Voice of the White House

Sir:

Concerning your Hagerty cover: Since when does a press reporter take his notes in longhand? Your artist should have had shorthand symbols.

MARY ST. CLAIRE Secretary Washington, B.C.

P: Reader St. Claire, if she polls the press, will find that a reporter who uses shorthand is as rare as a secretary who can write a good news story.--ED.

Sir:

After remolding Ike's brass hat into a golden halo, and rocking the country to sleep with "Everything's fine, Daddy's here," Hagerty simply must have overcome his dislike for "wading through manure."

MARY C. HAMILTON Strykersville, N.Y.

Sir:

Re your Jim Hagerty effusion: if Elvis Presley were a member of the Eisenhower team, I have no doubt that his face would appear on your cover along with an article describing him as a great singer.

RAY BENNET Belleville, N.J.

Sir:

We're proud of Jim Hagerty. He treats representatives of all news media--radio, TV, newsreels--with the same fairness accorded the printed (press) media.

JOHN P. COSGROVE

Broadcasting Washington, B.C.

Seurat & the Ladies

Sir:

You must be proud of yourselves to put such things as the "Three Nude Studies" in TIME. I return the pictures. You keep them.

MRS. WM. C. DORSEN Penfield, Ill.

Sir:

Seurat's paintings [Jan. 20] reminded me of a famed pathologist at the University of Michigan who occasionally gave lectures on "pathology in art," whimsically pointing out the "acres and acres of adipose tissue" painted by the Flemish artists. With this in mind, Seurat's immaculate technique, when applied to the representation of nudes, is suggestive of the measles, or worse, smallpox, or even the French pox derived from the older days of the bordellos of the Left Bank. These features of speculative pathology are, of course, lost in the Seurat landscapes.

ROBERT S. DIETERLE Ann Arbor, Mich.

Sir:

Our own Mary Cassatt was also a pointillist painter.

CATHARINE HUNT PAXTON Port Chester, N.Y.

P: Mary Cassatt (1845-1926) was a great impressionist, did not dabble in points.--ED.

Pace for President?

Sir:

Mr. Frank Pace is excellent presidential timber--well educated, fine background, superior administrative abilities. He has an interest in our Government, is an Anglo-Saxon, and approaches matters the way that type of person always does. Most important of all, he is a bang-up golfer.

KENNETH R. PYATT San Antonio

Sir:

After reading the article on Pace, a paraphrase keeps running through my mind: What is good for General Bynamics seems to be good for the United States.

CURTIS BESINGER Lawrence, Kans.

Success & Mess

Sir:

Thanks for showing the potentialities that Eisenhower saw in Neil McElroy--a position well filled.

SALLY LANGHOFF Rosemont, Pa.

Sir:

Your description of McElroy makes it evident that his mentality and action are identical with that of Ralph Hopkins of The Man in the Gray Flannel Suit and Avery Bullard of Executive Suite.

E. G. M. HANNS

Sao Paulo, Brazil

Sir:

Being a taxpayer and homemaker, I am very much interested in knowing why Defense Secretary McElroy needs eleven mess attendants attached to his office [Jan. 13].

MRS. A. DOUGLAS RICE

Burham, N.C.

P: Let Taxpayer Rice take whatever comfort there may be in the fact that there used to be 13 of them--ED.

Harry's Way

Sir:

Is Mr. Truman trying to say [Jan. 20] that President Eisenhower is not doing a good enough job because the unerring Mr. Truman can no longer tell him what to do? Is it not enough to have ruined the brilliant career of General MacArthur?

JAMES KING

Rockford, Mich.

Sir:

It takes real guts to deride one of the world's greatest generals and statesmen in just a few sentences to satisfy an "imaginary" ego.

EDWARD KURDZIEL

Rothbury, Mich.

Sir:

When is ex-Captain Truman going to reveal to us how he told Generals Foch and Pershing what to do in World War I?

LYNN MYERS Franklin, Pa.

Big Chance

Sir:

I recommend the establishment of a sweepstakes to be conducted by the Treasury, with one-half of the proceeds to be awarded as tax-exempt prizes (possibly savings bonds) and the other half to be used to cut the high taxes of all tax-tired Americans in all of our 48 states. This sweepstakes would be a practical, patriotic and voluntary way to raise dollars towards the coming fiscal year's $74 billion budget. Almost every good American is endowed with the desire to take a chance in one form or another. Sweepstakes tickets could be sold at existing state buildings.

FRANCIS E. KELLY Boston

The Woolly Brains

Sir:

In your Jan. 20 issue, a University of Buffalo physics professor tells a sad story of approximately 60% student failure in the physics courses, and blames it on "permitting woolly-brained educationists to impose their peculiarly distorted concept of the meaning of education on our school system." The answer may simply be poor instruction, or perhaps Professor "Pancho" Bobie's [Jan. 13] school of misguided thought that almost anyone can teach if he has sense, character and a basic knowledge of history, science, languages and literature.

GEORGE A. W. STOUFFER JR. Indiana, Pa.

Sir:

Chairman Lyle Phillips could well use some competent "woolly-brained" physicists to analyze the methods used by his physics department. Looking at the pathetic pupil achievement in these courses at the University of Buffalo causes me to ask: When will university physics and math departments take a good long look at how to teach science?

ARTHUR D. MEYER Worthington, Ohio

Sir:

How can we expect our children to enroll in science courses when most of them can't even spell?

E. COYLE New York City

Guerrilla Warfare

Sir:

I have enjoyed TIME'S book reviews for years, but Writer with Boxing Gloves [Jan. 13] takes the cake. We carry on a running battle with our sons for the sake of good English, but the guerrilla warfare of the sportswriters in the daily newspapers constantly defeats us. The almost futile effort to relegate matters of sports ("games for boys") to their proper place of importance in our children's thinking is infuriating.

KATHLEEN KUBEK Sparta, Mich.

The West Virginians

Sir:

As a former resident of West Virginia, my greatest shock did not occur in learning of the sad condition of her schools [Jan. 20J, but rather in the possibility that the citizens may be finally awakening enough to do something about it.

CHARLES W. FARLEY Euclid, Ohio

Sir:

We teachers in West Virginia have not been forced to contend with the hoodlumism prevalent in many "good" school systems.

PATTY GRADY Huntington, W.Va.

Hah, Hah, Hah, K.K.K.

Sir:

The Indian uprising in North Carolina is the happiest news [Jan. 27] in many moons. It is high time someone took a scalping knife to these arrogant Klansmen, who claim to be 100% American. One can only hope the incident will laugh the K.K.K. out of existence.

ELIZABETH DAVIS New Brunswick, N.J.

Below Par in Fla.

Sir:

TIME [Jan. 20] goofed, but good, in reporting that "heavy snow wiped out half of crop in Dade County (Miami)." Our reputation is shot. Please tell your readers that rain damaged the crops.

THOMAS C. ROBINSON

Miami

Sir:

Where in the world did you get such information? You are really slipping--on the snow.

P. E. BARBER Fort Lauderdale, Fla.

P: TIME fell on its ice.--ED.

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