They Must Be Taught

Sirs:

. . . You published [TIME, Feb. 3] the reactions of some of your readers to the John-stones' creating a $10,000 scholarship for Orientals, and a former Kamikaze pilot being the first to benefit.

As a Japanese girl who knows both East & West, who in fact is so "Westernized" as to reject the creed that her countrymen are supermen, may I ask to express my candid opinion in your columns?

A number of the more liberally minded Japanese will doubtless be deeply moved by the Johnstones' noble gesture. But such isolated acts and the feelings of a few individuals cannot swerve the policies of a whole nation. What can you expect of people in whom from the cradle have been instilled the notions that vengeance is a sacred duty and that their race has a divine mission, i.e., to rule the world ?

Only a longterm, say 25 to 30 years, occupation can teach the Germans and the Japanese something: I purposely write "teach something," I do not mean they will get better automatically.

If I were an American, Republican talks of economy by reducing the expenses for the armed forces would make me extremely unhappy, for the economy might prove a costly one. It was tragic enough that the boys whose fathers were World War I veterans did have to fight another horrible war. Let not history repeat itself! Amen.

YOKO FUKUSHIMA Tokyo

General in Residence

Sirs:

If your military editor is correct [TIME, March 3], General Wedemeyer must be running up quite a telephone bill commanding the Sixth Army (California, Oregon, etc.) from his Baltimore headquarters.

Fortunately for the taxpayers and the Army, General Wedemeyer commands the Second Army (Maryland, Pennsylvania, etc.).

WILLIAM S. GREEN

New Haven, Conn.

P: Right. TIME'S writer is not to blame.

But his researcher is peeling spuds.--ED.

Write as You Talk

Sirs:

Readability measurement is a fairly new business. As such, it is newsworthy: witness your story on Robert Gunning [TIME, March 3].

It surprises me, however, that your reporter did not come up with the name of Rudolf Flesch. It's true that "educators" have been working for years to develop a formula to measure readability. But Flesch was the first to get one that really works. . . .

Flesch gave his work to the public in The Art of Plain Talk (Harper, 1946). For $2.50 anybody can buy the formula, can test his own stuff. That people don't, for various reasons (i.e., it's a lot of work, people worry more about what they say than about how they say it), is the raison d'etre of "readability experts." . . .

Mr. Gunning's advice, as reported by you, is still the best there is. It is Flesch's; it's also mine: Write as you talk.

JAMES M. LAMBIE JR. Readability Associates New York City

Sirs:

For almost any publication in this country to criticize a newspaper of the stature of the New York Times, one of the ornaments of world journalism, seems to me a rather doubtful enterprise.

But for a magazine like TIME, which habitually and unreservedly mangles the English language, to lambast the Times on the grounds that it is "unreadable," is downright ridiculous.

"Physician, heal thyself!"

JAMES D. BISHOP New York City

Sirs:

Thanks for that nice article on Mr. Gunning, and his fight against unreadable English. . . . Modestly, the article does not mention the readability of your own style. Let me fill that gap. By my formula, TIME is more readable than almost any other printed source of news. For this, I herewith present you a "Readability Oscar"--and almost forgive you all the things you do to the English language. . . .

RUDOLF FLESCH Dobbs Ferry, N.Y.

Don't Write, Draw

Sirs:

In reference to your article about the disappearance of calligraphy teaching in schools [TIME, Feb. 10], I feel that this is an advantage, especially if the teaching of drawing is substituted for it. Here are the reasons:

1) Calligraphy is hybrid: it's neither writing nor drawing. I consider the use of the typewriter in schools an American virtue: it's fast, easy to learn, and clear, and to be clear is a duty we have towards others.

2) Drawing is necessary for everybody's education; it should be part of every school curriculum. And with a base of drawing you can easily master later any calligraphy, including the most ornamental, Chinese signs, etc.

3) Both drawing and typewriting attract and interest children, while calligraphy is painful or tiring for most little children to learn.

I feel that substitution of drawing for calligraphy would give an important mission to the artist-pedagogue, and be a needed addition to general education.

JOeAN (JOHN) JUNYER

New York City

War's Aftermath

Sirs:

For the disgraceful prevalence of graft, thievery and moral bankruptcy in Manila, vividly reported in TIME [Feb. 17], no denial or excuses are offered.

The plea is made, however, that TIME readers sympathize with rather than sneer at us for this new phenomenon in Philippine life, brought about by Japanese occupation. Before Pearl Harbor, criminality in the Philippines was no worse than in the U.S. and in other countries. After the American surrender at Corregidor, Filipino character . . . had the ruggedness to choose continuance of resistance against the Japs either by guile or by force, in the hills and in the valleys, to make General MacArthur's promised return come sooner, less costly in American lives.

But Filipinos as well as allied nationals in Manila, groaning under the iron heels of the enemy, soon discovered that to lie, deceive or steal was the only way to survive. ... A sackful of Japanese "Mickey-Mouse" money often would not buy fish and rice to feed your starving wife and children. The only way out was to steal. Imperceptibly, insidiously, inevitably, a weakening of the moral fiber had to come about. Thus, even long after V-J day, we see the sad spectacle of a considerable number of Filipinos still finding it convenient and profitable to live by their wits.

The Philippines suffer not alone from the after-effects of the war. China, France and Greece are undergoing the same travail.

PEDRO LOPEZ

Associate Prosecutor for the Philippines Tokyo

In Line of Duty

Sirs:

You spoil an otherwise splendid report of the wreck of the train Red Arrow rounding the "famed Bennington curve" near Altoona, Pa. [TIME, March 3], by the statement: "Around them, like spilled match sticks, were the baggage car (six dead) and the twisted Pullmans."

The six dead were railway postal clerks, not in baggage cars but in equipment known as railway post-office cars. Six of a crew of 13 railway postal clerks died at their posts of duty sorting U.S. mail en route. Likely a part of the load was your own worthy magazine, TIME. . . .

ROBERT L. SIMPSON Railway Postal Clerk Rapid City, S. Dak.

Whose Welfare?

Sirs:

Labor is agreed with Senator Ball and his like-thinking colleagues [TIME, March 3] on one thing--if this were a perfect world there would be no need for labor unions. But from there on their viewpoints are as far apart as atomic energy and the oxcart.

Senator Ball and his colleagues do not deny directly but try to obscure the great fact that labor unions have been responsible for raising the living standards of great sections of the American population, thus promoting the "general welfare" clause contained in the Preamble of the Constitution, at a time when duly elected state and federal legislatures were shirking their sworn duty in refusing to even take the plight of the people into consideration.

Senator Ball and his colleagues maintain that the means used by labor unions to promote the general welfare by raising the living standards of the people were too vigorous, and therefore all rights of labor unions to promote the general welfare should be taken away from them. But Senator Ball and his colleagues do not propose to offer any substitutes to protect the living standards of the people! . . .

Senator Ball and his colleagues intend to strait-jacket all labor into lily-white perfection, while at the same time allowing the other economic contenders to whale the tar out of the living standards of the majority of our people who work for a living. . . .

J. GORDON ROSEN Galveston, Tex.

Sirs:

TIME'S excellent article on praiseworthy Senator Ball put me in mind of a fragment from Horace: "Who then is free? The wise man who is lord over himself."

. . . The answer here, no matter how it may be interpreted, logically upholds the fact that the closed shop is not to be considered a system of freedom under any aspect.

. . . The closed shop signifies the further degeneration of our national synthesis, in that it is historically correct that humankind will voluntarily enslave itself, sacrificing virtue, love and freedom for security. . . .

JOHN MENZIES JR.

Covington, Ky.

Sirs:

. . . The facts of the matter are that tousle-haired, fuzzy-thinking Joe Ball is a frustrated product of a lopsided agricultural-industrial economy here in the Middle West. . . .

The pitting of farmer against labor here in Minnesota in a divide-and-rule program has long been Republican and Farm Bureau strategy, and proposed anti-labor legislation has been particularly vicious. Farmers would like to have dollar-a-pound butter but don't want labor to get the dollar to buy it with. . . . The farm attitude expressed by the head of a large producer cooperative in Minnesota was put in these startling words: "When there is enough butter, there is too much!" Mr. Ball ought to realize that the farmers have been on a sit-down strike, too . . . and vent a little of his spleen on them too. . . .

F. B. GRIFFITH Minneapolis

Jockey's Heartache

Sirs:

Your reference [TIME, March 10] to "a disc jockey in Charlotte, N.C."--without stating his name--is causing more heartaches locally than Ted Weems's recording ever dreamed of. The disc jockey, having access to twelve million pairs of ears via the ether waves, nightly pleads for each listener to write you to put his name in TIME. . . . Unless you do something soon to stop the clamor in the local press and radio station, you may expect an express collect package to arrive in your office soon. . . . It's my radio I'm. sending.

JAMES R. HENDERSON Charlotte, N.C.

Sirs:

This disc jockey, Kurt Webster of radio station WBT, has done a job other jockeys have dreamed of for years--not only reviving a tune but an entire orchestra. . . . Webster plugged Heartaches when nobody, even Weems, had thought of the record in ten years. Its revival to the point of the Decca re-issue was an absolutely single-handed job. Even the Charlotte press, not given to plugging radio, compares your story to reporting discovery of America by "local sailor." . . .

CHARLES H. CRUTCHFIELD

General Manager WBT Charlotte, N.C.

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