Think Control

Sir:

Your IBM article [March 28] is most provocative . . . [but] a few comments are in order: A computing machine is nothing more than a fast, accurate and very stupid clerk that can do nothing more than it is built and told to do. Clerks are useful, valuable and often necessary, but their functions are not awe-inspiring. It is more important to ask the right questions than to obtain correct answers to the wrong questions. Further, the value of a mathematician is not measured by his arithmetical computing ability . . .

R. D. TEASDALE

Erlton, NJ.

Sir:

. . . That Thomas Watson's "THINK" may sometimes fall down the wrong chute is exemplified by the IBM building on Place Vendome, that marvel of 18th century Paris.

Many Parisians have often wished that Mr. Watson had thought a little less when he decided to install his soulless machines right on Place Vendome, where they do not belong and from which apparently he won't budge . . .

CHARLES I. MARGRY

Paris

Sir:

. . . I'm afraid I must be quite sadistic about the whole matter of "old thought control" (the television industry's nickname for IBM) and ask, if uncharitably, why doesn't the clock on its world headquarters here work on schedule? Perhaps a small gremlin with imagination has whispered in the ears of a regimented salesman or punch operator and said "THINK-- how do I get out?"

MAUREEN P. TOOMEY

New York City

Native Dancer

Sir:

I would be interested to know to what purpose you published the picture of Mr. Capote and Miss Monroe [April 4]. Perhaps you could try for a shot of Carson McCullers picking her teeth, or Tennessee Williams slipping on a banana peel. Is it newsworthy that Mr. Capote (who is a fine writer) is not a good dancer, or that he is shorter than Miss Monroe?

RAYMOND GLASCOCK

Lenox, Mass.

The Demon Rum

Sir:

Upton Sinclair has included my husband, W. E. Woodward, in his dazzling list of writers who traveled "to their graves by the alcoholic highway [March 28]." My husband . . . was one week short of 76 years of age when he died, and the death certificate gives as the cause arteriosclerosis, cardio-vascular disease, in other words, old age. To that I would add overwork. Upton Sinclair's family history is so tragic that it is natural for him to think that anyone who takes a drink is an alcoholic. And while we are about it, neither Dreiser nor Sherwood Anderson drank to excess.

HELEN WOODWARD

New York City

Sir:

No wonder Upton Sinclair can't get his book, Enemy in the Mouth, published. He still thinks of alcoholism in terms of "John Barleycorn," a term that went out, if I am not mistaken, shortly after the turn of the century. I bet that Sinclair still goes to temperance lectures on the Demon Rum and plays the ballad, Father, Dear Father Come Home With Me Now on the old piano roll.

BURLING LOWREY

Lawrence, Kans.

Sir:

It was surprising to learn from Upton Sinclair that Stephen Crane, the short-lived author of The Red Badge of Courage, is categorized as a tosspot. After many years of research into the affairs of Stephen Crane, I feel compelled to state that Crane's drinking, social or otherwise, seemed less than enthusiastic . . . Over a half century ago when A Derelict, a short story by Richard Harding Davis, appeared, it was whispered among the literati that Channing, the more than generous newspaper correspondent of the tale, was actually Stephen Crane. Davis denied the supposed inference . . . I hope it is not about to be resurrected by Mr. Sinclair.

AMES W. WILLIAMS

Alexandria, Va.

P: For further word from Novelist Sinclair, see below.--ED.

The City (Contd.)

Sir: . . . The unexpected cinemascopic view of my idolized city in your March 28 issue kindled my imagination, and my thoughts raced on to the time when I shall . . . see for myself this "City of Lights & Towers." In the far left corner of the Times Square picture are the neon words: The Center of the World.

This alone could be the caption for the pictures. As a deep contrast, Mr. Strock's photograph of Central Park, void of lights and people, appears ethereal and peaceful . . .

MARILYN J. BROWN

Portland, Ore.

Sir:

... I loved the shot of Central Park, however ... I had to gape with horror at the enormous waste being perpetrated on our city in the name of beauty. Smack down the center of one of the most peopled, congested, dirtiest islands in the world is this huge chunk of valuable realty making no contribution to the city at all -- 51 blocks long, several city blocks wide, just sitting majestic and very idle while the city is busting at its seams looking for solutions to its space problems . . . What an ideal spot for a huge parking lot ...

SY BERG

New York City

Sir:

So "model housing developments like Peter Cooper Village and Stuyvesant Town break up bleak gridiron of East Side slums"? What, I would like to know, will break up the bleak gridiron of these developments? Lewis Mumford was certainly right when he said that if we go on rebuilding New York on such obsolete patterns, we should merely be exchanging slums for future super-slums.

E. MORISON

New York City

Sir:

Looking at your night skyline of Manhattan, I was reminded of a poem that I composed some 40 years ago ... I recall only two lines: Did ever a dream city rise from the sea That was fairer, more fleeting and fragile than thee? If you had asked me what the last adjectives meant exactly, I couldn't have told you.

But now I know it was a poet's intuition of the H-bomb.

UPTON SINCLAIR

Corona, Calif.

The Yalta Papers (Contd.) Sir: The Yalta disclosures [March 28] should puncture the myth of F.D.R.'s infallibility . . . Any Democrat who tries to pin the tag "giveaway" on Ike's Administration should be laughed right off the podium.

CHARLES E. JURAN

2nd Lieutenant, U.S.A.F. Chanute Air Force Base, Ill.

Sir:

Re Yalta: we are shocked to learn that our personal and national Santa Claus was a larger operator than we realized.

G. O. WILLIAMS

Sharon, Okla.

Sir:

One "unguarded moment" in the Yalta record I missed--when F.D.R. appeared at the door of the conference room shouting, "Tunis, anyone?"

M. J. PULVER

Chicago

Sir:

You say, "Roosevelt unhesitatingly" did this or that . . . For all you know, he might have stayed awake nights worrying . . .

TIME is a Democraticarper, a Southeckler, a cynicritic, a journalismonster, and the loser of my picayune business when my subscription expires.

NORMAN T. BROWN

Fort Worth

Sir:

. . . F.D.R. not only confused his enemies; he made them look politically inept in the eyes of the world. Their hope was that they could hew him down to their own pigmy size, but he died while still towering over them, loved by millions, and respected by multitudes . .

F. S. DONN

San Luis Obispo, Calif.

The Church & Margaret

Sir:

The March 21 article on Princess Margaret and Peter Townsend once more focuses our attention on the logical absurdities which Anglicanism gets itself into these days. Elizabeth, as "head of the church," cannot officially disprove of Margaret's marriage to a divorced man (presumably because such marriages violate the law of God), although, according to other Anglican authorities, she might approve of it as "big sister" (presumably because such marriages do not violate the law of God). Nor, in this same anomalous situation, can the Archbishop of Canterbury approve the marriage (presumably because such marriages violate the law of God), even though he man "readmit her to Communion after a decent interval" (presumably because such marriages do not violate the law of God) . . . It is certainly to be noted that the English church of 1533 tended to uphold the laws of God a little more briskly than does the modern English Church . . .

(THE REV.) ROBERT J. STOWE, S. J.

Los Gatos, Calif.

Ladies at Lambeth

Sir:

If the Archbishop of Canterbury is departing for East Africa with the lady pictured as his "wife" [April 4], this is news! Especially, it must have come as quite a shock to the real Mrs. Fisher, for I believe the charming lady in your photograph is Miss M. C. Forman. Miss Forman is the warden of Lambeth Palace--the London headquarters of His Crace, the Archbishop.

(THE REV.) J. F. H. GORTON

St. Matthews Church

Horseheads, N.Y.

P: Reader Gorton is right; Miss Forman is also a sister of the Archbishop's wife. (see cuts.)--ED.

Culture on the Newsstand

Sir:

Your article "Respectable Paperbacks" [April 4] implies that quality starts at 95-c- in paperbound books and reaches 1,500 book shops. Actually, quality begins at 25-c-, reach ing 100,000 newsstand outlets, most of them in towns without a bookshop. I cannot believe that TIME would want . . . to imply that paperbound books on the newsstands are not respectable.

The truth of the matter is that the real pioneering in making high-quality books available at a low price has been largely that of our company, to some extent reinforced by our competitors, particularly Pocket Books . . . We have sold not tens of thousands but millions of copies of Homer, Dante and other classical, scholarly and important contemporary writers through tens of thousands of outlets . . .

VICTOR WEYBRIGHT

Chairman and Editor

The New American Library of

World Literature, Inc.

New York City

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