Challenge

Sir:

For the lucid account of Karl Marx's Communist Manifesto [TIME, Feb. 23], I offer my congratulations. . . . Nothing can forestall Communists' inroads in starving countries unless awakened American officials answer the Manifesto's challenge.

RAY F. LAIR Columbus, Ohio

Sir:

Communist pictures always show American businessmen as fat, heedless, cigar-smoking, worker-eating ogres.

By depicting Karl Marx on your cover as a red-eyed monster, you are stooping to those low Communist tactics.

I. D. BONNEY Vancouver, B.C.

Sir:

You can't imagine how much amusement you are affording Marxists the whole world over. The apologists for capitalism are still trying to rub poor old Karl off the map. . . .

However, to set the record straight, we beg to point out that, contrary to-what the Russophiles and phobes may say or think, Marxism never has been tried, so cannot be found wanting, as you so glibly try to cancel it out. . . .

The world is filled with followers of false tacticians, who take the name of Marx in vain. . . .

PETER ROBERTS World Socialist Party Los Angeles, Calif.

Tom Clark's Quail

Sir:

If Attorney General Tom Clark had, as you say, been dining on "quail full of buckshot" [TIME, Feb. 23], it would have been a neat trick. . .

Any quail of which there is to be enough left to dine on, must be shot with "birdshot."

THOMAS H. GILLIAM JR.

Philadelphia

P: Irish Honey

Sir:

Since sentimentalists in great numbers are always among even such intelligent audiences as TIME'S readers, you have done me a great service by reviewing The Pursuit oj Robert Emmet [TIME, Feb. 23] as though it were a curl-up book suggestive of saccharin and Irish honey. For this I am truly and deeply grateful.

But for the realists among your readers, could you add that it is also the delineation, documented to the last detail, of the origin, development and suppression of a democratic movement in Ireland which was influenced by American ideas even more than French ones? The adjectives valuable, scholarly and realistic have been used [by other critics] to describe the book, which give a different impression from that conveyed by your reviewer. After all, one doesn't endure, for eight years, in exile, the difficulties which were a constant factor of my work on the book, just to embroider in emerald floss another portrait of Emmet suitable for use on a cuddly sofa cushion. It took guts and ingenuity even to stay in Ireland. . . .

HELEN LANDRETH Brooklyn, N.Y.

P: Let Author Landreth not get her Irish up, and eat hearty, now she's home. TIME said her book was "exhaustive."--ED.

Voice from the Archives

Sir:

Your note in TIME, Feb. 23, on the 3-c- stamp commemorating the 150th Anniversary of the Mississippi Territory mentioned that Mississippi was misspelled on the territory's original seal.

You could have stated that the seal was designed in 1798 by the State Department, Washington, D.C., and sent by it to Natchez. Therefore, it was another mistake produced by the damnyankees.

WILLIAM D. MCCAIN Director Department of Archives and History Jackson, Miss.

P: The damnyankee State Department was in Philadelphia at the time.--ED.

Church Builders

Sir:

RE YOUR ARTICLE ON YE YUN HO AND HIS NEED OF $1OO FOR COMPLETION OF HIS CHURCH [IN KOREA] PLEASE ADVISE HOW I MAY FORWARD THE MONEY TO HIM.

(MRS.) H. J. KELLY Northridge, Calif.

Sir:

. . . The enclosed check [$100] to Ye Yun Ho is in memory of my father, Dr. Ulswell Gifford McDowell, a Presbyterian clergyman. . . .

DOROTHY MARTIN New York City

P: TIME has forwarded the money to Ye Yun Ho.--ED.

First Flight

Sir:

Had the Wright Brothers endeavored to take off in the manner you describe [TIME, Feb. 9], they would still be sitting on their skids at Kitty Hawk. ... It was quite impossible for a 12 h.p. motor to lift that plane off the ground. It was launched by a catapult, which consisted of a heavy weight hoisted to the top of a triangular tower and attached by ropes and pulleys to the front of a monorail car running on a wooden track. The plane was balanced on the car, and as the engine revved up, the weight was released. The car hurtled down its track and fell over as the plane became airborne. . . .

If it is any consolation to your graphically inaccurate biographer, all the other obituaries of Orville Wright made the same error.

ALDEN HATCH Cedarhurst, L.I.

P: Reader Hatch (author of Glenn Curtiss; Pioneer oj Naval Aviation) has the right idea but the wrong place. On the Wrights' first flight at Kitty Hawk in 1903, their plane rested on a car which ran on a monorail. After a 35-to 40-ft. run, the plane lifted from the rail, and in Orville Wright's own account "climbed a few feet, stalled, then settled to the ground. My stopwatch showed that the machine had been in the air just 3 1/2 seconds." It was not until nearly a year later, on a cow pasture near Dayton, Ohio, that the Wrights used the derrick (see cut) catapult method which Reader Hatch describes. -- ED.

The B. Traven Mystery

Sir:

I was never "hired" by Mr. John Huston as he stated according to your review of Treasure of Sierra Madre [TIME, Feb. 2]. . . . When I was introduced to a certain gentleman -- one of the very few genuine gentlemen in the caravan that the Warners shipped to Mexico for their boo-bah-booing there --he looked at me hard and sharp for two seconds and asked: "Suppose you had something to do with that picture in general, or, let's assume, with the music or sound effects, what would you suggest?" After I had talked about four minutes, he interrupted me short and said: "You're on."

Mr. John Huston will never be a great writer, because he is a bad observer. On locations I wore any odd or old clothing, as the going was mostly rough; but when I presented myself at the hotel I did not wear "faded khaki" as Mr. John Huston claims, but was dressed immaculately in a new and expensive tailored suit as would be proper if one is to meet somebody whom he believes important at so swanky a place as the Reforma Hotel.

Mr. John Huston says that he "was pretty certain" that I was Traven himself [the author of the novel], which would mean that he had "hired" Traven for $100 (not $150 as he says) a week, that same Traven who a few months earlier had been offered between $750 and $1,000 a week. . .

Mr. John Huston allows your correspondent to write: "Many of Traven's suggestions for the movie treatment were so intelligent and knowledgeable (a terrible word) that Huston was fascinated, and wanted to meet him.". . . How, then, is it that Mr. John Huston can say that he "was pretty certain" that I was Traven, when at one instant he says that Traven's suggestions fascinated him and with the same breath he declares "Groves made no worthwhile suggestions." Who is who now, and what is what. . . ?

That's all folks, thank you.

HAL GROVES Mexico City

P: Says Producer John Huston: "On my recommendation, an offer was made to Traven some years ago to collaborate with me on the script of Treasure and Traven accepted. [But he insisted] that he would have to come northward to Hollywood in stages, acclimatizing himself latitude by latitude, and that that would take months, so negotiations were abandoned.

"Personally, I would deplore any definite proof that Groves and Traven are one. Traven has worked very hard at being mysterious ... in a world where too much is known about too many."--ED.

Newer Look

Sir:

All of us in the dorm were plenty riled at Christian Dior's droopy New Look last summer. . . . But now, we heartily approve of Mr. Dior's New Short Look [TiME, Feb. 23], which we hope will soon soar up to knee length. Foolish women who have splurged on the New Look can cut the extra yardage off their skirts, use it for sofa covers, or send it to Europe to clothe destitute children. . . .

MAXWELL CLAYTON Dallas, Tex.

P: Reader Clayton had better not get his hopes up too far: Dior juggled only a few of his hemlines--and made those only an inch shorter.--ED.

Graph v. Graft

Sir:

LET THE ARTICLE "WALT & WELT" [TIME, MARCH I] BE A LESSON TO THE BUILDING INDUSTRY TO CUT THE WORD "GRAPH" FROM THEIR DICTIONARIES. AMAZING HOW SUCH AN INNOCUOUS LITTLE WORD GOING INTO THE EAR OF A TIME CORRESPONDENT CAN COME OUT in THE HORRIBLE FORM OF "GRAFT." JUST FOR THE RECORD, IT IS OUR BUSINESS GRAPH LINE WHICH HAS BEEN RISING NOT OUR GRAFT.

WALTER WURDEMAN WELTON BECKET Los Angeles, Calif.

P: TIME'S correspondent, who heard it wrong, is sorry to have crossed his Ts when his source didn't.--ED.

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