Thunder from Down Under

Sir:

The new "maturity" which your April 4 cover story credits to Australia also applies to TIME'S coverage of that vigorous country. Congratulations for writing five meaningful pages of American prose on Australia without once using the words "kangaroo" or "boomerang," or evoking the usual images that these terms have contributed to a now outdated view of Down Under.

Robert Menzies may eloquently summarize the new Australian vigor, but the national motivation of which you speak comes directly from those dinkum "blokes, coves and coots" who see a job to be done and are quietly going about doing it, fortified by a slightly irreverent bush spirit and the best bloody beer in the world.

HENRY HEIKKINEN

Minneapolis

Sir:

Dobell's portrait of Mr. Menzies is a hideous physiognomical distortion. However, TIME'S writers were as flattering with their pen pictures of our P.M. as Australia's Dobell was awry with his brushwork.

HOWARD ROBERTSON

Brisbane

Sir:

Your feature confirms that our leading statesman, Menzies, is of world stature; your cover shows that our leading portrait painter, Dobell, does not make the grade.

SPENCER HASSALL

Sydney

Sir:

Looking at the portrait of Prime Minister Menzies of Australia, one feels that it is an excellent likeness, portraying not only his physical appearance but revealing his character as well. My congratulations to the artist.

LENA DILLAVOU HEDIN

Mexico City

Sir:

Maybe we all don't like Mr. Menzies as much as you say we do, but the story illustrates one point: the U.S. is becoming increasingly aware of Australia.

KEN COPLAND

Sydney

Sir:

You omitted a point of amusing historical significance to Americans. When Captain Phillip, R.N., founded the first Australian settlement that "warm January day in 1788," his express assignment was the establishment of a penal colony to replace that lost in America in 1785. The first Australian colonization was a direct result of the War of Independence.

BEN CARLIN

Falls Church, Va.

Sir:

You did not report that the Australian male still rules and has not yet become subservient to and dominated by the female of the species as appears to be the state of affairs in the U.S.--although it did take us some time to restore the position after the G.I. invasion of 1942-45.

E. L. HENZELL

Dayboro, Queensland

Sir:

You quoted a "senior Australian diplomat" as claiming that Australians "can talk to anybody in the world without any sense of innate inferiority." He must be a bigger nincompoop than most other brainless, unlettered Australian public servants, who banned Erskine Caldwell's God's Little Acre and threatened Tom Lehrer with imprisonment if he sang his songs in Adelaide.

How can such absurd, Dogpatch-like creatures be thought equal to civilized people?

A. CORVIN-ROMANSKI

Melbourne

Sir:

We knew that there would be great interest in TIME's Menzies cover and story, but we never anticipated the splash it caused. Ever since the magazine hit the stands, TIME and Dobell have been Topic A in Australia.

Almost every major Australian paper has reproduced the cover portrait--the Australian Women's Weekly (circ. 800,000) reprinted it in full color--and nearly everyone has something to say, from those who call it "a travesty" to those who say it is "a work of genius"--or, more succinctly, from "bloody good" to "bloody awful."

The Melbourne Herald headlined its story MENZIES PORTRAIT--A STORM. The Sydney Sunday Telegraph reprinted the entire cover story, and the Sydney Daily Telegraph editorialized: "That American TIME magazine has chosen Mr. Menzies for its cover portrait is a tribute to a great Australian statesman and a boost for Australia."

Though TIME'S Melbourne printing plant increased its press run by 50% to meet the demand for copies, it was not nearly enough. All newsstand copies were sold out within two days, with requests for copies still coming in. Australians are really beginning to feel out from Down Under in terms of the rest of the world.

KEN CLARKE

TIME-LIFE International Sydney

How to Choose a Candidate

Sir:

History tells us our country was founded in part by people who came here to escape the domination of the Pope.

Are we to start back into that turmoil by electing a Catholic President? Heaven forbid ! There is no place in America for a Pope and his various machinations.

MRS. W. A. O'CONNOR

Corvallis, Ore.

Sir:

If you vote against a man because of his religion, it is called bigotry. But if you vote for him for the same reason, it is called tolerance.

EDWARD CHARLES

Binghamton, N.Y.

Sir:

There are things far more important than a candidate's religion--peace for one. Will he tell the people how they can have peace by instituting the rule of law?

CARL K. BRONEER

San Diego

Disunion in South Africa

Sir:

Once again, this time in South Africa, the soft underbelly of the Western "free" nations reveals a startling and potentially dangerous weakness. Race tensions and hatreds, while long played down as having no real effect on the ability of the Western alliance to oppose Communism, flare forth as a glaring reminder that this could be the Achilles' heel that Khrushchev has been looking for. It is a situation made to order for those trying to sell Communism as the panacea for all the tragic ills suffered by the black man at the hands of "democratic" governments.

NELSON HENRY

Dayton

Sir:

The ignorance of some people is ofttimes appalling; do not South Africa's Prime Minister Verwoerd and the mass of cretins cavorting behind him, in the slime and filth that is his belief, even suspect what is to be the certain fate of their children? Bloodshed and tyranny lead to but more bloodshed and tyranny.

ARTHUR J. JACKSON

Philadelphia

Sir:

South Africa's "realists" (white Nationalists) are the wave of the future. TIME (and others) should realize that it was the realistic element of our world that did all the building, inspiring, and gave the leadership that brought us to our present high level of civilization.

PHILIP F. CONNELL

Portland, Me.

Sir:

The brutality of Sharpeville served to show the world, in blood-tinted colors, that the real savages of Africa are the ones wearing white skin.

AUSIER MOURA

Rio de Janeiro

Roof at the Top

Sir:

In a recent trip through the Southeast, I wanted to take some colored pictures of what I thought was a distinct style of architecture with a new, fresh approach. I came home with one picture--St. Paul's Lutheran Church of Sarasota. I am glad we concur on Victor Lundy's abilities [April 4].

(THE REV.) FRANK A. KOSTYU

Immanuel Evangelical & Reformed Church

Alliance, Ohio

Sir:

With reference to the "bold roofs" of St. Paul's and St. Andrew's, may I suggest that they evoke nothing so much as the graceful lines of a revival tent. It would appear that church architecture has regressed through neo-store-front to neo-camp-meeting.

CARL BANGS

Kankakee,Ill.

Sir:

Your story on the fascinating creations of Architect Victor Lundy comes as no surprise to his boyhood friends. Back in the years of our Bronx school days, everyone recognized his exceptional talents.

In fact, one of the many pleasures I enjoyed from our close friendship was the fringe benefit of sharing in the endless stream of invitations that he received to parties. There was always an ample surplus of good-looking girls. Victor married the second prettiest girl I know--a friend of my wife's.

JOSEPH E. SALES

Flushing, N.Y.

The Deliverer

Sir:

Your kindly and loving obit for Franklin P. Adams [April 4] evoked long-forgotten memories of his "Conning Tower" columns, which, secreted among the pages of William Wordsworth's output, helped a desperate group of college juniors get through an uninspired course in romantic poetry.

By midterm, in appreciation, we had written the following for underground class distribution:

Lord, we don't like to complain

We know that the course is no lark

But there's that horrible pain

When Wordsworth determines the mark.

Nothing to read but the love

That enters his heart every day

Lord, if you hear up above

Fling us an F.P.A.!

Who will deliver today's Wordsworth students? Allen Ginsberg?

SYLVIA R. LEFF

San Francisco

Sir:

If the late great F.P.A. got away with it, why not me too?

Of all sad words asked married men

The saddest are these: Where have you

been?

Or:

A thing of duty is a chore forever.

ANNE ALLMAN

St. Augustine, Fla.

Madison Time

Sir:

As a student nurse at the Johns Hopkins Hospital, only two blocks away from Madison Avenue, I particularly enjoyed your article on the new dance, "the Madison" [April 4].

Almost everyone around here is learning this dance--from the little children in the neighborhood to the medical students, doctors and nurses.

It is quite therapeutic too. You should see our patients perk up and cry, "It's Madison time!" whenever the tune is heard on the radio.

PETIE DAVIS

Baltimore

Sir:

Maybe down South and out West it is called the "Madison," but up in Harlem it is called "Mashed Potato."

DUNCAN B. BUTLER

Glen Rock, NJ.

Stockholder Report

Sir:

Re your March 14 article on the French aluminum and chemical company, Pechiney: this article summarizes in the most vivid way the activity of our company. However, I must point out an error regarding our activity in Cameroon. The aluminum plant belonging to the Compagnie Cam-erounaise de l'Aluminum Pechiney/Ugine is exclusively in the hands of French and Belgian shareholders [not shared with Olin-Mathieson]. On the other hand, Olin-Mathieson is an important shareholder of FRIA, which produces alumina from local bauxite in Guinea; other shareholders in the company, in addition to our French group, are English, German and Swiss producers.

R. DE VITRY

President

Pechiney

Paris

P: TIME erred.--ED.

The Thinking Man's Philter?

Sir:

Congratulations for your delightful cover story of tobacco [April 11]. I have never smoked in my life, though I have always liked him to "blow some my way" and, being of the full age of majority, pressed down and running over toward 90, I well remember the hideous fear with which many oldsters watched the younger generation (of which I was one back in the last century) eating tomatoes. (They were known as love apples and considered poisonous.) So, how about this song of an old tomato:

Hush little 'Baccy, don't you cry.

As you are now, so once was I.

As I am now you soon may be--

The source of vitamins A to Z.

LOUISE HUBERT GUYOL

New Orleans

Sir:

Your cover was enough to make me want to give up smoking--sadistic symbolism at its finest!

LYNDA PECK

Washington, B.C.

Sir:

Your excellent article on tobacco stated that 36% of all women over 15 smoke. But apparently Cover Artist Artzybasheff was unaware of this, because not one of the burning cigarettes he drew had even the slightest trace of lipstick on it.

CHARLES KINGSTON

Evanston,Ill.

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