Dear Time-Reader,

For more than a year now the U.S. press has been doing a praiseworthy job in bringing the tragic plight of the Navajo Indian to the attention of American readers. TIME'S part in making public this injustice recently produced at our Paris office a U.S. Army sergeant with $77.50 in cash and a request: would we please forward the money to the starving Navajos in New Mexico?

The sergeant and his enlisted and officer friends in the American occupation forces in Germany had read about the Navajo Indians' plight in TIME'S Nov. 3 issue, and had been moved to make their contribution toward alleviating it. Their typically American gesture is an example of the scores of concerned letters and gifts of money, food and clothing we have received from TIME readers since the Navajo story was published.

These donations should be credited to a sizable segment of the whole U.S. press--for TIME'S story was merely the most recent of a long series of such articles. Regional newspapers like the Gallup (N. Mex.) Independent had long been recording facts about the Navajos--especially since 1933, when the Government crippled the Navajos' crude economy based on sheep-raising by ordering them--because of overgrazing and the resultant soil erosion--to begin doing away with their flocks.

Another regional newspaper, the Santa Fe New Mexican, published a series of articles last year that gave TIME'S Denver correspondent, Barren Beshoar, his first indication that things were going badly with the Navajos. He made a trip to the reservation to see for himself and TIME ran the story in its August 12, 1946 issue.

This fall, reporters for the Denver Post, the Phoenix Arizona Republic and other newspapers in Navajo territory found that many Navajos were faced with starvation this winter unless something were done for them. Writers for various U.S. magazines like Harper's found the same thing--as did TIME'S Beshoar when he again visited the reservation to confirm the facts for TIME'S Nov. 3 story.

As many of you undoubtedly know from reading your newspapers and TIME, one result of this effort by the U.S. press to tell its readers about the Navajos' plight has been a cascade of letters to Congress and the White House. Significantly enough, several Congressional committees have now visited the Navajo reservation. Another result, of course, has been the multitude of contributions from all over the U.S. for Navajo relief. In case there could be any doubt of their necessity, a letter we have received from the justly famed American Friends Service Committee speaks for the accuracy of the press' reporting: ". . . One of our representatives . . . [has] returned from a trip he made for us to the Navajo territory. He confirmed everything that TIME had revealed. . . . We are sending immediately 8,000 pieces of warm winter clothing, 1,000 pairs of shoes, 4,000 new children's garments. . . ."

In this instance, however, Congressman Ben F. Jensen, Navajo advocate and chairman of the House subcommittee on Interior Department appropriations, stated the case for the U.S. press when he said: "I shall be forever grateful for this publishing of the facts. It makes the job of getting something done in the Congress easier when people know the facts."

Cordially, James A. Linen

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