Man of the Year
Sir: Jack Kennedy, our President.
A. KUPIDLOWSKI Stonington, Conn.
Sir: Your nomination should be a composite man. Whether he had been involved in the shooting at Sharpeville, the Congo, Algeria, or Nigeria the world has at last begun to take notice of "The African Man." His emergence on the world scene is not only the event of the year but the touchstone of this new decade.
D.C. DE LA POER BERESFORD Melbourne, Australia
Sir: Dag Hammarskjold's defiance of the leader of the "East Side Rocket Gang"--Khrushchev--prompts me to nominate the valiant Swede.
E. A. BINNEY Preston, England
Sir: I suggest the Big Five of neutralism--U.A.R.'s Nasser, India's Nehru, Ghana's Nkrumah, Indonesia's Sukarno and Yugoslavia's Tito as Men of the Year.
MELKON GERARD DJIZMEDJIAN Cairo
Sir: There can only be one choice: Ship's Cook Brian Quinn. He led Soviet Seaman Victor Jaanimets to freedom.
ROBERT M. SHEERIN Saint-Jean-Cap Ferrat, France
Winners & Losers
Sir: Well, we survived Truman.
WILLIAM R. LINDLEY Tacoma, Wash.
Sir: Now that Flopsy and Mopsy are in the White House, nobody's carats will be safe.
WILLIAM F. MARTZ Detroit
Sir: Nixon could "stand up to Mr. K.," but not a home-grown Mr. K.
FRANCIS LYNCH Los Angeles
Sir: John F. Kennedy, a brilliant young man with plan and purpose, won the people. This country needs his winning ways. May he now make ours a winning country.
JOSEPH J. HUTTIE Bethlehem, Pa.
Sir: Will Walter Reuther move into the White House or use it only as a business address?
RUSSELL E. ABEL Dallas
Sir: I found it highly significant that Kennedy was on the Nov. 7 cover, while Nixon occupied it the preceding week. I'm a Republican and saw the handwriting on the wall with your Nov. 7 issue, but still voted for Nixon. Thanks for good and impartial coverage on the elections.
EILEEN MCKENNA Syosset, N.Y.
Thought you'd be interested in the enclosed picture [see cut]. Sort of "something for everybody."
DAN O'CALLAHAN Peekskill, N.Y.
Sir: Now that he is out of work, I suggest the French people elect Eisenhower to replace De Gaulle and end the Algerian war.
ROBERT TIPTON Monroe, Me.
Sir: With all the recent harping on the "youth" of the candidates, perhaps the nation's employers will now cease considering "over 40" as synonymous with "senility."
F. H. NORMAN CARTER New York City
Sir: I am glad Mr. Kennedy won--if for no other reason than to give proof positive that we are a tolerant people. This should lay low, once and for all, the hue and cry that Protestants are a bigoted and intolerant lot of people.
CORNELIUS NICHOLAS BARKER Minister The Manasseh Cutler Church (Congregational) Hamilton, Mass.
Election Issue
Sir: I write to compliment you on the Election Extra Issue. It's not that I liked the issue because it agreed with what I think. This is partly true; but, much more, you hit every good sidelight on the head, as well as describing the broad flow of the election itself. To do this as shrewdly and entertainingly as you did is one thing; to collect, edit, write, print and distribute the whole thing in little over a day is tremendous.
JOHN ROTCHFORD Jackson Heights, N.Y.
The Alamo
Sir: Having just seen John Wayne's The Alamo, I was amazed to read your hatchet job in your Nov. 7 issue. The review, which found fault with everything except the institution of John Wayne himself, was filled with distortions and evidenced a deliberately hostile reviewer ("the picture was as flat as Texas"). No mention was made that the picture has a patriotic theme showing how diverse and often feuding men banded together with the common purpose of fighting for liberty.
BEN E. PINGENOT Eagle Pass, Texas
Sir: Re your review of The Alamo: after a fairly steady diet of doom, declining prestige and farm income, dull candidates, duller debates, and disunited nations, may I offer my heartfelt thanks for the first genuine laugh in months.
MRS. JAN M. LAITOS Omaha
It's Only Art
Sir: Many of the features in your Art section have been far out in left field, but this one about Jean Dubuffet is the limit. He is simply a gangster who expresses his antisocial character and makeup in the medium of painting. Maybe I am old-fashioned in believing that art should have an esthetic appeal.
SVEND E. ANDERSEN Nutley, N.J.
Sir: Oh for the good old days when a painting was addressed to the eye instead of to the ear, when it spoke for itself and needed no explanation. Now vision is verbalized, and the honest artist is out of fashion--and out of luck. I might suggest that $30,000 for a mess of refuse from the town dump is a high price to pay for jargon. Happily, the wheel will turn.
DONALD C. GREASON Bernardston, Mass.
Sir: The critics, who once scorned Dubuffet, now, according to TIME, call him "the most important painter to come out of postwar France." But the public continues to scorn him, because he is ahead of his times and the public, as usual, is behind the times.
ROSALIND CONSTABLE New York City
Sir: Congratulations on your Dubuffet article. It is good to see a painter working fresh connections of mind and eye. More strong digestions like his are needed to assimilate the art of the past and give the impetus necessary to handle new facets of today's vision. His work is not cruel but intelligently kind.
ALFONSO OSSORIO East Hampton, N.Y.
Sir: Re your Nov. 7 issue: Ted Bates & Co. is not the agency for "Miles Laboratories (Alka-Seltzer)."
FRANCIS E. SAMMONS JR. Ted Bates & Co. Inc. New York City
Sir: The item both upset our stomach and gave us a headache, we naturally dropped two Alka-Seltzer tablets in a glass of water. While they fizz, we will call to your attention the fact that we have been the agency of record for Miles Laboratories for 40 years.
ALBERT G. WADE II Wade Advertising Chicago
Independent Times
SIR: TIME, NOV. 14, SAYS THE ST. PETERSBURG "TIMES" is OWNED BY MY COMPETITOR, BRITISH
PRESS LORD ROY THOMSON. THE ST. PETERSBURG "TIMES" is ONE OF FEW U.S. NON-CHAIN NEWSPAPERS OWNED BY A WRITING EDITOR WITH INSTRUCTIONS TO MY EXECUTORS TO KEEP IT THAT WAY.
NELSON POYNTER EDITOR-PRESIDENT ST. PETERSBURG TIMES ST. PETERSBURG, FLA.
Sir: The St. Petersburg Independent is a member of the Thomson Group. Incidentally, the Independent is the only newspaper in the world which gives away free papers when the sun fails to shine. In 50 years the first edition has been given away free 211 times.
LOYAL PHILLIPS St. Petersburg Independent St. Petersburg, Fla.
A Quiet American
Sir: I was very much moved by your Oct. 31 story of Mark Higgins and his death in the Congo. He did a brave and wonderful thing in refusing to accept the "set pattern" by choosing to work in Africa with Missionary Albert Schweitzer.
MARY D. EDWARDS New York City
The Nuclear Argument
Sir: I note the judgment of Professor I. I. Rabi, member of the President's Science Advisory Board (TIME, November 14th), that I am "not technically qualified to discuss such questions" as I raised in my two open letters to the Presidential candidates on the issue of nuclear tests. Professor Rabi apparently means that, since I am not a nuclear physicist, I am incompetent to discuss issues of public policy with regard to the development of nuclear technology. This is an absurd and arrogant judgment.
In January, 1951, just after President Truman had issued his directive to determine the technical feasibility of a thermonuclear weapon, I was appointed to the Atomic Energy Commission. I recall that Professor Rabi and some of his confreres on the General Advisory Council were profoundly wrong at that time, both in their scientific estimates about the feasibility and practicability of the new weapon. It turned out later that the Soviet Union was no more than six months behind us in nuclear technology. Their thermonuclear or H-bomb test was made, in fact, only about six months after ours.
I am aware of Professor Rabi's strongly emotional opposition, and that of a segment of the scientific fraternity, to the resumption of nuclear tests. In my judgment Professor Rabi and his confreres are wrong again. Their technical qualifications as nuclear physicists do not guarantee the validity of their views on public policy.
I note also that Dr. Hans Bethe, Professor of Physics at Cornell University, commented that I was attempting "to divert public opinion from the real issue: to get a treaty that could lead to disarmament." On the contrary, I was attempting to divert public opinion to the real issue, which is the technological progress of the U.S. For two years our advance in nuclear technology has been stopped by the moratorium on tests. Meantime the progress of the Soviet Union--so one must assume, in the absence of any evidence to the contrary--has continued unchecked and uncontrolled.
My open letters to the candidates called attention--in necessarily guarded fashion, owing to security regulations--to the possibility of revolutionary new weapons. Doubt has been publicly cast on the military value of these new weapons by Dr. David R. Inglis, past Chairman of the Federation of American Scientists. He could readily clear up his doubt by reference to the official request of the armed services--the Army, the Navy, and the Air Force--for a study, on an urgent basis, of such weapons.
I must also advert to the charge of "irresponsibility" made against me by Dr. Jerome B. Wiesner, member of the President's Science Advisory Committee. His position apparently is that all discussion of new possibilities in nuclear technology is "irresponsible" and "scare" talk. From a nuclear scientist who must know that nuclear technology is in its infancy and that its possibilities are almost endless this statement is incomprehensible. He further maintains that nothing must "inhibit the government" in its endeavor to reach an agreement with the Soviet Union on the cessation of nuclear tests. He apparently shares the current obsession, prevalent in a sector of the scientific community and unfortunately communicated to the government, that a treaty to end nuclear tests is somehow inevitably the beginning of disarmament and a guarantee of peace. This is nonsense. For my part I maintain that nothing should inhibit the government in providing for the nuclear progress of the U.S. in the interests of military security. If we can think of nothing in the field of arms control about which to negotiate except a ban on nuclear tests we are indeed at the end of our political and diplomatic rope.
THOMAS E. MURRAY New York City
P:Reader Murray, former member of the AEC (1950-57) is special consultant to the Joint Congressional Committee on Atomic Energy.--ED.
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