Painful Confession
Sir:
For the last month I have been traveling in the U.S.A. on a lecture tour, and, since America insists upon keeping her cities so far apart, I have had ample time on the trains to read. ... I soon found that TIME was not only becoming a habit but a necessity.
Your life stories of Gandhi and Benjamin Britten were masterpieces of observation, accuracy and coherency.
Better than that, they were well written. Whether you like the implied rebuke or not, your magazine is much better than it used to be.
In view of the fact that you once accused me in your columns of being "vinegary," and on another occasion labeled me as "a minor league wit," you will realize how it pains me to write this letter. Nevertheless your magazine over the last four weeks has been a major league triumph, and as a fellow craftsman in the black art of journalism, I must pay this tribute.
A. BEVERLEY BAXTER, M.P.
Chicago, Ill.
Calling Norihside
Sir:
The story of Joe Majczek [TIME, Feb. 16] and its subsequent denouement is for my book the winner as "the greatest American tragedy." . . .
What ingredients! What characters! An innocent man, convicted of murder, who is incarcerated for twelve bleak years. A wife who abandons him. A mother who never lost faith, and who scrubbed floors for defense money. . . . But the story gets better! And here is where we all come in: "A movie company paid him a meager $1,000 to make his story into a movie." The picture has already been made (Call Northside 777).
Who profited and will profit from Majczek's utter humiliation? How much have we all contributed? . . .
I have served as state and federal prosecutor for many years. I know that conviction of the innocent is rare indeed, but it did happen here, and it hurts to know that some of my fellow Americans are feasting upon it. ...
SCOTT M. MATHESON
Assistant United States Attorney
District of Utah
Salt Lake City, Utah
Sir:
Your story . . . has satiated me with a kind of revulsion for certain aspects of our system of political representation, hardly proper in a people respectful of its governmental institutions. . . .
Enclosed find $1 for Joe Majczek. Let contributions of other citizens help bring back to Joe at least a partial faith in U.S. justice.
RAYMOND P. DENEGRI
Chicago, Ill.
Quenching
Sir:
... A word has been most mischievously inserted in one of your cinema reviews [TIME, Feb. 16]. . . .
Enlighten me, kind sir, let my thirst for knowledge be quenched--what is this "ootch-magootch?"
JOAN L. BROESE
Melrose Park, Pa.
P: It's what Lovey says to Dovey.--ED.
Shot in the Arm
Sir:
"Beefy Wagnerian gods . . . snorted and bellowed"; "the Met's soggy chorus would need a shot in the arm"; ". . . stable of posturing actors--make opera more gross than grand"; and to be final, "the stylizing makes more for convenience than conviction" [TIME, Feb. 16].
We people who love the opera for itself . . . object to the sneering and leering of those who choose (shall I say to be charitable) to be so damn superior. . . . The singers do not "snort and bellow!" If they did they would find themselves out of a job--but quickly! And one does not attend the opera to see acting. Get that straight! One goes to hear . . . the ecstasy of the human soul in song. . . .
Finally, welcome to Peter Grimes and Benjamin Britten. Opera people everywhere hail its coming. Nevertheless, we shall always find inspiration in the great procession of music dramas and composers from Britten right back to Lully and Gluck.
J. N. ALLAN
Vancouver, B.C.
Sir:
Beethoven's music was very sloppy [as Composer Britten said], but there are still enough of us around with no musical training and a protracted childhood admiration of Beethoven who prefer to glow naively in the light of the Eroica than to endure the involute bleatings of Britain's Britten. . . .
WILLIAM STYRON JR.
New York City
Southern Comfort
Sir:
In 1922 the police president of Munich, Ernst Poehner, by proper exercise of the legal powers vested in him, might have halted the back-alley rowdyisms of Hitler and his followers. . . .
Last month in Lakeview, Ga., men of the same mental stamp as those who made up Hitler's Sturmabteilung, the local Ku Klux Klan, were attempting the same sort of intimidation. You quote [TIME, Feb. 16] the law enforcement officer of the county, Sheriff Jim Moreland, as saying: "I'm just as scared of the Ku Klux Klan as you are." Further, he advised the victim to conduct himself in a manner more pleasing to the Klan. Shades of the Munich Brown House!
HENRY I. TRAGLE
Richmond, Va.
, . . If "Coach" Bowland would like some assistance, there are those of us here who would be only too glad to offer it.
WILLIAM G. CROOK JR.
Harvard College Cambridge, Mass.
Protest
Sir:
WE, THE UNDERSIGNED MEMBERS OF THE FACULTY OF THE UNIVERSITY OF NEW MEXICO, ENDORSE THE RECENT DECISIONS OF THE REGENTS [in firing President Philip Wernette --TIME, Feb. 16]. WE AFFIRM FULL CONFIDENCE IN THE PRESIDENT-ELECT [Tom Popejoy]. WE EXPRESS COMPLETE ASSURANCE THAT HIGH ACADEMIC STANDARDS WILL BE MAINTAINED UNDER HIS LEADERSHIP.
SIGNED BY 181 OF 218 REGULAR FULL-TIME FACULTY MEMBERS.
EDWARD F. CASTETTER
Chairman
Budget & Education Policy Committee
Albuquerque, N.Mex.
Sir:
TIME'S SUMMATION OF UNIVERSITY OF NEW MEXICO PRESIDENTIAL SWAP BOILS DOWN TO UNDERSTANDABLE STATEMENT A MASS OF FACTS AND GOSSIP THAT HAD CONFUSED NEW MEXICO PUBLIC. . . . HULLABALOO RAISED AGAINST TIME'S STORY BY UNIVERSITY FACULTY MEMBERS COINCIDENTALLY FOLLOWS BOARD OF REGENTS' STATEMENT THAT NEW PRESIDENT POPEJOY WOULD BE GIVEN FREE HAND IN SELECTING HIS FACULTY FOR NEXT YEAR.
WILL HARRISON
Santa Fe, N.Mex.
Bad Medicine (Cont'd)
Sir:
The article entitled "Bad Medicine" [TIME, Feb. 16] does not do full justice to the Americans, whether in or out of the Government, who urge a reversal of our partition policy on Palestine. Your story suggests that they are impelled solely by practical motivation. They do, indeed, feel that in determining American policy, insufficient attention has been paid to legitimate overall national interests, but they also feel that partition of Palestine is to be opposed on grounds of morality, justice and humanity.
Besides military and civilian officials who have been unable to express their views publicly, the opposition includes prominent religious and educational leaders . . . [who] feel that the partition recommended by the General Assembly does violence to the rights of small nations and the self-determination of peoples as proclaimed in the Atlantic Charter and the United Nations Charter. They believe it is far more dangerous for the United Nations to attempt to enforce an unjust solution than to look for another which could be just and workable. . . .
KERMIT ROOSEVELT
Washington, D.C.
Sir:
TIME did a phony balancing act in its story on Palestine, calling the anti-partition arguments "persuasive" and directly opposed partition arguments "practical as well as moral."
... It is the U.S. who is in a position to dictate to the Arabs, since the Arab chieftains cannot keep power without American dollars for Arab oil. They would never so much as think of negotiating with the Russians--their feudal life cannot withstand the inroads of Communism, and their religious fanaticism recoils from Soviet irreligion.
, . . The problem is one of enforcing the only constructive political decision reached by the U.N. since [its] inception. . . .
The dilemma is whether to keep the venal friendship of the Arabs, which they cannot afford to forsake, or whether to uphold the honor and decency of the U.S. and the hard-pressed authority of the United Nations. The dilemma, thus, does not exist; it lacks horns.
HARRY BRAND
Columbia University
New York City
Sir:
. . . You admit that Uncle Sam, in the question of the Palestine Partition Plan, put his foot into it and now doesn't know how to get it out, gracefully or otherwise.
You might recall that in that question, as well as in the all-important one about the . veto power, the Cuban delegation was the champion of the opposition. In San Francisco, Ambassador Belt's impassionate appeal, and at Lake Success Professor Dihigo's logical arguments, were crushed under the steamroller tactics of the all-powerful U.S. delegation, with the result that you now regret.
But since the attitude of the almighty U.S. is much more important to the world at large than the opinion of insignificant Cuba, don't you think it would help to alleviate the sufferings of a sick humanity to have [the Cuban delegates] assist the U.S. in framing its foreign policy? At least, they may teach the U.S. State Department that "might" is not always necessarily "right."
ALBERTO J. GARCIA
Havana, Cuba
Men In Training
Sir:
The world is unstable. Universal Military Training must and will come [TIME, Feb. 9].
It costs money for everything; why shouldn't we pay to be safe? No man can begrudge a year of his life to his country.
RICHARD E. GOODWIN
Patuxent River, Md.
Sir:
To advocate Universal Military Training as a "character and health builder" is to point a finger of shame at our homes and educational systems. If these are so poor, so ignorant or so depraved that the draft is needed to train young men, then it would seem self-evident that we should spend more money for better schools, more for public health, and work out some educational and character-building program for young parents. . . .
The only valid arguments for Universal Military Training are based on military necessity. . . .
U.M.T. should not be sold to the people as a substitute for the Y.M.C.A.
(MRS.) HOLDEN S. NICHOLSON
Wrentham, Mass.
Sir:
... It seems to me that the training and preparation of vast armies . . . has been definitely outdated by the atomic bomb. In the event of any future conflict the most vulnerable point of attack will be any point where people are massed together. ... Armies as we have known them are as out-of-date now as the bow & arrow, and the sooner we realize it the better. . . .
We are in need of trained men--but not military men.
GEORGE GLEASON
Lincoln Park, N.J.
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