Spaceman

Sir:

May I nominate as Man of the Year Commander Alan Shepard, the first man in space. As an anti-Communist Maltese, I do not believe that the Communists have yet sent a man into space.

Vic CARABOTT

Albion, Australia

Sir:

A significant thing about Astronaut Shepard's space flight is that it was made on the birthday of Karl Marx, the author of Communism.

OMER F. BROWN II

Trenton, N.J.

Sir:

Astronauts in alphabetical order! Shepard is sixth, not seventh as you state in your article of May 12--unless, of course, you include Gagarin in the list!

Was not the name Freedom 7 chosen by the astronauts themselves, the number "7" to designate the total number of astronauts ("Freedom" being self-explanatory) ?

MRS. D. E. Ross Fairvicw Park, Ohio P: Yes.--ED.

Sir:

Freedom 7 not only proved that we are not as far behind the Russians as they would like to think, but also that we have more confidence in our space program than the Reds have.

Despite Khrushchev's bragging, they had to make sure Gagarin was back safely before they dared make an announcement. We had ours on TV (make or break) for the whole world to see.

Let our friends and enemies alike note this example of honesty as one of the many qualities of a free people.

GEORGE T. BRUNO

Denver

Crumbs & Trout

Sir:

With interest I read your article "Diplomacy--Penny Ante" (April 21). I happen to be one of the Dutch editors who got his slice of meat snatched away at the conference in Noordwijk.

We were very grateful for the background information given to us, which was sound and very helpful. Knowing the situation, we have not been too harsh on the embassy, which was just as embarrassed as we were. This penny-wise seminar could have done a lot of harm in any other country than Holland. America should realize that it is terribly hard to catch trout with just bread crumbs, especially when other countries know exactly what trouts like.

J. DEN BOEF Vlaardingen, The Netherlands

Corbu

Sir:

In connection with your excellent Le Corbusier coverage, you might like to know that "Corbu" was deeply influenced by the unusual white, windowless, thick-walled folk architecture of the tiny Mediterranean island of Mykonos.

"Now I know that I have never built anything worthwhile," exclaimed Le Corbusier when, in the early 1930s, he was first confronted with these extraordinary churches, with their rounded, curving walls that follow the turning of the roads, their thick, often windowless outer shells looking like the ramparts of an ancient fortification, their arches spanning across narrow alleyways, and topped with strange pigeon-coop bell towers.

All of these characteristics appear in Le Corbusier's famous style and are particularly well illustrated in the examples from the Ronchamp Chapel, of which you printed such fine pictures.

RUTH IVOR

New York City

Echoes of Cuba

Sir:

A hundred Peace Corps will not undo the harm that the CIA and our military have done in Cuba to our world reputation. Thinking Africans in this first area that was scheduled to receive Peace Corps teams are very suspicious already of U.S. motives. The example of how Mr. Kennedy's brave new Administration is bringing "peace" to the poor people of Cuba may cause the poor people of Africa to reject our offers almost as fast as the Cubans rejected us.

Just a few more sickeningly self-righteous cloak-and-dagger capers like the Great Cuban Invasion by our completely irresponsible CIA and we will have lost the second biggest continent's good will even faster than we lost Asia.

ANTON NELSON Technical Adviser Meru Co-Operative Union Tanganyika

Sir:

American newsmen, "in the rush to select a scapegoat" for the abortive Cuban-invasion attempt, need look no farther than their own typewriters. If the CIA was uninformed as to the real conditions in Cuba, especially concerning the morale of the masses and the probability of wholesale defections from Castro's militia, then the American newspaper readers were doubly so.

Instead of skulking around in the jungles giving away anti-Castro invasion plans, why weren't newsmen walking around the streets of Havana or villages near the Bay of Pigs finding out how many people were really unhappy?

JOHN DAY

Buenos Aires

Sir:

Your report on Cuba is truthful, probably, but irresponsible, definitely. Unless you naive, honest fellows learn to stop shooting off your silly mouths, even friends who love your wonderful and generous country will lose faith. All things in moderation--even the truth.

Democracy is a wonderful thing if only you could muzzle it.

IVAN A. MITCHELL Dunedin, New Zealand

Sir:

Thank God we have a President who is young enough to try new ideas, mature enough to learn from his mistakes, and courageous enough to admit he was in error and try again with new faith and enthusiasm.

JOHN LEWIS

Wellesley, Mass.

Sir:

As I told my Democratic friends on election eve, we're going to look back on the Eisenhower years with fond remembrance. Those years of quiet but firm diplomacy and, if necessary, decisive action were great years.

KENNETH E. STROUT Lexington, Mass.

Same Shade of Scarlett

Sir:

If you can't write a clever review without taking a negative approach, couldn't you just for once be a little less condescending in your evaluation and exhibit a little more forthright enthusiasm?

I'd be interested to see what TIME had to say about G.W.T.W. 22 years ago.

JOYCE GUNTER Lafayette, Calif.

P: The judgment was about the same as 22 years later, but the blade was not so sharp. Said the cover story on Vivien Leigh, Dec. 25, 1939:

"Gone With the Wind was a U.S. legend. Producer David Selznick sensed that the first rule in retelling a legend is exactly the same as retelling a fairy tale to children--no essential part of the story must ever be changed. So long as they swore by the book, producers of Gone With the Wind were free to make as great a picture as they could, and the film has almost everything the book has in the way of spectacle, drama, practically endless story and the means to make them bigger and better."--ED.

Surrender

Sir:

TIME gambled--and lost. The review of Play the Devil has General Eisenhower losing a bet because his troops did not reach the German border by Christmas 1944. To settle the bet, your reviewer could have asked anyone from the 22nd Infantry Regiment, 4th Infantry Division, where he was on Sept. 12, 1944. The correct answer is Germany--I know: I was present as a platoon leader. General Eisenhower should get his -L-5 back. TOM REID

Lieutenant Colonel, U.S.A. A.P.O. 46, New York City

P: Not as Ike tells it. Said he Jan. 14, 1959, at the National Press Club: "We insisted we were going to be on the borders of Germany at Christmas , and if they had any sense they'd surrender. Well, they didn't, and I lost -L-5." The operative word seems to be "surrender."--ED.

Not a Bequest

Sir:

I would like to draw your attention to a misleading impression created by an item in the May 5 issue of TIME. My late husband, Oscar Hammerstein, did not leave a bequest to the Southwark Cathedral in London. Several weeks after his death I received a letter from Canon Colin Cuttell informing me that a motion had been passed at a meeting of the cathedral chapter to install a memorial to Oscar because of his contribution to the English theater. He asked for my approval to do this, and I agreed. I later made a small donation to help implement this plan.

DOROTHY B. HAMMERSTEIN New York City

Catharism

Sir:

The role of the Papacy is painted dark indeed in your account of the Albigensian Crusade [April 25]. But you do not tell your readers why the religion of Mani (of which Catharism was one of the manifestations) has been proscribed by the civil as well as the religious authorities wherever it has raised its head.

Not only Roman Pope, but also pagan Roman Emperor, Byzantine Basileus, Sassanian Shah and Ottoman Padishah moved to stamp out this perverse negation of human life when it has appeared in their domains. Shah Bahram, the Iranian King who had to deal with Mani himself, flayed the arch-heresiarch alive and tacked his skin above the great gate of the city of Ctesiphon as an eternal warning, and it waved in the wind there several hundred years.

The reason that Manichaeanism has always evoked successful persecution is that it ends human life upon this planet. H. C. Lea, the American historian, says of the Cathari: "If a majority of the faithful had adopted their beliefs, Europe would have been reduced to primitive savagery; it was not merely a revolt against the church, but the abdication of man before nature."

God help France if this heresy does indeed revive!

MANNING MACDONALD Los Angeles

Disraeli

Sir:

I read (and laughed at in derision!) the letter written to you by Walter L. Arnstein, assistant professor of history at Roosevelt University in Chicago--in which he says that Benjamin Disraeli, Prime Minister of England, was born of Jewish parents but later was baptized and became a faithful follower of a Protestant church--therefore, not a Jew any longer.

In a book of mine called This Way, Miss, I retold a story about Millionaire Otto Kahn and the hunchback wit, Marshall P. Walsh. The banker and the hunchback were walking along Fifth Avenue, and the banker, pointing to a Christian place of worship, said to the hunchback: "This is my church." The hunchback replied: "I thought you were a Jew." The banker said: "I was a Jew." The hunchback looked up at him, walked a few steps, stopped and looked up at the banker again and said: "You know, Mr. Kahn--I was a hunchback!"

However, for the record--at least the emotional one: while in London last year, in Westminster Abbey, I heard a group of people ask the guide where Benjamin Disraeli's tomb was, and the guide replied, "Oh, he isn't buried here--he was a Jew, you know."

I suggest that Professor Arnstein look into his heart, and his common sense, before accepting the written word.

GEORGE JESSEL

Santa Monica, Calif.

P: Disraeli is buried in the family vault at

Hughenden, Buckingham, England.--ED.

Post-Mortem

Sir:

Your story on Adolf Eichmann refers to Reinhardt Heydrich suffering a severed spine in the attack on him near Lidice. It was as Heydrich rode through Prague that a hand grenade was thrown into his open car and exploded behind him. His spleen was torn to pieces. In spite of almost immediate surgical intervention, he died several days later. I had to perform the autopsy and found the spine intact. As the whole incident occurred in Prague, the destruction of Lidice cannot be linked with the death of Heydrich in the way described in your statement.

DR. H. HAMPERL Director of Pathology University of Bonn Bonn, West Germany

P: The Germans destroyed Lidice for aiding and sheltering Heydrich's killers.--ED.

Harvard, Non

Sir:

As the Bryn Mawrtyr sister of a Harvard man, I've long suspected that Harvard owes much to Bryn Mawr. Your May 5 issue confirms my suspicion. The "non-Horatian plea" of Harvard's President Pusey to Harvard students protesting English language diplomas, appears in Bryn Mawr's Alumnae Bulletin, spring 1961. The author: Jane Hess, Bryn Mawr '62.

If its president wisely continues to read his wife's alumnae magazine, Harvard has a rosy future.

KATHERINE K. TURMAN Chicago

P: President Pusey sent his thanks to Miss Hess.--ED.

Sir:

I am puzzled by your description of the diploma riot at Harvard. You say the battle cry was "Latin, Si; Pusey, No !" But why should the scholarly young classicists do their screaming in Spanish? I suspect that the cry really was "Latin, Sic; Pusey, Non !"

TOMMY O'BYRNE New York City

P: One student claims it started as sic--but, misunderstood, it became si. Others, however, insist that "Harvard students don't know that much Latin."--ED.

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