The Conquest of Europe

Sir:

A salute for your straight reporting of Mrs. Kennedy's costumes on her trip abroad. Thank heavens she has enough respect for herself, her position and country to undertake the most tiresome chore of fittings, hairdressers, etc. Selecting something "off the rack" and pin-curling her hair before retiring would have been less bothersome. Regarding her purchase of a French costume, it was a fine diplomatic gesture toward an ally who has proved most difficult. And lest we forget, Jackie's clothes did not make her; she enhanced them.

BETTINA MUSITANO

Philadelphia

Sir:

We can all go to bed at night now with the assurance that we will be safe and secure, as our "former" enemies, now conquered, would surely never attack a land with such a charmante beauty at its helm. Bouffant hairdos! Pillbox hats! Bah! 'Tis a sad state of affairs indeed!

JACK A. OTTEM

Minneapolis

Sir:

Probably along with millions of others, I am fed up with the overlong puffs of the Kennedys in magazines and newspapers--especially of Jackie's clothes sense and beauty. I can't see anything special about Jackie's form or features. To a mere man, her "evening gown" looks more like a nightgown.

C. H. COWPER

Detroit

Sir:

Scheduled for conferences within a few hours with Tough Customer de Gaulle (friendly rival) and Khrushchev (rival), Kennedy still remembered to notice the new hairdo and provide an object lesson for American husbands.

"Well," he gushed, "I'm dazzled."

Ponder that, youse guys.

ANTHONY SANT AMBROGIO

Bloomfield, N.J.

Sir:

In the race for "slick" v. "celestial" space, there's no denying that the women are ahead--from "I like Ike" to "j'adore Jacqueline" in less than a year!

PRISCILLA H. CROSBY

Bryantville, Mass.

Feet & Furniture

Sir:

Your picture of Attorney General Robert Kennedy [June 2] certainly shows a complete lack of dignity on his part. I do wish he would keep his feet off my furniture.

WILLIAM C. WILLIAMSON

Doylestown, Pa.

"Nehru of America"

Sir:

The latest trend of American citizens is to criticize their President for no fault of his--such as the fizzling of Cuban affairs, the lagging behind in the space race, and the lowering of prestige in Laos. As an Asian, I can view it only as self-condemnation. President Kennedy's personal stature in the eyes of Indians has grown larger and greater than anybody else's. He is a Nehru of America.

S. YADAV REDDY

Hyderabad, India

Stained Glass

Sir:

Stained-glass windows are usually reserved for saints, angels or devils. Seldom do living people make the grade. However, twice I have been commissioned to depict in stained glass Presbyterian Eugene Blake as president of the National Council of Churches. The Redford Avenue Presbyterian Church in Detroit and the First Presbyterian Church in Fort Worth both have him, without halo, wings or forked tail.

HENRY LEE WILLET

President

The Willet Stained Glass Studios

Philadelphia

Miller's Spoiled Mystery

Sir:

The difficulty with Henry Miller's Tropic of Cancer [June 9], the thing that makes it so hard for us to take it at all seriously, is that it's so incredibly dull. As long as it was a mysterious and forbidden book, worthy of becoming a cause, if not of being read, everything was splendid, and Miller's unspoken name was God. Now that everyone can read him for less than a good night's drunk, he is likely to suffer in his reputation.

A world in which Miller is commonplace or less might well be an improvement over the present one. Young writers will have to discover new people to imitate. Older writers will have to find new demigods to praise.

C. V. J. ANDERSON

New York City

Sir:

Both Miller and Durrell remind one of cocky, small-statured, dirty-minded bad boys jumping and leering about in an effort to plague the teacher out of holding English class. These two have reached the point of diminishing returns, and hold about as much interest and variety as the Playtex commercials.

LYLE LYTTON

Atlanta

Not Too Lost

Sir:

Malcolm Lowry's sea novel Ultramarine was never quite so "lost" as TIME'S account would imply. He had brought the first draft of it to me in Cambridge, Mass., in 1929, as a result of reading Blue Voyage, and with the plan of working on it with me there that summer. (For an account of this singular collaboration, see Ushant, in which Lowry is called Hambo.) When, four years later, the book was published, I am sure several versions of it were in existence, so that it didn't really need to be rewritten, only, in effect, to be copied.

I myself had, and still have, what seems to be the first draft of the first 50 pages in an old exercise book. He knew I had this manuscript, and could therefore have asked for it if he had needed it; clearly, he didn't. The title of the book, Ultramarine, was, of course, a punning reference to Blue Voyage. I suggested that he ought to go a step farther and call it Purple Passage.

CONRAD AIKEN

Brewster, Mass.

Freedom Ride

Sir:

In a matter as delicate as the relationship between colored and white people in the South, only people who live and work here are really equipped to handle it properly, quietly and effectively.

Indeed, if only people who are vitally concerned about injustices in the South would live here for a while, get the "feel" of what we're like, and learn to cherish, as we do (I am an adopted Southerner), our friendships with the colored people with whom we come in contact, our easy give-and-take, they would perhaps walk more carefully--not blast through the South in a speeding bus. They would know that just as the entire Southland is damaged by the actions of the white mob in Montgomery, so each carefully nurtured relationship--often characterized by courtesy and mutual concern--of individual white and colored people is somehow damaged, hurt by racism in any form.

JAY HANLON

Hattiesburg, Miss.

Sir:

Cheers and a giant wave of the U.S. flag for the Freedom Riders, who are challenging democracy to manifest itself. If Molotov can eat in the bus station in Enterprise, Ala., and his wife does not have to go to a side window and ask a white short-order cook for the key to the colored rest room, then any Negro has more than the right to seat himself right beside Molotov and expect even more courteous service.

Keep it up, Freedom Riders. Do not listen to any talk about how far you have come since slavery except to reply that you have not come far enough.

MRS. THEADORE M. PRYOR

Wahiawa, Hawaii

Sir:

The most tragic public figure in the South today is Governor John Patterson of Alabama, a young man who, with his eyes wide open, hitched his wagon to a falling star.

ROY WILKINS

Executive Secretary

National Association for the Advancement of Colored People

New York City

Sir:

Your article "Crisis in Civil Rights" was a good one--superbly handled, well written. TIME again takes its place as the fairest of newsweeklies. More power to it.

GIRARD T. BRYANT

Kansas City, Mo.

Sir:

We from this corner of the world look at racial segregation in the U.S. South this way. Politically, it is a serious handicap for the ideals of American democracy, and many people will tend to think that the U.S. South is representative of the U.S. as a whole. Sociologically, it is nonsense, since there exists no sane proof to show that the white man is superior to the black man just because the former's skin is white and the latter's black.

It is one of the many human illusions that make the white man believe that the black man is inferior just because the white man happens to be victorious at one turn of history. But history never stands still; it goes on in a state of perpetual flux.

TIN SWE

Rangoon, Burma

Flames Without Tears

Sir:

As an old hand at fiction, may I congratulate the write-up artist who penned the account of my actions on the night my house was burned down [May 26].

The facts are these. My wife and I started the evening at the house, a little way down the road, of an absent friend. Having rescued a box of her papers and tried in vain to locate the cat, we left this house in flames and were driven back to our own home by a friendly onlooker. Here we picked up a few clothes, my wife's Guarneri violin, and the MS. of the book on which I have been working for the past two years. By the time these had been taken to the car, the house was burning. There was nothing we could do, and all the local fire engines (though not the TV trucks) were somewhere else.

So we got into the car and drove away--sadly enough, goodness knows, but (ignoring those conventions of the romantic novelette to which your write-up artist so faithfully adhered) not crying like babies, nor requiring to be restrained from running back into the flames.

ALDOUS HUXLEY

Santa Monica, Calif.

Tractor Trade

Sir:

Once again the American people are being "suckered" into revealing their complacent stupidity. Tractors for Castro! My God! Stupidity, thy name is America!

Why not spend the $17 million for tanks and give the boys another chance?

We're being ridiculed all over the world for our "nonintervention" policy. Beatniks prowl the streets of Caracas and other cities shouting "Death to Americans," while the American Government and people close their eyes to reality.

LLOYD ALLYN

Caracas, Venezuela

Sir:

It's not really easy to be an American. Being free people, we must think for ourselves. Our conscience is our "dictator." How, then, can we live with ourselves if we refuse to trade a machine for a human life?

MRS. JUNE DISHON

St. Louis

Sir:

If this country goes through with the tractors-for-prisoners ransom deal with Castro as planned, it will set a dangerous precedent because it will encourage other countries, both large and small, to do the same thing. Castro is blackmailing the mighty U.S. and humiliating us before the rest of the world. Instead of approving such a deal, our Government should denounce it for what it is and forbid any private citizen or committee of private citizens to have anything to do with it.

FRED MEARSE

The Bronx, N.Y.

Drugs on the Market

Sir:

TIME'S article, "Too Many Drugs" (May 26), is a libel of the prescription-drug industry that cannot pass unchallenged.

TIME claims there are 150,000 prescription drugs now in use, increased by 15,000 new mixtures and dosages each year, while 12,000 die off. These figures are then used to support baseless recommendations to cut drug production which, if carried out, would in part be violative of federal antitrust laws.

I will wager your medicine editor a case of aspirin that the figures are false. We can prove that the $200-million-plus rate of annual spending for health research by our industry produces at most no more than 500 new items yearly, about a tenth of them new chemical compounds.

If TIME will seek the real facts, it will find that its figures represent total listings in an annual catalogue of drug store merchandise, the Red Book, whose listings, roughly, run from Ace combs to Zoe eyebrow pencils, from adhesive tape to vending machines for postage stamps.

AUSTIN SMITH, M.D.

President

Pharmaceutical Manufacturers Association

Washington, D.C.

P: TIME'S term was 150,000 "preparations," not prescription drugs. Reader Smith is correct in saying that this figure includes other drug store merchandise. However, the fact remains that the majority of the items involved are drugs in their many forms.--ED.

Lethal Chair

Sir:

Concerning Robsjohn-Gibbings klismoi [June 2], may I predict now that these lovely, graceful, classically inspired chairs will not catch on.

Just give that picture another look. See those lovely little polished stabbers? Good for stabbing the back of the knee if you don't back up to the chair at the right angle, good for catching the hems of dresses, lovely for scarring kneecaps, gouging table legs, and catching falling babies in the eye. Not to mention that those protuberances will be the first thing the movers will manage to hit the newly painted doorway with, damaging both door and way and chair.

VESTA WARD

Salt Lake City

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