The Great Bookster

Sir:

After reading your article on Mortimer Adler in the March 17 issue, I was astonished but pleased to learn that someone has, at last, done something to eliminate the automatic acceptance of biased philosophy, and has offered something that is not so one-sided which will give the student an opportunity to think for himself and draw his own conclusions . . .

PHILIP M. C. ARMSTRONG JR. Annapolis, Md.

Sir:

In regard to the caption ["Should professors commit suicide?"] on the March 17 cover: HELL YES! The educational system of the U.S. would be a lot better off if some of them did.

C. CRAIG FRITSCHE Lexington, Va.

Sir:

If Mortimer Adler gets his way, I'm going to quit school at 16.

PETER RATCLIFFE Lincoln, Neb.

Sir:

For his long, hard effort against the Dragon of Deweyism, Huckster Adler deserves the fur-lined spittoon. But before he sallies forth again, he should straighten out his armor. His recent encyclopedist tendency, his readiness to defend either side of a contradiction (made out to be a virtue in your article), his over-all intellectual hedgehopping show the same irreverence and inconclusiveness that make the philosophies of William James and John Dewey what they are: anti-wisdoms. Mr. Adler may have provided his own criteria for what he chooses to call "Great Ideas," but he has yet to discover a criterion of truth.

THOMAS S. KLISE Peoria, Ill.

Sir:

. . . As a Great Books discussion groups enthusiast, I have known and admired Mortimer Adler for years, but I little suspected the amazing contribution he is and has been making to the improvement of mankind until I read your article . . . Pragmatism has never been or intended to be the philosophical panacea for the world's ills and weaknesses. Peirce and James never so intended it. Nor Dewey, as far as that goes. At least not during his most creative period. In its proper philosophical fields--politics, education, sociology--pragmatism served (and is still serving) a useful purpose . . .

GINO J. SIMI Washington, D.C.

Great Screwworm Plot

Sir:

Your March 10 account of Entomologist R. C. Bushland's method of reducing the population of screwworm flies [by breeding sterile males] reminds me of the conceit that

There was a young farmer named Graham, Who, though bugs ate his crops, wouldn't spray 'em. He explained: "I've a droll But effective control: I just catch all the females and spay 'em."

Yours for fewer screwworms, by whatever means.

H. C. CROOK East Pembroke, Mass.

The Case of the Singing Spy

Sir:

A footnote to your footnote re TIME's March 10 movie review of 5 Fingers ["20th Century-Fox publicists . . . claim that the spy 'Cicero' conveniently turned up in Ankara when the picture was shooting on location"] :

In the interest of truth, and in defense of 20th Century-Fox's excellent publicists, I can corroborate, and if necessary substantiate, the fact that "Cicero conveniently turned up in Ankara . . ." I was there myself . . . and I do know that this statement is correct.

OTTO LANG Producer of 5 Fingers 20th Century-Fox Film Corp. Beverly Hills, Calif.

Sir:

. . . Not only did "Cicero" conveniently turn up in Ankara during the location shooting of 5 Fingers, but I put him in touch with [Director] Joe Mankiewicz, who spent more than an hour in deep conversation with him in the gardens of the Ankara Palas Hotel. "Cicero," whose real name is Elesya Bazna ("Ulysses Diello" in the movie version), was only one of a dozen aliases adopted by this clever, unscrupulous little man during his daring exploits of espionage.

Shortly after Mankiewicz met Cicero, I turned up strong circumstantial evidence that Bazna, last July, was attempting to extract money from Soviet agents--including the chief of the MVD in Turkey. I informed the Turkish Surete, which trailed Bazna, arrested him and held him for . . . interrogations . . . He was released for want of documentary proof of his current espionage activities.

Bazna lay doggo for almost eight months, under constant Turkish police surveillance. Recently, either because he badly needed the money or because his vaulting ego demanded it, he gave a private concert in Istanbul . . . (he has a melodious baritone voice). The concert drew a "gate" of more than 1,000 Turkish lira [about $350] . . . Bazna was seized again, the box-office receipts impounded, and he is currently under arrest . . . He is 51 years of age and the father of six children . . .

My bona fides in this extraordinary case are known to the Turks, to the British and to security officers of JAMMAT (Joint Allied Military Mission to Aid Turkey) . . .

RAY BROCK New York City

P: TIME's thanks to Producer Lang and Foreign Correspondent Brock for their up-to-date footnotes to the spy story. --ED.

The Big Bite (Ruminations)

Sir:

Your March 10 article on taxes was timely and informative. I shed no tears for my fellow citizens who are being hit where it hurts them most. For years they approved a dishonest tax, and they deserve all they get. Unscrupulous politicians have always understood that they could depend upon the votes of those who are moved by "envy, malice and all uncharitableness." The Marxian concept of graduated income and inheritance taxes was made to order for them . . . The Communist Manifesto advocated ten measures which should be adopted in order to bring about a dictatorship of the proletariat. Two of these measures were: "A heavy progressive or graduated income tax," and "Abolition of all right of inheritance." Well, our politicians, more concerned with votes than with the welfare of their country, have saddled us with the former, and have gone a long way toward the latter . . .

In 1913 I was among the many whom the income tax did not affect, but I argued against it as being dishonest. I was told that it was a small tax and should not worry anyone, even the millionaires, but I insisted that it was essentially dishonest and could become confiscatory. Nobody heeded me. I was right. Poor old John Q. Public, the perennial sucker--who almost elected W. J. Bryan, who elected F. D. Roosevelt again and again and again, and who put Harry Truman into office--had better wake up.

GEORGE ALBERT DROVIN Chestnut Hill, Pa.

Sir:

Your story on income tax was excellent. But I thought your concluding reference to the striptease artist was a cheap, spicy element, laboriously dragged in by the G-string. On second thought, however, maybe you were using the stripteaser as a subtle means of suggesting an obvious idea: that we shall all be doing a national striptease soon if we don't put a stop to high taxes, government graft, and international giveaway programs . . .

LAWRENCE E. BOWLING Bristol, Tenn.

Sir:

. . . I liked that phrase, "But every dime the American taxpayer gives up has been voted out of him by his duly elected representatives." I might say the same thing about the duly elected representatives spending the tax money collected.

HUGH ELLISON Berkeley, Calif.

Sir:

It's the same old story: "Them's what has it hates to part with it." Unfortunately in the U.S. today, those who have the most hate the most to part with it . . . If it is a privilege to live in a country such as ours, then it should be a privilege to pay taxes to support it . . .

ELMER M. SHARE Long Beach, Calif.

Sir:

Your parody on Lincoln's great Gettysburg Address represents bad taste in the extreme! Years ago they were desecrating the 23rd Psalm in the same childish manner, and it wasn't especially young even then . . .

RICHARD H. WADDELL Los Angeles

Sir:

On Friday, March 18, 1949, the Editor of "A Line O' Type Or Two" (a column in the Chicago Daily Tribune) was kind enough to publish a parody that I had written on the Gettysburg Address . . . In their issue of March 10, the Editors of TIME were kind enough to reprint my three-year-old parody on the Gettysburg Address . . . I doubt that it "has been going the rounds" for a very long time ; there haven't been enough changes made in it. By my count, four single words and one phrase of ten words were changed. I would say it was only two typewriters and a bureau drawer removed from its original printing.

EVANS JONES Chicago

P: TIME congratulates Author Jones, whose parody has indeed been going the rounds in Washington, attributed to that eminent writer, Anon.--ED.

Sir:

You dwell lovingly on the subject of the income tax--it's big, it hits everybody, and "you gotta." But for the main point--why the money is needed--you give no word. But back under Foreign Affairs, buried in a section on France, and captioned "Face of Disaster," you carry part of the answer:

"The French tax structure discriminates unfairly against the wage earner by levying 80% of all taxes indirectly--i.e., on food and consumer goods. Landowners and businessmen benefit from light and easily evaded personal income taxes."

The rest of it is illustrated in two pages of maps showing the ominous encroachment of Russia on Western Europe and the Far East.

NEIL STAEBLER Ann Arbor, Mich.

Word Thou Never Wert

Sir:

The price of civilization may have increased ninefold in the past quarter-century, as you suggest in your March 10 issue. But surely you need not cheapen an otherwise excellent article on taxation by attributing to Wordsworth a piece of indigestible grammar that would offend any intelligent high-school pupil: "Bryan, wouldst thou wert living at this hour." The poet might have written: "Would (that) thou wert . . ." What he did write is

Milton! Thou shouldst be living at this hour:

England hath need of thee . . .

Yes, Milton (or Wordsworth, or Bryan), TIME's English hath need of thee. It is: . . . a fen of stagnant waters . . .

JOHN S. IRWIN Madison, Wis.

P: Fenny TIME bows apologetically to Milton, Wordsworth and William Jennings Bryan.--ED.

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