More Goods, Less Hot Air?

Sir:

Reading through your valuable news magazine, and through other American organs, I am not too amazed to find the current supposition that Americans have now become the world's champion philanthropists, and the only saviors of sorrowing mankind . . .

Nothing could be farther from the facts . . .

Until the U.S. has matched Canada's two billion dollars' worth of loans and gifts to Europe since the end of the war (Uncle Sam's comparable contribution, based on national income, would be around $39 billion), it would make for better feeling if the American people would produce more goods and/or credit for foreign distribution, and less hot air.

PAT N. FOSTER

West Vancouver, B.C.

Taft's Pants

Sir:

I am amused by your statement on Bob Taft in "Who's Who in the GOP": "Bespectacled, with a toothy mouth and boxlike jaw, he looks more like a college professor than a politician" [TIME, April 19] . . . As a matter of fact, college professors don't all look alike and I know none who looks like Bob Taft.

If a common attribute must be found, I suggest that it is the senator's "all-purpose" pants. No doubt many a professor also wears the same pair to work, to the golf links and to dinner. But here too there is a difference--a difference that will be clear if you apply the adjectives "shiny" and "only" to the pants of the professor.

HUGH SPEER

The University of Kansas City

Kansas City, Mo.

Spring Wheat

Sir:

I am pleased to note that in the story on the Calumet horse, Coaltown, TIME [April 19] admitted that the Derby is only Kentucky's greatest race.

Any unbiased observer knows that the Derby merely separates the wheat from the chaff. The wheat is sent to Baltimore, where two weeks later America's greatest race, the Preakness, is run.

STUART PALMER

Rockville, Md.

P: Let Reader Palmer carry the refining process a step farther: one month later, New York's famed Belmont Stakes, third of the three $100,000 three-year-old spring classics, will be run.--ED.

Broom Spell

Sir:

I looked with keen interest at the cover of TIME, March 29 issue, Mr. Lovett's portrait, which is drawn by Mr. E. H. Baker.

There is a spell in Japan since olden times, to drive away an unpleasant or tedious visitor. The method of this spell is to stand a broom upside down on a porch, like the picture of Mr. Baker. It is more effective to cover brooms' cheeks with a towel.

I expect Mr. Lovett to clear away and drive away the cobwebs and the devils from the world.

SHUNJI YAMAGUCHI

Asahigawa, Japan

Partisan Disarmament

Sir:

Your reference without qualification to Italian Communism's partisans "who never surrendered the arms with which they fought the Germans" [TIME, April 19] is unfair to American and British leaders who early realized the potentialities for future trouble inherent in these Allied-sponsored guerrilla groups. Partisan disarmament was priority business for AMG in North Italy, particularly in Emilia (the eight provinces between the crest of the Apennines and the Po), whose military government I headed. The technique was interesting:

Within days of liberation, partisans of the vicinity were first paraded, armed, with music and flags, before Allied officers, in each provincial capital and sizable town. At the end of the parade route were placed several empty army trucks, and some spielers who continuously plugged the example of Garibaldi in discarding his gun and returning to the plow when his work as a soldier was done.

Carefully coached bellwethers in the vanguard tossed their weapons into the trucks, and the rest followed suit, it having been previously announced that there would be certain refreshments and kudos for unarmed partisan veterans . . .

Although we were under no delusions as to the completeness of the job (for example, practically no sidearms were turned in), we did collect a total of 35,000 weapons in Emilia, in about ten such "standdown parades" . . .

ALFRED C. BOWMAN

Colonel, G.S.C.

Washington, D.C.

Micro, Not Mille

Sir:

In TIME, April 19, a statement was made in the article, "Little Black Box," that a microvolt is one-thousandth of a volt.

A schizophrenic wouldn't be a schizophrenic with that much electricity; he'd be a stark raving mad lunatic . . .

GENE K. CAREY

Ames, Iowa

Sir:

. . . May I join the thousands of others who will inform you that a microvolt is one-millionth of a volt ?

JACK H. MURRAH

Atlanta, Ga.

P: Not thousands--just 104.--ED.

An American Foreign Legion (Cont'd)

Sir:

What Reader Paul Estle [TIME, April 5] has to say about an American Foreign Legion is not a bad idea. In fact, there were so many requests to join the U.S. Army that only last week the U.S. Legation in Luxembourg issued a statement that no one who is not a U.S. citizen can join the U.S. forces. Obviously there are candidates enough . . .

M. GANGOLF

Luxembourg

Sir:

. . . Here is a proposal so sensible and practical that it probably stands no chance of being acted upon . . .

H. K. HOWARD

Berkeley, Calif.

Sir:

. . . Paul Estle seems to ignore that during World War II the European people fought against dictatorship as well in the front line as behind the lines . . .

It is therefore . . . insulting that European people may be considered as Kanonenfutter to be lured by money and food . . .

C. R. ROGHELLA

Milan, Italy

Mental Exposure

Sir:

The charge of "P.B.," reprinted from L'Action Catholique in TIME, April 19, that the "costumes generally worn by most girl skaters are frankly indecent," reveals indecent exposure of mind. What decent mind would think of saying that a posture of girl skaters "brings to mind a posture that dogs often use?" . . . P.B. is really indicting the Creator for indecency when he charges that it is indecent to show an uncovered leg in skating or dancing.

ROY W. THOMAS

Denver, Colo.

Bright Bird

Sir:

As owner of the famous talking budgerigar, Blue Boy, my attention was naturally arrested by your Bill and Coo Cinema review [TIME, April 12].

You speak of these remarkable birds as "midget parrots." They are, of course, of the parrot family, but their correct name is shell parakeet or budgerigar . . . These remarkable birds . . . can not only be trained to act but to talk as well. My bird, Blue Boy, has a vocabulary of over 400 words which have been distinctly understood by many of his visitors . . .

JUANITA STAFF TURLEY

Chicago, Ill.

P: Can he say Melopsittacus Undulatus?--ED.

Cold War, Old Plot

Sir:

You have pointed up the rather ironic similarity of the "phony war" of the winter of 1939-40, and the "cold war" of the winter of 1947-48. Even the most sanguine will have to admit that although most of the principal characters in the play have been changed, the plot remains the same.

There are those (myself included) who hold that the "iron curtain" hides great weakness. But what many of them fail to realize is that Hitler's Germany of the "phony war" period likewise was far weaker than most believed.

In 1938, Hitler opposed a world untouched by a major war for 20 years. The Allies were economically strong but militarily weak. Today, Stalin opposes a world ravaged by the most destructive war in history. The "Western Union" is at present both economically and militarily weak.

Hitler moved into Czechoslovakia unopposed--Stalin has now done the same. Our failure to read Mein Kampf cost us dearly. Our failure to see its present-day parallel may be even costlier.

MACK J. JORDAN

South Bend, Ind.

Salty Treasure

Sir:

The alleged discovery of the Berlin Museum collections in a German salt mine [TIME, March 29] is nothing more than a reporter's fib. No American lieutenant colonel ever "stumbled on the treasure." One of the curators of the Berlin Museums had been commissioned by me to accompany the transport.

When the Americans arrived, he stood hat in hand at the entrance of the mine, and in conformity to his instructions handed over the paintings ... to the American authorities.

. . . The Berlin collections in the Russian zone had a very different fate.

O. KUMMEL

formerly Director General of the Berlin State Museums

Berlin

P: That's not the way TIME heard it--from Lieut. Colonel Irvine Russell, then of the 90th Infantry Division, which took over the town of Merkers, where the salt mine was located. His version:

From some impressed French laborers, U.S. commanders got a tip that there was gold stored in the mine. All the Germans in Merkers who had anything to do with the mine were rounded up, and one of them was the assistant director of the Berlin museums, Dr. Paul Rave. He told the Americans about the paintings, and accompanied the first Americans, led by Colonel Russell, to visit the mine.

Adds Colonel Russell: it is entirely accurate to say they ''stumbled on the treasure," since they would have gone right on without investigating the mine if they had not received the tip from the French.--ED.

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