Endorsement
Sir:
Congratulations on being condemned by Vishinsky. That's the best endorsement a free newsmagazine could get.
FRANCIS BARNETTE
Baltimore
Checkmate
Sir:
TIME'S Sept. 29 cover showed . . . the red pieces [on the chess board] hopelessly positioned with king in check, vital men doomed, checkmate a certainty.
DR. CONRAD MOSES
Wilmington
Sir:
A hurried analysis . . . indicates that the player pushing the red men (Stalin) has accepted white's gambit pawn but lost a knight as a result. Furthermore, the red player has not taken time by the forelock, but has remained undeveloped, while white has taken full advantage of every possibility to develop his position. . . .
W. G. McGAVOCK
Davidson, N.C.
Sir:
. . . Ernest Baker is not only a splendid artist but an excellent chess player as well.
It is Russia's move. If she changes her viewpoint, recognizes other nations' rights to Life, Liberty and the Pursuit of Happiness as well as Religious Freedom . . . her opponent might delay the checkmate (moving of white bishop one space forward, diagonally), or at least give Russia another chance (new game).
If Russia continues to follow the same policies in the future as she has in the past, this might be the last game.
RALPH O. ROGERS
Indianapolis
Sir:
Congratulations on your cover with the famous chess game (Marshall v. Tschigorin, Monte Carlo, 1902) in background.
We thought it quite symbolic of present U.N. chess game.
Let's hope the results are equally conclusive.
An interesting point: the tactics adopted by Tschigorin (black pieces) are now considered obsolete by modern theorists!
WM. C. ADICKES JR. Asheville, N.C.
Blood & Guts
Sir:
Your review in the Sept. 29 issue of Robert S. Allen's book Lucky Forward is the first authentic evaluation of General Patton from the combat soldier's standpoint I've ever read. You bet he wasn't known to the line soldier as "Georgie." It was just plain "Pat-ton." You bet it was "our blood and his guts" as far as combat troops were concerned! A general's position is too remote to make him a hero to his men. . . . We did respect Patton but only as hired help respect any reportedly competent high executive.
WILFRED S. REYNOLDS JR.
Birmingham, Ala.
Sir:
It was a pleasure to learn that TIME'S book reviewer wasn't taken in by Robert S. Allen's phony-baloney story of how Patton and his Third Army won the war. . . .
I believe the record goes more like this:
First on the Normandy Beaches--the First Army.
First to break a hole at St. Lo for the Third Army to pour through--the First Army.
First to reach Paris--the First Army.
First into Belgium and Luxembourg--the First Army.
First to crack the Siegfried Line--the First Army.
First into Germany and across the Rhine--' the First Army.
First to meet the Russians at the Elbe--the First Army. . . .
ALLAN E. BULMER
Ex-Ninth Air Force Man
Revere, Mass.
Sir:
After reading your review of Colonel Robert S. Allen's Lucky Forward, most Tim-erudites will undoubtedly write off his book as a collection of unfounded accusations, muddled documentation, and sanguinary description conceived for reflected self-glory.
I have read Lucky Forward and find that it is the most authentic work yet done on Patton, the Third Army or the ETO high command. However, since I was [with] General Patton from the time of the landings in North Africa until war's end in the Reich, perhaps I did not view his activities from the vantage point enjoyed by TIME'S book editor nested away in New York City.
RALPH DEL MONT
Chicago
P: The review was written from the vantage point of a Third Army combat veteran.--ED.
Stars in Chapultepec
Sir:
TIME, Sept. 22, cut of five West Point cadets and officer carrying floral facsimile of "Old Glory": the local florist of Chapultepee should have [ascertained] the correct number of white stars to be inserted in the field of blue. . . .
JEROME N. GLOGAN
Woodhaven, L.I.
Sir:
. . . We must have added Alaska, Hawaii, Cuba, Puerto Rico, the Virgin Islands, Guam and Wake. . . .
F. G. LINK
Arlington, Mass.
P: Did Reader Link lend his abacus to the Chapultepec florist?--ED.
No Segregation
Sir:
In your story on the Freedom Train [Sept. 22], you quote the Negro poet Langston Hughes as follows:
When it stops in Mississippi will it be made plain
Everybody's got a right to board the Freedom Train?
And then you leave his question unanswered. . . . The board of trustees last July adopted the following resolution: "Resolved that no segregation of any individuals or groups of any kind on the basis of race or religion be allowed at any exhibition of the Freedom Train held anywhere."
THOMAS D.A. BROPHY
President
American Heritage Foundation
New York City
Cold Figures
Sir:
Your Latin American department was off base in its comparison of the Portillo Hotel in Chile with our famous Sun Valley [TIME, Sept. 15]. You say the cost per person at Portillo Hotel is $9 a day with meals, while Idaho's Sun Valley Lodge costs $22 per day without meals, with an inference that this cost is the lowest rate. This is definitely not correct. The lowest rates at Sun Valley Lodge last winter for single occupancy in bachelors' quarters were $6.50 a day without bath. . . . The rates at the Portillo Hotel range upward from $9 a day for each occupant of a room which must be shared with another occupant, and go up to $15 a day. . . . Single occupancy is estimated from $10-$12 a day and up. . . .
JOE COPPS
New York City
Capp at Bat
Sir:
According to TIME [Sept. 29], Editor Ed Leech ordered Li'l Abner dropped from the Pittsburgh Press because . . . "we don't think it is good editing or sound citizenship to picture the Senate as an assemblage of crooks . . . and undesirables. In addition the continuity contained a double-meaning statement so obvious that we considered it vulgar."
Can I go to bat, now, fellas? That boy is pitching some wild ones. In the first place, my strips did not picture the Senate as a whole. I clearly indicated, in both drawings and dialogue, that this was a special group, determined to kill a bill to put Congress on the air for all America to hear. . . .
Mr. Leech is pretty bitter about my picturing a few Congressmen as crooks and undesirables. Now I didn't make this stuff up. . . . Mr. Leech's own paper informed me that, within [recent] months, two U.S. Congressmen have been declared officially crooked. . . .
Now about that double meaning. There was no such thing. The gag that horrified Mr. Leech had jes' one single meaning. A few days later Gracie Allen used precisely the same gag on the air. American humorists going back from Chic Sale to Mark Twain, Bret Harte, Artemus Ward have all had fun with just such gags. Everybody laughed, nobody griped--just Leech.
AL CAPP
Boston
Sir:
Hats off to Editor Leech. . . .
Personally, my sympathy lies with the men on the Hill. The problems they face are profound and unprecedented. I don't know the solution to many of them. Does Mr. Capp?
M. WHITNEY LEE
Tucson, Ariz.
Across the Board
Sir:
Is it possible that TIME placed a ''WIN" bet on a Flash-in-the-Pan? Henry Morgan [TIME, Sept. 29] was slightly better than terrific last year--but--oh, Brother--how his script could use a fumigation this year.
M. ROBERT FELTON
Wilmington
P: TIME'S bet on Comic Morgan was across the board--to win, place, or show.--ED.
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