Clear Sailing

Sir:

By sending the Republicans' top man "Ike" to Europe, and with Bushman the educated ape dead, Mr. Truman should have clear sailing for another four years in office. However, in four or five years the Democrats should have Mickey Cohen ready to replace Truman.

S. L. DAVIS

Booneville, Ark.

The Secretary of State

Sir:

In the murk and confusion that befogs and embitters many people, your Jan. 8 review of the works of Dean Gooderham Acheson brilliantly searches out, in a most inspiring fashion, the intricacies of this much-abused controversy.

. . . You render the community, and more especially the debauched field of journalism, a just and a lasting service.

BERRY WALL Manchester, Vt.

... It pleased my sense of fair play . . .

ROBERT N. HOUSTON Pearl River, N.Y.

Sir:

. . . TIME deserves an E for efficient and effective propaganda for slurring Dean Acheson . . .

HOWARD DANIELS

Flushing, N.Y.

Sir:

. . . One of the finest bits of objective reporting and editorializing I have come across in a long time ... I can see that the policy of TIME is to keep cool but hotly alert in the present emergency . . .

CHARLES F. MOLLE

San Francisco

SIR:

BRAVO FOR YOUR CONSCIENTIOUS STORY. DULLES IS THE MAN TO SUCCEED ACHESON.

ROBERT V. HEATH

BOSTON

Sir:

. . . Your article was a cheap and irresponsible piece of demagoguery . . .

R. W. FLINT

Boston

Sir:

Your Dean Acheson piece reaches new, dizzier peaks of tendentiousness . . . Your determination to look facts in the face without seeing them will also confirm European alarm and dismay at. the insane irresponsibility of American politics.

H. HOPKINS

London, England

Sir:

. . . Acheson and his bright boys ... are still, even this minute, depriving us of the tremendous aid we could secure by backing Chiang to the limit and backing him now. Chiang may not be a lily of the valley, and neither is Tito. But what is Chiang's record with Communism as compared to Acheson's? Chiang was fighting Communism tooth and toe while we stabbed him in the back . . . BURTON K. DAVIDSON Brookhaven, Miss.

Sir:

. . . "Error of the fatal flaw," my foot! And I fain would use it (the foot) to kick the gobbledygook-talking diplomats in their hindsight. Only Lattimoronic "experts" could have failed to foresee the calamity that was bound to result from letting the Mao mob become the rulers of China.

LIPPE null New York City

Banned Crossbow

Sir:

TIME [Dec. 18] was wrong in its reference to the Denver Post editorial on the atom bomb. The Post did not say "Pope Innocent III had banned the crossbow in the 16th Century," as TIME erroneously paraphrased it. Unlike TIME researchers, Post editors know that Innocent III died in 1216. Post editorial said: "In the time of the Crusades, Pope Innocent III banned the crossbow as an inhumane weapon for Christians to be killing other Christians with. In the 16th Century the French complained that the British used the inhumane weapon known as gunpowder."

EDWIN P. HOYT The Denver Post Denver

P:TIME erred in paraphrasing the Post. The Post erred in attributing the crossbow ban to Innocent III; it was Innocent II (died 1143).--ED.

Whimsy in Michigan

Sir:

Many thanks for your Jan. 8 profile of the late James Stephens. It recalls another Stephens anecdote.

During my undergraduate days at Michigan, Stephens came to the campus to lecture. What he talked about I've forgotten, but the man I'll never forget, nor the occasion. It was a bright May day, and the open windows of the lecture room looked out upon ripe Michigan lilacs. Stephens himself, that day, resembled a dwarf sunflower. He distracted a bumblebee, who circled the poet's head, buzzing the bloom. Stephens looked up. "Gad," he said in wonder, "an albatross."

... MILO RYAN

Seattle

Face of a Hero

Sir:

Re the [uncaptioned] picture of a soldier by Carl Mydans, in TIME, Jan. 1:

The picture is of Sergeant First Class Jerry Christensen [see cut], Operations Sergeant, 34th Infantry Regiment, 24th Division, taken about July 7, 1950, south of the city of Chonan, shortly after he, Colonel Martin and Sergeant Downs, both members of the 34th, had engaged a Russian T-34 tank with a 2.36 rocket-launcher. Christensen was the only member of this "Tankkiller Team" that survived this action. Concussion from the blast of the T-34's 85-mm. jarred his left eye out of its socket.

Christensen replaced the eye himself without any serious damage.

Sergeant Christensen is now listed missing in action as a result of the delaying action fought by the 24th Division in & around Taejon, Korea, approximately two weeks after the above described action.

CAPTAIN GEORGE E. ROGERSON An ex-"34ther" Fort Ord, Calif.

Divided Christianity?

Sir:

I was vitally interested in the article about Dr. John Mackay in your Jan. 8 issue. Rightly, Dr. Mackay drew the distinction between the Catholic conception of the Church and the Evangelical or Protestant view. [But] he asserted that ". . . [Roman Catholic] clericalism constitutes the greatest spiritual menace in the Western world of today."

... Is the good doctor conscious of the fact that clericalism, which he condemns, is just as much a possibility from a Protestant stress on the Super Church as from the Roman? . . . Our freedoms rest in the fact that there are denominations. Mackay would "liberate" us by destroying these bulwarks of liberty.

REV. NORMAN WHITEHOUSE

Pilgrim Congregational Church Oklahoma City

Sir:

Dr. Mackay's insulting, distorted attack on the [Roman] Catholic Church will earn him only the disdain of Protestants of good will . . .

M. A. DONOHUE

Chicago

Sir:

. . . Let us hope that other good Protestant leaders profit by Dr. Mackay's example in deploring the farce Roman Catholicism has made of Christianity.

MRS. P. F. WAIT

San Francisco

Sir:

Theologian Mackay's proposition is indicative of the muddled thinking of the Christian who prefers Communism to Catholicism. Until the merits of divided Christianity--however dubious--again occupy the center of the stage, such strategy is more than erroneous. It is fatal.

JOAN H. KUEBLER Tiffin, Ohio

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