The Goal of Human Endeavor
Sir:
Reader Hewson's assertion [TIME, April 28] that your " 'Road to Religion' leads exactly nowhere" is a denial of Christianity itself, as well as every other great religion, and his contention that "ours is not to pray but to act" ignores the crucial fact that first we have to know how to act. That is the purpose of religious ethics, teaching and contemplation.
All true religions have taught that the life of contemplation, i.e., of the saints and mystics, is above the life of action as well as the life of pleasure. And, as Toynbee says in Vol. 3 of his Study of History: "The goal of human endeavours . . . will only be attained when the whole of Society has come to exist of individuals of the new species which is represented by the Saints alone in human history up to date."
H. C. FRANCIS
London, Ont.
Great Is Varipapa
Sir:
STORY ON ME IN MAY FIFTH ISSUE CONTAINS BAD TYPOGRAPHICAL ERROR. YOU REFER TO ME AS ANDY ("THE GREEK") VARIPAPA. YOU EVIDENTLY MEANT ANDY ("THE GREAT") VARIPAPA FOR NONE IS GREATER THAN ANDY ("THE GREAT") VARIPAPA. ALSO YOU DEPRIVE THE ITALIAN PEOPLE OF A GREAT ATHLETE WHEN YOU CALL ME A GREEK.
ANDY ("THE GREAT") VARIPAPA
Los Angeles
P: Chalk up one Brooklyn strike for Bowler Varipapa.--ED.
The Timeless Reproach
Sir:
I had just received the notice from the Government in Czechoslovakia, that my parents and all my other family had been deported in 1942 to a concentration camp in that country, and from there deported again to the gas chambers of Oswiecim in Poland. . . .
TIME Magazine [April 28] came with the same mail, and I looked through it mechanically without much understanding. But suddenly I stopped: I saw my father and my mother ... in Koerner's My Parents, and I read of "a painting which spoke the timeless reproach of the dead, of those who would never again turn to face their persecutors. . . ."
Only a knowing man could paint like that. . . .
HERBERT LEVIN
Chicago
Hangman's Helper
Sir:
Look who's sneaked in for a very worried view of the Budapest execution [see cut, TIME, April 28]. . . .
ROBERT X. BRUCE
Hollywood, Calif.
Sir:
Has TIME uncovered the ex-Fuehrer as an assistant to a Hungarian hangman? . . .
FRANCIS L. COYLE Washington
P: A little too well-fed for a ghost.--ED.
Loew-Down
Sir:
How amazing! Products designed or packaged by Raymond Loewy have current gross sales of over $1,000,000 [TIME, April 28]. . . .
E. P. MILES JR.
Durham, N.C.
Sir:
With three million a year for designing, and sales only one million a year? Aren't you a little shy in that one million--could it be a billion? I think your figure a little "Loew."
SETH A. FOLSOM
Union, N.J.
P: To TIME'S Philadelphia printer, three fat zeros.--ED.
Widows Beware!
Sir:
. . . LEGITIMATE FUR BREEDING LIVESTOCK IS NORMALLY VALUED AT ABOUT THREE TIMES PELT VALUE, WHICH MAKES CHINCHILLAS [TIME, APRIL 28] WORTH ABOUT THREE TIMES A VERY DEBATABLE $25 TO $30, WHICH IS A LONG WAY OFF [CURRENT PRICES]. BIG CHINCHILLA STOCK SELLING POINT IS THE PROMISE TO TAKE UP BUYER'S OFFSPRING AS PRODUCT AT A BIG PRICE, WHICH OF COURSE CAN CONTINUE ONLY AS LONG AS FRESH SUCKERS ARE AVAILABLE. WHEN THIS STOPS, THE BUBBLE BURSTS AS IT DID EVENTUALLY WHEN SAME RACKET WAS PLAYED IN CANADA BEFORE THE WAR. .
PLEASE DO YOUR STUFF AND WARN OFF WIDOWS AND VETERANS. . . .
TERENCE RUTTLE
(raw fur rancher and broker)
Winnipeg, Man.
Postgraduate Advice
Sir:
Now will you hang your head in shame?
In TIME, April 21 ... you say: "By the time he graduated from the University. . . ."
The University does the graduating--it should read: "By the time he was graduated."
RAY DE BOER
Director of Forensics
Dakota Wesleyan University
Mitchell, S. Dak.
P: Let Reader De Boer regain his balance by hauling in that extended little finger.--ED.
Best in the West?
Sir:
"San Francisco's present symphony ... is generally recognized as the best in the West" [TIME, April 21]. Weeell, maybe so, but some of us don't agree.
A few weeks' ago we had the pleasure of welcoming Monteux and the San Francisco Orchestra for a pair of concerts; at the same time Wallenstein and the Los Angeles Philharmonic went north for five concerts, three of which were played in San Francisco. . . . Most of us, including the critics, came away with the nice feeling that we would not exchange either conductors or orchestras. . . .
NORVEL V. TONES
Los Angeles
Primarily Local
Sir:
We greatly appreciate your article on the Veterans College [TIME, April 28], but there is one point that has been neglected. . . . The Veterans College is primarily local in its scope, and our student body is drawn from eligible veterans living in or near Providence, R.I. or within commuting distance. Because of staffing and housing problems . . . we have been forced to make this move. . . .
JAMES A. CUNNINGHAM JR.
Director
Veterans College
Providence, R.I.
Masters' Medal
Sir:
Your little paragraph on the Peabody Award winners in radio [TIME, April 21] was a most misleading little paragraph. . . . Although five of the 14 awards went to programs carried on independent stations, you neither mentioned any of these nor even indicated that such programs had received awards. You cited only the network programs which won awards.
TIME's right to be misleading is too well-established for me to cavil at it. However, you referred to these network programs as "The chief winners," and this is not only misleading but inaccurate and pretty high-handed as well. For ABC's adaptation of John Hersey's Hiroshima, which won an honorable mention in the category of educational broadcasts, appears as one of the 'chief winners" in your book; while the series One World or None, which won for New York's independent station WMCA the medal for the outstanding educational broadcast, does not appear in your book at all. If second-place Hiroshima was one of the chief winners, what, pray, was first-place One World or None?
DEXTER MASTERS
New York City
P: Dexter Masters' One World or None was indeed the chief winner in the educational category. TIME, as usual hard pressed for space, too hastily squeezed out the little-known independent stations in favor of the widely heard networks.--ED.
Jungle Bunk
Sir:
I cannot refrain from commenting on your article "The Midday Sun" [TIME, April 21].
While I agree that physically one may live in the tropics without ill effects if he has good food and plenty of rest, certainly the conclusions [in the U.S.-Canadian Army study] are a bunch of bunk. . .
I spent 2 1/2 years mostly in the Solomon Islands and in the Palau group with a hospital for the Army, and I know there was mental deterioration of the medical men in that and all other units that were sent there and kept there for long periods of time.
I think, however, that the chief reason was that the men were relatively isolated, and that the deterioration of memory and real clear thinking resulted from the lack of stimulation to their mental faculties, rather than the climate as such. . . .
ROBERT H. BELL, M.D.
Palestine, Tex.
A Vast Racket
Sir:
Some of your correspondents have expressed themselves to the effect that we should not outlaw Communism in the U.S. . . .
The trouble with Communism is that it is not a real political movement but sort of a smoke screen that hides a vast obscenity. It is a gospel of hatred, preying on the unhappy and dissatisfied. It promises more wealth and privilege to the working classes, but, once coming into power, holds that same working class in the most terrible bondage, and maintains itself through terror. Communism is a vast "racket," and every racketeer in every country has joined with it. The worst Communists are NOT members of the Communist Party, but politicians and opportunists who have allied themselves with it, thinking to ride to more power, and who state virtuously that they are NOT COMMUNISTS.
Because Communism is essentially dishonest, a cult of hatred, and so being the doctrine of "anti-Christ," it should be outlawed and fought in the open wherever we can fight it.
JAY TAYLOR
Orlando, Fla.
TIME v. Webster
Sir:
At the bottom of a page in TIME [April 21] there was a special note concerning Joseph Pulitzer--"Pronounced Pull-it-sur, not Pew-lit-sur."
Am I to believe TIME or my Webster's Collegiate Dictionary?
LORAINE HOWARD
Lawrence, Kans.
P: This time, TIME.--ED.
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