The Good Man

Sir:

There have always been exemplary lives, like Mr John D. Rockefeller's--masterfully portrayed in TIME [Sept. 24]--which show to what heights of ethical and spiritual perfection man is capable of ascending.

ENRIQUE AVILA

San Diego

Your story on Rockefeller read like the officially approved biographies of Henry Ford and Mary Baker Eddy. TIME used to be an organ of sharp, witty criticism rather than a cliche-ridden apologist for a spiked version of the American Dream.

JOHN R. TOWNSEND

Minneapolis

Sir:

Let us suppose that you were the victim or a holdup man, and later on, his son, who accepted the loot, knowing exactly how it was obtained, tossed you a handful of coins. Would you call that charity and would you respect the donor?

G. DEWEY SPIES San Mateo, Calif.

His character is a tribute to devoted and devout parents. His life is an example and an inspiration to the world.

GEORGE EXLINE

Hudson, Ohio

Sir:

You say the Rockefellers read the Bible every morning. I wonder what thought ran through their minds when they came to St. Matthew "Lay not up for yourselves treasures upon earth" (6:19). Did this passage create the guilty feelings that resulted the philanthropy?

PETER A. KAROPOULOS

Somerville, Mass.

Sir:

TIME'S sentimental, sweet story about superhuman, superpious Rockefeller showed extremely bad taste. I never read a similar accumulation of platitudes. It was doubtless the worst piece of writing I ever read in your magazine.

HANS RUTHENBERG Ames, Iowa

Sir:

The only people who cannot look upon the life of John D. Rockefeller Jr. as a composite of kindness, greatness and unselfish devotion to mankind everywhere are those who are unwilling to recognize that some men will always have more than others.

JOHN L. COPPIE JR.

Pittsburgh

How's Adlai?

Sir:

Prior to a boxing match, both fighters are obliged to undergo a thorough physical examination. With the health question such an important issue of the current presidential campaign, why shouldn't both presidential candidates give the public a report on their physical condition ? It is entirely possible that Adlai is suffering from a hangnail or fallen arches, unknown to the public. Just how healthy is Adlai anyhow? I, for one, would like to know.

WILLIAM J. GLASER

Faribault, Minn.

Sir:

Am reminded by Stevenson's speeches of the oldtime patent medicine man who used to drive into a town, gather a crowd, and after softening them up with a funny story and a few wisecracks would harangue the crowd with spellbinding oratory that so magnified every itch, twitch and minor pain inherent in every human being that half his listeners thought they had incipient cancer, tuberculosis or at least a chronic ulcer. Stevenson's speeches are filled with the same wisecracks, half-truths, distortions and exaggerations designed to scare the susceptible into believing that the Democratic Magic Elixir is their only hope.

HUGH V. JAMIESON

Dallas

Sir:

Adlai: "How do you expect me to act folksy in front of so many people?" [Sept. 17].

Nice that Ike doesn't have to "act" anything. What he appears to be he is. Let acting flourish in the theatrical world where it belongs. Not, Heaven forfend, in the White House.

HELEN SUTOFF Palos Verdes Estates, Calif.

Corruption at Issue

Sir:

Re "The Corruption Issue" [Sept. 24], Truman's miserable record has nothing to do with this campaign. Now if you could unearth scandal during Stevenson's tenure as governor, the comparison might have some validity.

A. J. SMITH Baltimore

Sir:

You speak of "deep freezers" and "mink coats," but there was nothing said about Aberdeen Angus cattle, registered hogs and sheep, tractors, chain saws, cultivators and a Crosley with a fringe on top.

T. C. ALMON Decatur, Ala.

Sir:

When will TIME accept--even grudgingly--the fact that Harry Truman is no longer a candidate for the presidency? Harry and his "rascals" were evicted several years ago. According to TIME'S quaint type of thought,

Ike should be as subject to attack for Teapot Dome as Adlai is held responsible for Harry's alleged foibles.

MALCOLM M. LAWRENCE

Fort Chaffee, Ark.

Harry's Heartening News

Sir:

After alarming us with such disquieting facts as "Richard Nixon is an s.o.b.," "the Eisenhower gang is a bunch of racketeers," and the Republicans have taken our country so far down the road to destruction that "with God's help, the Democrats must save us," it is good of Harry to comfort us with the heartening news that we have loyal, upright citizens left in the persons of Alger Hiss and Nathan Gregory Silvermaster [Sept. 17].

HOWARD BRUCE HENDRICKS

Lansdale, Pa.

Mixed Words

Sir:

One of your correspondents [Oct. 1] says Estes will campaign with the call, "Pie in the sky with Adlai and I." I distinctly remember Ike's thanking all who had been so kind "to Mamie and I," but I have yet to hear Estes use bad grammar.

L. S. HIRSCH New York City

G.O.P. Trouble in Utah

Sir:

You refer to Utah as "nominally Republican" [Sept. 24]; it should be observed that Bracken Lee was the first Republican governor in 24 years, and the only Republican state official to be elected to office in Utah in the 1948 elections. TIME and Kingmaker Watkins to the contrary, Governor Lee has led the resurgency of the Republican Party in Utah. His defeat at the hands of switchover voters spells trouble for the Republicans come November.

GRACE SMEDLEY

Salt Lake City

Muskie Preferred

Sir:

In your Sept. 24 story on the Maine election, you gibe at Washington pundits for their explanation of the Democratic victory, but a sentence later you do some odd punditmg yourself: "Support came in strongly from the throngs of independents who ... did not take a shine to the warnings that 'a vote for Muskie is a vote against Ike.' " Isn't it barely possible that the independent voters of Maine agreed that a vote for Muskie was a vote against Eisenhower, and voted for Muskie for exactly that reason ?

JAMES A. DECKER

Prairie Village, Kans.

Feeding Time

Sir:

No conscientious allergist can permit Walter W. Sackett's accelerated diet for infants [Sept. 24] to go unchallenged. To feed eggs, orange juice and other solids to infants only a few weeks of age is the best way to initiate such allergic diseases as atopic eczem allergic rhinitis, bronchial asthma and even neuro-circulatory disturbances.

BEN C. EISENBERG, M.D. Huntington Park, Calif.

"And what does good Dr. Sackett suggest we parents do between his "six-hour feedings" while a miserable, yowling, hungry baby decides he wants his bottle before the clock says he can have it?

As a mother of a fat, jolly, contented nonfeeding-problem eight-month-old girl, I now know why my baby has cried on and off since she was born. Good Lord, we forgot the crisp bacon.

JOY MAN GOLDEN

Plainview, N.Y.

Playgirl

Sir:

Publication of the photograph of Play-Mate Pilgrim of Playboy Magazine with her clothes on [Sept. 24] must have whetted the interest of many a TIME reader. Can you do anything about it?

JOSEPH McMAHON

Limerick, Ireland

P: For what can be done, see cut.--Ev.

A.F. v. A.F.

Sir: In a letter [Sept. 17], Robert J. Beardmore says "I'd like to say that there isn't a marine in the Marine Corps who wears his uniform with any more pride than our airmen . . . Come now. Reader Beardmore, why didn't you sign your rank? Just plain "Robert J. Beardmore, U.S.A.F." won't do, you know. Surely you're not ashamed of being an officer. The clincher is the patronizing way you refer to "our airmen." An enlisted man would lave said "we airmen."

Let's face it, Captain or Major or Colonel Beardmore, the Air Force is, with the exception of a tiny group of combat pilots, an organization of specialists--typists, mechanics, engineers, etc.--not fighters.

ARTHUR J. ROTH

Malaga, Spain

P: Reader Beardmore is not ashamed of being a staff sergeant.--ED.

Whose Ism?

Sir:

Your Sept. 17 News in Pictures reminds me of Hitler's concentration camps, where victims of racial prejudice had to live behind barbed wire guarded by the SS. Now our own children in some states cannot go to school unless protected by tanks and machine guns. O. BRANCHESI

Cincinnati

Sir: Does the U.S. have the right to criticize Soviet police tactics when we allow similar doings within our own country, as depicted in the pictures showing the results of Supreme Court's decision, whereby the federal and certain state governments are trying to shove integration down our throats?

H. ARNOLD WILLIS

Galveston, Texas

Nomination for Man of the Year: Dr. Omer Carmichael, superintendent of Louisville's successfully integrated schools [Sept. 24] for showing that the greatest problem of 1956 can be solved.

BROCK McELHERAN

Potsdam, N.Y.

What's Wrong with Picto

Sir:

The idea of Karel Janson's new "international language," Picto [Set. 24], is not new; the Chinese have employed an ideographic script for two or three thousand years. As a child I made up half a dozen systems like Janson's.

G. STEVENSON

Waverley, Mass.

Sir:

If Picto came into use, it would probably have several thousand characters in 50 years. I hope that Picto will be allowed to fold up its symbols and silently fade away.

MARVIN M. FROMM

Pittsburgh

Why Teddy?

Sir:

In your interesting article on the "Teddy Boys" of Britain it seemed that all the unusual slang words were explained but the most important--their name.

KEMP LITTLEPAGE

Point Pleasant, W. Va.

P: Teddy is tabloid-headlinese for Edward; the original "uniform" of London's hoodlums featured the pipestem trousers and velvet collars of the Edwardian era.--ED.

Van Gogh's Ear

Sir:

TIME says: "Van Gogh sliced off his left ear."

Irving Stone says: "He slashed off his right ear."

M-G-M no doubt agrees with TIME?

LORETTA J. MCCUE

Flushing, N.Y.

P:Yes. Van Gogh's famed self-portrait, which appears to show the right ear bandaged, is a mirror image.--ED.

The Most

Sir:

I am a teenager, and I think Elvis Presley is disgusting. Why should he be making $7,500 a week when schoolteachers who are educating us only make a small sum of $60 a week We'd have an awful time with a Government run by people like Elvis Presley.

PAT HANSFORD

Hollywood

Sir:

Why does TIME keep running Elvis Presley down? People who dislike him are mostly hangovers from the Gay Nineties. We really think he's the most, to say the least.

TENLEY JONES (aged 14)

Washington, D.C.

Sir:

Elvis Presley could only be a product of our current Republican Administration.

MELVIN H. WEINBERG

Dallas

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