Dynamics

Sir:

Was your cinema critic perhaps a bit severe in calling Dimitri Tiomkin "probably the world's loudest composer" and stating that his music for the documentary film, Rhapsody of Steel, "bangs away on the sound track like a trip hammer" [Feb. 1]? Actually, the music for Rhapsody of Steel covers a wide dynamic range, with a substantial proportion of subdued effects.

SIGMUND SPAETH

New York City

End v. Means

Sir:

You quote Richard Nixon, avowed candidate for the presidential nomination, as follows: "A President's success is determined by his results rather than how he did it" [Jan. 25]. Must I now teach my young sons that the end justifies the means?

SUZANNE GUETTEL SUSKIN Kansas City, Mo.

Sir:

Nixon's statement is exemplary of the most pernicious ideology of our times, and one that was adopted with "success" by national socialism and atheistic materialism. Mr. Nixon has been called "tricky Dick," but in this statement he has inadvertently tricked himself, as far as I am concerned.

ANTHONY P. MCBRIDE Adams, Mass.

Buried Treasure

Sir:

It was a disappointment to find TIME presenting the same aged and tattered stereotype of commercial diving and divers [Jan. 25]. This is no reflection on Jack Coghlan. Long may his air flow sweet! But I get tired of people asking me, out on the job, if it's true that a diver earns $100 an hour. Maybe he earns it, but he's paid more like $100 a day.

Is there a man in the magazine or newspaper world who is constitutionally capable of writing a diving story without dragging in "silver and jewels"? Or who can resist employing the old, shameful deceit concerning the value of sunken cargo by citing its insured or market value at the date when it was loaded aboard the ship--new and being awaited by some purchaser whose plans and profits revolved around it? What would be today's value of papermaking machinery made in 1927, valued then at $1,500,-ooo? What would its original consignee give for it, delivered now, even if it had not been underwater for 33 years?

ERIC J. SCHMIDT

Interlake Marine Service Trenton, Mich.

Beauty Contest Sir: Unless a woman is downright homely, it seems all magazines and newspapers use such exaggerated terms as "beautiful, glamorous and hand some" when describ ing all females. Now TIME [Feb. i] comes up with "handsome" to describe Mrs.

John Kennedy. Mrs.

Kennedy could be far more attractive if she would follow her husband's example and do something about her hair.

BETTY M. FRANCIS Levittown, N.Y.

Sir:

If Mr. Kennedy is trying with such effort to build an image for the people, perhaps it won't be long before he approaches the speaker's rostrum wearing a monocle.

NICKI HILLS San Leandro, Calif.

Sir:

Young Jack's a solid citizen

Whose loyalties won't err;

He'll sing "God bless the Vatican"

And wear his cap of fur.

JAMES MOREY Durham, N.C.

Erratum

Sir:

I don't have my Latin dictionary handy, but I strongly suspect that if Theodore Francis Green has for his motto Sinesco discens [Jan. 25], then sinescent (but not sinile) Sinior Sinator Green would be well advised to check his spelling.

W. W. DOLAN Linfield College McMinnville, Ore.

Undue Pressure

Sir:

To let Adam Clayton Powell and other Negroes pressure Tammany Hall into replacing Hulan Jack with another Negro just for the sake of having the Manhattan borough president a Negro [Jan. 25] is a foolish thing. Whoever is qualified should get the job.

To demand such a thing would have it appear that Tammany Hall has inflicted some injustice upon the Negro race and therefore must, to appease our ire, be cautious and solicitous. Tammany Hall has no such responsibility.

We Negroes have got to accept such a situation as this for what it is--a situation in which a man compromised his political responsibility and integrity for the sake of financial benefit, and with maturity and sensibility be big enough to suppress hypersensitive feelings of race pride.

PEGGY ANN TAYLOR Oberlin College Oberlin, Ohio

Sociologists or Scientists?

Sir:

Yea for Myron Lieberman [Feb. i]. It really is a sorry state of affairs when doctors, carpenters, farmers, businessmen and housewives decide school policy. I'm fast realizing why there are so many private schools around the country.

BRIAN A. HANSON

St. Albans, Me.

Sir:

Myron Lieberman's suggested cure for the ailing state of U.S. education is far worse than the disease. To give the present crop of teachers, trained in the mumbo-jumbo quackery of the schools of education, the sole responsibility for determining the curriculum is to invite a disaster of nightmare proportions.

MORRIS RAPOPORT College Station, Texas

Sir:

Lieberman's equation of educators with physicians is not valid. Any medical association is composed of members who can prove their theories by objective or scientific tests. No layman can argue against a germ culture or test tube. What objective demonstrations will prove an educator's omniscience? The only scientific method applicable to education is trial and error. Educators are sociologists, not scientists. Their power derives from the people, not from absolute truth.

CHARLES HOLLAND

Wallkill, N.Y.

Initiative

SIR:

SERIOUSLY DISTURBED TIME AFRICA STORY [FEB. i] ALLEGING CERTAIN ATTITUDES ON

PART OF KENYATTA AND NKRUMAH TOWARD MYSELF, ALSO POSITION OF PETER KOINANGE AT KENYA CONFERENCE. KOINANGE's PRESENCE IN LONDON RESULT OF INITIATIVE TAKEN BY ME AND OTHERS. NEITHER NKRUMAH NOR KENYATTA HAD ANYTHING TO DO WITH IT. KENYATTA AND GROUP AT LODWAR CAMP SENT ME MESSAGE WHICH I RELATED TO AFRICAN LEADERS' CONFERENCE IN KENYA ON IOTH JANUARY EXPRESSING FULL CONFIDENCE IN MY COLLEAGUES AND MYSELF AND APPROVING OUR GROUP PROPOSALS FOR LONDON CONFERENCE. NKRUMAH AND I AGREE ON MANY POINTS, DIFFER ON SOME. NKRUMAH TOO HAS SENT MESSAGE OF BEST WISHES.

TOM MBOYA LONDON

Apathy Through Ignorance

Sir:

Comments in your magazine regarding the outbreak of anti-Semitism abroad and in this country [Jan. 25] have been very critical (and rightly so, of course). A point you make is that the present outbreak of anti-Semitism is at least partly due to the fact that the present-day German youth is not taught the facts of history; that such embarrassing things as former concentration camps, genocide, etc. are glossed over or ignored by teachers and textbooks.

Isn't some of our own apathy in regard to civil rights due to this same sort of ignorance? Are our young people given the true facts of some ugly aspects of our own history? The chapter in my son's senior high American history book dealing with the Civil War has a pretty picture of smiling, well-dressed colored people standing near a lovely Southern mansion; there is nothing in the text to imply this is anything but typical. MRS. JOHN HECKATHORN Silver Spring, Md.

Last Word

Sir:

I cannot agree more with the comment of my friend Dr. Henry Van Dusen to the effect that all orders are partially invalid in a divided Christendom and that the orders exercised by-the minister of any one group are "invalid" and "incomplete," and have expressed the same thought in an article in the Christian Century in the same week as his letter appeared in TIME [Jan. 18].

He asks why, in connection with my extension of episcopal orders to the Methodist chaplain of Mills College, I did not at the same time apply for a similar procedure at the hands of the Methodist Church. The answer is simple: the Episcopal Church, through Canon 36, has provided for such an authentication while leaving the candidate in his original church; the discipline of the Methodist Church has no provision. We can onlv make ecumenical progress by way of local "breakthroughs," by using avenues provided by the canon law of our respective churches. But Dr. Van Dusen and I are in complete agreement as to the value of using available avenues to the fullest.

(THE Rx. REV.) JAMES A. PIKE Bishop of the Episcopal Diocese of California San Francisco

A Bit of Gratitude

Sir:

In reference to the ingratitude of the hierarchy for the Ronald Knox translation of the Bible [Jan. 25], TIME should not have missed the letter of Knox Biographer Evelyn Waugh to the Tablet, an English Catholic weekly:

"In January 1945, when royalties from the New Testament began to be paid in considerable amounts, Cardinal Griffin wrote to Ronald Knox asking whether he was 'willing to accept a fair share.' Knox gratefully declined. Any impression that Knox may have been held to a hard bargain against his will is false.

"After the Low Week meeting of 1945, the cardinal wrote to tell Knox that the -L-200 stipend, which had been discontinued in 1942, would be resumed. He then said: T am delighted to be able to convey this resolution to you, first of all because it does show how much the bishops have appreciated the work you did on the New Testament, and also what you are doing for the Old Testament, and I am sure you will be glad to know how we all support you. Secondly, we feel that we are very much in your debt.'

"This plainly belies the remark I quote of Knox's (p. 273) that no word of thanks was ever said to him for his benefaction. I can only suppose that my informant misdated a conversation which must have occurred before 1945."

FRANCIS MEEHAN C.SS.R.

Mount St. Alphonsus Esopus, N.Y.

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