMOND U.S. Senate Washington, D.C.

Parents & Delinquents

Sir:

I was astounded, or something, to read in TIME [April 2] that after the New York legislature passed a bill making parents financially responsible up to $250 for malicious property damage inflicted by their offspring, Governor Averell Harriman had vetoed the bill because it would "give to troublesome delinquents a weapon against their parents which they would not hesitate to use." Oh well, why should I or anybody be astounded about the people in New York? Isn't it in New York where parents frequently say: "I wish my son Johnny would hurry up and get old enough to go to reform school"? Isn't it in New York where they say: "It takes all kinds of people to make the underworld"?

W. A. HAMMAN

San Diego

The Poujade Story (Contd.)

Sir:

I read in TIME, March 19, the article devoted to M. Poujade in which it is stated with astonishing certainty that my father,

Colonel de la Rocque, had been "bought" before the war "with money from the secret funds French Premiers have always used to buy off trouble (as Colonel Francois de la Rocque of the prewar Croix de Feu was bought off)." Later the qualification "fascist" was added to the term Croix de Feu. Such slander has always emanated from the propaganda arsenal of the Communist Party and from the extreme right wing, who represented in France the forces opposing fascist and Marxist dictatorships. I insist, then, in reestablishing the facts. The fable of "secret funds" has dishonored its inventors and certain of our adversaries are now the first to honor the memory of one who lived and died a poor man. The founder of a network of military information beginning in June of 1940--a system for which he received the thanks of the Allied general staff for the high quality of his information--my father was deported to Germany with 150 of his collaborators. Pursued by the Nazis, twice arrested by them, deported in 1943, he succumbed to the effects of that deportation; his vice president, Noel Ottavi, died at the Sand-bostel concentration camp.

GILLES DE LA ROCQUE Paris P: Among those testifying at the inconclusive trial which Colonel de la Rocque brought against his alleged libelers in 1937 was ex-Premier Andre Tardieu, who, according to Parisian Journalist Pierre Lazareff (now director general of France-Soir), "stated, with considerable relish, that, as Premier, he had indeed given money to the famous Colonel. And he added that Pierre Laval had done the same. When questioned, Pierre Laval refused to admit or to deny the fact."--ED.

Running Into the Gutter

Sir:

Better watch what you say about this Elvis Presley cat [April 2], or you'll have all of young America, TiME-readers or not, down on your neck. This boy is the new god of the beanie brigade and the kiss-me-quick clique, and he's not to be spoken of lightly. Johnnie Ray was never like this; above the background screams and the thud of falling female bodies, you're hearing another Frankie Sinatra with both pop and hillbilly appeal.

ALAN C. ELMS La Center, Ky.

Sir:

In your pop record reviews, you ran into the gutter a recording by Elvis Presley. If you think the teen-agers of this country are taking the slander you printed about our man Elvis you are sadly mistaken. Man! Elvis is the most in all us cats' books. 43 ELVIS PRESLEY FANS Waterbury, Conn.

Straight or Otherwise

Sir:

Your April 2 article on "The Incredible Yankee" is incredible--incredible indeed that Robert McLane has managed to stay out of jail. As a judge of the United States Court in Germany, who was there for six years following World War II, I could only feel contempt for fellow Americans who did so much to besmirch the otherwise splendid record of the American Occupation. McLane and others of his ilk have certainly not contributed to our prestige abroad at a time when it is sorely needed.

JOSEPH M. MANDELL

Billings, Mont.

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