Whose Front?

Sir:

The account of the trials and tribulations of Editor Guy Shipler, The Churchman, and especially the criticism of Unitarian Leon Birkhead [TIME, Feb. 28] points up a dangerous tendency in American religio-political thinking. One is made increasingly aware that the Roman Catholic hierarchy is trying desperately, and with some success, to sell America on the idea that we must choose between Rome and Moscow; that to defeat Communism, we must strengthen the power of Catholicism . . . America need not go either to Rome or Moscow for leadership. We need a new appreciation for the ideals of true democracy which our founding fathers endeavored to write into our Constitution.

REV. F. V. MCFATRIDGE Coldwater Baptist Church Coldwater, Miss.

Sirs:

... It is most appalling to read your comments describing Dr. Shipler as an apologist for any group. He is truly a most remarkable man . . . Dr. Shipler and The Churchman expound Americanism in every line . . . They both abhor race discrimination and the evil politics of the Vatican, but most of all they cry out for world peace ... As for the Rev. Leon M. Birkhead, I have nothing but honest contempt . . .

ARTHUR MADONICK Lexington, Va.

Sir:

I have been wondering if the Rev. Dr. Guy Shipler intends to honor Bishop G. Bromley Oxnam for his militant efforts to prevent Roman Catholic children from using public school buses? . . . The men who set out to destroy Roman Catholicism, in effect, destroy Christianity as well, because when the united Church of Rome falls there will be no hope for any other Christian church, especially Protestantism ... In this I speak as a Protestant and not as a Roman Catholic.

HERMAN J. V. GRIMMER JR. San Salvador, El Salvador

No Secrets

Sir:

I bought Elephant and Castle last week and have reached page 163 ... but already your reviewer [TIME, Feb. 21] has dulled the edge of my enjoyment. Not because he found the novel boring (everybody to his own taste), but because he ... disposed of all the drama in one sentence: "Gian's nutty old father . . ." Your reviewer has spoiled everything for me. Had he broken into my apartment and made off with [the book] I could call the police. But he has done worse than that . . . He has robbed me of anticipation, conjecture, apprehension, fear, dismay. The unopened book is a mockery to me now. It has no secrets. It has been ravished . . .

DORCAS D. RAY Louisville, Ky.

On a Visit

Sir:

Several of my patients have asked me if I wrote the letter which refers to a psychoanalyst's fee for a couch seance [TIME, Nov. 15], The letter was signed by D. S. Hayes, M.D., Washington, D.C.

I am the only Dr. Hayes listed in the Washington telephone book, the city directory or the District of Columbia Licensure. I did not write the letter referred to.

DEAN MAESER HAYES, M.D. Washington, D.C.

P: Dr. Daniel Hayes of San Anselmo, Calif, wrote the letter, from Washington, where he was visiting.--ED.

Words Worth Having?

Sir:

... I did invent the word "disinflation" [TIME, Feb. 28], or, to keep the record quite straight, a friend of mine . . . suggested it to me and I first put it into print, but it was in The Economist in March 1947, not in LIFE, June 7, 1948. Moreover, the definition you quote from me [a state of the economy in which there is "more of a decline in prices than in wages"] was intended to be more of a special case than a comprehensive definition. A disinflation is a deflationary movement (i.e., one where the total of effective demand for all things together is falling relatively to the total supply), but one which leads back towards healthy equilibrium after a period of inflationary strain. Similarly, at the bottom of the Great Depression, it was found necessary to invent the word "reflation" to denote an inflationary movement, but one that was good because it was moving back to healthy balance. The difference between reflation and inflation is that between thaw and heat wave. The difference between disinflation and deflation is that between cool-off and freeze-up. These are real distinctions, and worth having words for.

GEOFFREY CROWTHER

The Economist London, England

Justice for Rundstedt [Cont'd

Sir:

Mason Lawrence's fear in "Justice for Rundstedt" of being considered a Nazi sympathizer [TIME, Feb. 28] is well founded. I heard his argument in Germany in 1944-45; I heard it after the Malmedy massacre; I heard it at the Nuernberg trials; and now in 1949 from Mason Lawrence, who suggests that Germany's generals are criminals only because Germany lost the war. Let Justice Jackson answer that from his opening speech at the Nuernberg trials: "Military men are not before the Court because they served their country. They are here because they mastered it and drove it to war. They are not here because they lost the war, they are here because they started it. The wrongs which we seek to condemn and punish have been so calculated, so malignant, and so devastating that civilization cannot tolerate their being ignored, because it cannot survive their being repeated" . . .

LEWIS P. SHELDON

New York City

Sir:

Mason Lawrence's excellent letter concerning justice for Rundstedt illustrates the dilemma of the thinking man who, taking a fair and eventually practical point of view, is often accused of taking no side at all; the inference being that any side aloof from self-interest is the opposite side, therefore outlawed . . .

GRACE WILSON STEWART Fort Winfield Scott, Calif.

Sir:

. . . Can Mr. Lawrence honestly conceive of Eisenhower, Patton, Marshall and Hodges sanctioning and indulging in the brutalities and horrors that were condoned and fostered by Rundstedt, who said in 1939: "The destruction of neighboring peoples and their riches is indispensable to our victory. One of the great mistakes of 1918 was to spare the civilian life of the enemy countries, for it is necessary for us Germans to be always at least double the number of the peoples of contiguous countries. We are, therefore, obliged to destroy at least a third of their inhabitants. The only means is organized underfeeding, which in this case is better than machine guns."

FRANCIS T. KRUPANSKY

Allentown, Pa.

For the Record

Sir:

By letter Dr. Ralph H. Gundlach, formerly of the psychology department of the University of Washington, called attention to an error in your article called "Penalty for Secrecy" [TIME, Jan. 31]. Dr. Gundlach's letter was printed in part by you [TIME, Feb. 21] together with an Editor's note [which] in practical effect, accused Dr. Gundlach of making a false statement in his letter when he said: ". . . Before the University of Washington Faculty Committee I was charged with being a Communist. This is not true; and I answered clearly and unequivocally that I was not a Communist" . . .

Will you please make clear that the above statement of Dr. Gundlach is true? . . .

C. T. HATTEN Seattle, Wash.

P: TIME erred in reporting that it was before the University of Washington Faculty Committee that Dr. Gundlach said: "No one can prove that I am [a Communist] and I cannot prove that I am not." The statement was made before the university's President Raymond B. Allen on June 2, 1948. On Dec. 9, before the Faculty Committee, Dr. Gundlach denied that he was a Communist, but the committee reported: "We feel that he has been evasive on many matters."--ED.

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