Fearful? Anxious?

Sirs:

Why the characterization of Roman Catholic population statistics as startling? (TIME, Jan. 8.)

Has TIME some fear or anxiety about the matter?

(REV.) FRANK J. B. FLYNN Detroit

P: TIME is neither fearful nor anxious about the great Roman Catholic Church, but thought (and thinks) the disproportion between the Roman Catholic percentage of Boston's population (74.3%) and the U.S. as a whole (16%-plus) a noteworthy fact. -- ED.

What Is It?

Sirs:

TIME says: ". . . as British as the Marble Arch, mutton pie, or Boxing Day" (Jan. 8). English-born and educated, I am curious about the item "mutton pie." What is it? It sounds dreadfully tough and watery. To evoke nostalgia you should have said "beefsteak and kidney pudding," or "bubble and squeak." Perhaps you meant "shepherd's pie," a concoction made from leftover cooked mutton, minced, coated with mashed boiled potatoes, and browned on top. This was generally eaten, glumly, on Wednesdays, for lunch. But this memory is seven years old. Today much-despised shepherd's pie is probably a luxury.

Perhaps you were thinking of Irish stew, which is as typically English as Danish pastry is typically American.

ROSALIND CONSTABLE New York City

P: No, mutton pie--plain English for English shepherd's pie. And it can be eaten cheerfully.--ED.

Great Tale

Sirs:

I am pasting a copy of your story of the heroic defense of Bastogne, "The Hole in the Doughnut" (TIME, Jan. 8), in my copy of Hero Tales from American History. I am sure the authors, T. Roosevelt and H. C. Lodge, would approve both the story and the style as worthy of incorporation with the great tales of the past. . . .

H. D. GREGORY Denver

The Face

Sirs:

From General Eisenhower to Anita Colby [TIME, Jan. 8]: "Oh, doll, how could you?" . . .

CHARLES R. POSEY JR Baltimore

Sirs:

Got any pictures of Colby's legs and figure? You can't make statements like this without proof. Besides, I don't believe it. You cads! . . .

M. W. STRATE St. Paul

P: Herewith one of the rare full-length photographs of Miss Colby.--ED.

Sirs:

Congratulations on your stunning article anent Anita Colby. It is exceptionally well written. . . . LILY SAREWITZ PHILADELPHIA

Sirs:

. . . Are Miss Colby's 150 pairs of shoes a cause or a result of rationing?

JOHN C. WYLIE U.S. Veterans' Hospital Fort Bayard, N. Mex.

Sirs:

How can you justify eight columns to Colby in these times?

SERVICEMAN'S NAME WITHHELD Pensacola, Fla.

P: How history will assess the comparative importance of the people pictured on TIME'S cover, TIME does not venture to say. But TIME likes the human race and is inveterately curious about it.--ED.

"The Rest of My Life . . ."

Sirs:

Here is a letter from an ex-newspaperman in response to a letter I wrote him asking that he consider a job on our staff in days to come. I can't remember seeing a better letter of its kind:

"Your letter caught up with me today, and I found it surprising and heartening to learn that I'm still in your bring-up file.

"It's hard for me to realize that we've passed the third anniversary of Pearl Harbor. ... I lost my time sense, I think, about the time we rounded the north turn of the training cycle in the California-Arizona desert. There have been a good many hours when, hanging between wakefulness and oblivion, I have allowed myself to consider the rest of my life. These are some of the tentative conclusions I have reached:

"1) I never intend to work as hard again as I have worked during these three years in the Army. During the easiest days of training the working day averaged better than ten hours and about the only way we could recognize Sunday was by the absence of our Catholic colleagues. My next job will have to allow time for private, personal thinking, talking, reading and writing.

"2) I intend to live in the South again. There are the usual reasons for that decision --the ties of blood that never seem important until you've lived a long time away from home. Then, I don't think I've been really warm since I left South Carolina in 1941; in Normandy I used to sleep in a puddle and dream of the long, bright days when good Southerners sit in the shade and watch the heat waves rise off the parched red earth and feel the sweat slowly run over their ribs. I have missed the innate courtesy and good manners of Southerners. I have met too many loud S.O.B.s. I have been forced into rudeness myself too many times. . . .

"3) I want to build a house, water a lawn, dig a can of beer out of my own refrigerator, get elected to a school board. I want to dig my roots into a community and regain the feeling of continuity I lost a long time ago.

"4) Some day, when the weariness has passed, I'll want to get back into the old fight, of which this war is a military phase. I've come to believe that the important things, the essential freedoms, the democratic processes, are luxuries, not inalienable rights, and the price we must pay for them is high. . . ."

J. E. DOWD Editor

Charlotte News Charlotte, N.C.

Toward a Better Future

Sirs:

Congratulations on your article "Business in 1944" (TIME, Jan. 8). . .. It is the kind of piece that makes us all think and plan toward our own future.

JAMES F. DEAN Baton Rouge, La.

Interglobol Strategy

Sirs:

. . . Mr. Winthrop's plan (TiME, Jan. 8), like much good satire, is less frivolous than prophetic. I predict that by 2000 A.D. the Germans, having been encouraged to migrate, will be firmly entrenched on the moon, the U.S. General Staff having rejected the planet as "militarily unsuitable" and the British having discounted it as unnavigable.

PAUL A. JORGENSEN Berkeley, Calif.

Sirs:

I have studied with great interest the Winthrop plan of interglobal strategy (TIME, Jan. 8), and would like to advance the Simpson theory of counterattack.

Obviously the main problem arises from the fact that four-tenths of the moon's surface (Winthrop's so-called "backside") is inaccessible to bombardment from the earth. To blast these regions I have designed a cannon combining the better features of a trench mortar and a slow curve. Consisting of a curved barrel mounted on a base equipped with weather bureau, barracks, soda fountain and bond booth, its aim and fire power is controlled by the formula given on the enclosed drawing (see cut).

If immediately submitted to the Harvard "Mechanical Brain," this problem might conceivably be solved by the time I have finished drawing up the blueprints and Gouverneur Winthrop's men reach the moon.

ANTHONY SIMPSON New York City

Quaint

Sirs:

"... The intrepid Manchesterites were still at it" (TIME, Jan. 8). The people of that city refer to themselves as "Mancunians," not as "Manchesterites."

Britons are given to labeling themselves with strange-sounding titles indicative of their respective towns, viz.: Oxford, Oxonian; Cambridge, Cantabrigian, which are the most famous. There are others throughout Great Britain, often piquant and quaint, like Liverpool, Liverpudlian; Blackpool, Blackpudlian, and perhaps best of all Giggleswick, Giggleswicket!

(S/Sgt.) RALPH L. FREEMAN Great Bend, Kans.

P: Right is Reader Freeman, who might also have mentioned: Glasgow, Glaswegian; Salisbury, Sarumite; Newcastle-upon-Tyne, Geordie; Portsmouth, Pompeyite.--ED.

This file is automatically generated by a robot program, so reader's discretion is required.