The Man from Minnesota

Sir:

Having read your article on Harold Stassen [TIME, Aug. 25], the writer conducted a one-man poll on the 1948 election. The result --one Republican vote if Stassen is nominated--otherwise a vote reluctantly cast for Harry Truman. PAUL SABINE Tucson, Ariz.

Sir:

CONGRATULATIONS ON ACCURATE REPORTING OF ACCOMPLISHMENTS OF HAROLD E. STASSEN. . . . [HE] PULLED MINNESOTA OUT OF A MESS SIMILAR TO THE ONE IN WHICH THE UNITED STATES FINDS ITSELF TODAY. HE CAN DO THE JOB NATIONALLY AS HE DID IN MINNESOTA. . . .

A. HERBERT NELSON Minneapolis

Sir:

. . . This man Stassen has the brains, stature, a good clean record, and I believe everything needed to make a good President. . . .

Dewey had a trial, got licked, so ought to stay out, while Taft should know that he will never get to first base. Even Harry Truman will go around Taft.

J. D. CRITCHFIELD York, Pa.

Headmaster & Hairy Ape

Sir:

Your leading article under Education [TIME, Aug. 25] is an almost incredible account of perverted ideas in dealing with children.

Every child needs and has a right to guidance. . . . Letting children, perhaps forcing them is more accurate, to decide for themselves by popular vote ("the vote of a four-year-old counts as much as ... any teacher's") all the rules of their own conduct and government is as unreasonable and inexcusable as for one to say to a blind man, "Choose your own path--I won't say a word."

To say, "It is better to let children swear than to repress this enthusiasm," to give them freedom to bite, scratch, break furniture, tear up books, attend classes only when they have nothing else to do, is more than asinine. It is vicious.

... To provide complete freedom in sexual relations to young children ("of course the children are fully instructed in birth control") is surely as definite a contribution to juvenile depravity as any overt act.

HARVEY MORRIS Rochester, N.Y.

Sir:

I have read with interest of Headmaster Neill and his school without discipline.

How long does he think it will take, by this retrograde movement, this reverse of evolution, for civilization to reach the ideal existence of the cave man, or better still, the hairy ape?

EDNA KINGSBURY WATTS Appleton, Wis.

Appointment in Yugoslavia

Sir:

I grew up in the school of daily journalism before it was the fashion to qualify names used in news stories with derogatory designations. In your piece on the recent visit of a group of Protestant clergymen to Yugoslavia [TIME, Aug. 25], you designated me as "anti-Roman Catholic editor of The Churchman, a gulliberal who says he is not a Communist fellow traveler." The implications to any intelligent reader are obvious, to wit: that I am an enemy of the Roman Catholic religion; that I am a babe-in-the-woods in intelligence and ability as an observer; that though I deny being a Communist fellow traveler, I am, in fact, at least tinged with red. I am an enemy of the Vatican political state, not the Roman Catholic religion; I may be gullible, in spite of spending my life in journalism; I am no Communist fellow traveler, but admit gladly to being a fellow traveler of the Carpenter of Nazareth and proponent of the social implications of His Gospel --a dangerous admission in these witch-hunting days, when Christianity and Marxism are confused by ignorant or prejudiced Americans, unhappily including the editors of TIME.

GUY EMERY SHIPLER Editor

The Churchman New York City

Sir:

TIME DEFINITELY DISTORTS MY REACTION TO THE "DAILY WORKER'S" STATEMENT CONCERNING STEPINAC'S GUILT. I DID NOT IMPLY THAT HE WAS INNOCENT BUT SPECIFICALLY TOLD YOUR REPORTER THAT I THOUGHT WE DID NOT HAVE ENOUGH EVIDENCE TO MAKE ANY BLANKET STATEMENTS CONCERNING EITHER HIS GUILT OR HIS INNOCENCE. I DEFINITELY SAID THAT WE WERE CONVINCED THAT HIS TRIAL WAS NOT A TRIAL OF THE ROMAN CATHOLIC CHURCH, BUT WAS A JUDGMENT ON HIS ACTIVITIES AS AN INDIVIDUAL CITIZEN OF YUGOSLAVIA. . . .

EMORY STEVENS BUCKE Editor

Zion's Herald Boston

P: TIME'S statement was taken from shorthand notes of an interview with Editor Bucke by a TIME reporter.--ED.

Silent Publisher

Sir:

TIME'S STATEMENT THAT CIRCULATION OF ARIZONA TIMES IS 8,3OO [TIME, AUG. 25] MUST HAVE BEEN DREAMED UP. . . . TIMES CIRCULATION FOR FIRST THREE MONTHS AVERAGED 14,337; WE ARE GROWING EVERY DAY AND PLAN TO ECLIPSE OPPOSITION IN 1948. . . . JOHN BOETTIGER

Phoenix, Ariz.

P:Not dreamed up, but taken from the best available sources was TIME'S statement. Publisher Boettiger refused to discuss his paper's circulation.--ED.

Youth In Prague

Sir:

Your article on the Youth Conference in Prague [TIME, Aug. 11] was good reporting, but lacked an important touch for me. I was at Prague when the conference opened. I saw the parade as you described it. ... That the U.S. Embassy in Czechoslovakia objected was no surprise. I hope they sent their official protest direct to the White House, for the U.S.A. was the only nation there which did not sponsor and plan an exhibit.

The Russian show, with its 15-foot statue of Stalin--a bunch of fresh red roses at his feet--was only one example of careful propaganda. Other countries did as well. Thousands of pamphlets were distributed that first day to help spread the communistic word. What did the U.S.A. do? Nothing. The eager young people who appeared for us paid their own way to Prague, collected their own exhibit items. They were nice kids, sincere, enthusiastic. If they did not represent our country as many of us believe it should be represented, blame the Government. . . . We failed completely to grasp the opportunity to show 30,000 serious boys & girls what the Government of America can mean to them.

ELEANOR HOWARD Geneva, Switzerland

Sir:

. . . Our impression is quite different from that given by TIME. These many thousand young people, from 60 or more nations, are full of vitality, remarkably friendly, and seem ready to work and to sacrifice for international understanding. True, many of their abler leaders are avowedly Communist, but that only makes more regrettable the decision of our State Department not to facilitate American participation. . . .

GOODWIN WATSON AND 17 OTHER U.S. STUDENTS Prague

Sir:

Let me tell you that . . . you really hit the well-known nail on the head. ... I hit Prague just as the thing was beginning, and during the ten days I stuck around ... I met members of many of the delegations and I found them a particularly uninteresting lot, this quality springing from their calcified mental attitudes and "canned" arguments. The members of the American delegation whom I met were especially depressing. One sweet young thing continually harped on the theme that most of the people in America didn't know what they were doing when they fought against Communism, that they were just "unwitting tools of reaction." She was sincere I think, but I was quite unable to impress her with the fact that she herself was the tool of forces considerably more dangerous. . . .

R. L. JOLLEY Houston, Tex.

Hit & Run?

Sir:

Your impartial editorial policy prompts me to offer these facts about the recent articles appearing in the press on General John Lee [TIME, Aug. 25].

This is from 3 1/2 years' continuous observation of him in his overseas organization; first as a G.I. well down the line of his command, and still later as a junior officer. . . .

The charges made by [Scripps-Howard Columnist] Ruark are not only totally unfair but are erroneous. In my opinion, it is unfair to anyone who contributes his life, time, energy and ability to the Army to be rewarded by such a "hit & run" attack. . . .

General Lee is one of the most God-fearing men in the Army. He was also noted for his daily enforcement of principles of non-discrimination of race, color or religion among troops, setting an example not only for his subordinates but for the peoples of Europe.

... It was he who quietly developed planning staffs in Europe to actually plot the tedious details of the continental operations with our British Allies. . . . His troops built the airfields for the bombing of the enemy, developed ports, depots and installations in the United Kingdom and later on the continent of Europe for the receipt and speeding of United States troops and supplies. . . .

If Ruark will check the record, he will find that the late General Patton and several other tactical commanders put in writing their appreciation of Lee and his organization.

J. DESMOND New York City

Sir:

... I know Lee. I was at West Point with him and served with him in the E.T.O. Besides being one of the most capable and the hardest working general I know ... he has character and integrity and an unswerving sense of justice. . . .

O. N. SOLBERT Brigadier General, Res. Rochester, N.Y.

Sir:

... In Advance S.O.S. Headquarters in Valognes, France, August 1944, Lee had to dine off gold-edged china and gold-encrusted goblets. Why criticize him now for what he and the brass did all through the war ? Once a star goes on an officer's shoulders they expect to be treated as a deity. ... It will all be "whitewashed" as usual. . . . That's the Army.

WALTER ALLYN ROGERS East Dover, Vt.

Sir:

I am colored and was a captain in the Fifth Army in Italy. . . . General Lee . . . took a greater interest in us (colored troops in Leghorn) than we had formerly experienced. He instituted many changes and improvements, came around to ask individual G.I.s among us how they were getting on, and in other ways treated us as American soldiers (which type of treatment it was not always our wont to receive). He was a standout to us. ...

You can almost always tell a man by the way he treats the little fellow. It's my guess that the man who treated us as I have described is not the man pictured by Reporter Ruark.

JAMES C. WARREN Chicago

On the Delaware

Sir:

Just where is "Shawnee, Delaware" and what are Fred Waring's Pennsylvanias doing there? [TIME, Aug. 25]. . . .

(MRS.) K. G. MIREDL Shawnee-on-Delaware, Pa.

Sir:

When I blew horn & beat drum for Fred Waring (1938-39), Shawnee was ON Delaware, not IN it.

JIM MORAN Los Angeles

P: It Still is.--ED.

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