Now Is the Time
Sir:
Re Dulles' statement [Sept. 14] on the Chinese Communists: at last, a Secretary of State and Government that let the world know where we stand.
For 15 months we lived under the Communists in China. Constantly students came to me, asking: "What does America think of this?" "What will America do about this?" I had to admit that I did not know. They never had to ask that about Russia. Everyone knew . . .
I do not agree with everything Secretary Dulles says, but I am tired of diplomatic doubletalk. We do not have to be blunt and offensive, but it is time we were honest.
(THE REV.) OSCAR A. GUINN JR.
The Parkman Street Methodist Church Dorchester, Mass.
Tribute to Skinny
Sir:
May I compliment you upon your article [Sept. 14] in tribute to General Jonathan Mayhew Wainwright IV, my honored and beloved uncle? This was not only an outstanding piece of journalism--crisp and straight to the point (as Skinny himself always was), but it is also the only account which my mother (his sister) and I have so far read which . . . does not contain some slight error or inconsistency. Moreover . . . it projected that ringing thing which was Skinny's peculiar genius--that steadfast belief in and love of his country (a composite emotion, nobler even than the love of man for woman, or of mother for child). I hope your delineation of his character and life has served to give the mushy middle of our citizenry some pause.
I'm glad you started the piece with Fiddlers Green. Skinny used to recite this to us sometimes, over a glass of "bourbon and creek-water," after another funny poem about the mechanized cavalry, Alowishius Gas N' Oil* ... I wish you could have seen him once as I did at a Hollywood party, after all the egomaniacs had pitched their latest promotion line, as he stood very straight and sang Should auld acquaintance be forgot with tears in his eyes, thinking of those men who died beside him . . .
BETTY MEARS
Bel-Air, Calif.
Pretty Antidote
Sir:
My sincere congratulations for your article on Miss Audrey Hepburn [TIME, Sept. 7]. Such a stimulating antidote to all the recent publicity, relating to a sad analysis of the deterioration of values among a fraction of our womanhood . . .
DR. L. F. V. P. VANDERHORST
Sunmount, N.Y.
Sir:
. . . You quote some fellow [Producer William Wyler] who asserts that "that girl is going to be the biggest star in Hollywood" . . . When you come to think that Jean Simmons was only 18 when she gave her brilliant performance in Sir Laurence Olivier's Hamlet, you start wondering whether [24-year-old] Miss Hepburn hasn't started too late . . . Her soulful looks will take her far. She's pretty . . . But I'd like to see her future work way over par before taking my hat off to her . . .
ELMER JACKSON
Madison, Wis.
Sir:
I am writing to thank you for providing me with one of the major thrills of my career: your cover and story in TIME. It is hard to say quite what I feel, but I would like you to know my sincere and grateful appreciation. Nothing could be more exciting, and no one could be happier than I.
The members of your staff whom I met for the many interviews were all so charming and very kind that the whole experience was interesting and such fun to do.
AUDREY HEPBURN
Hollywood, Calif.
One Short at Dinner
Sir:
TIME'S Sept. 7 review of Maugham's Choice of Kipling's Best leaves unclear the reason why the Indian member of a polo team visiting the officers of another regiment (in The Man Who Was) ". . . could not, of course, eat with the mess." This might lead some readers to infer that it was because of British insularity or snobbishness. The reason was that the Indian officer's caste might be broken if he ate with nonbelievers in his religion.
The same situation is touched upon in Kipling's poem The Mother-Lodge, where the membership, in addition to Protestant Anglo-Indians, a Jew and a Catholic, included a Hindu, a Mohammedan and a Sikh, so "we dursn't give no banquits / Lest a Brother's caste were broke" . . .
J. A. MCNEIL Toronto, Canada
Sir:
... Tell your reviewer to check back, and I'll bet a complete set of Kipling against a 3-c- stamp he'll find it was the Ressaldar's prejudices -- not those of the mess--that prevented their eating together.
J. CHARLES THOMPSON
Falls Church, Va.
Sir:
... In The Man Who Was Kipling wrote: ". . . There entered a native officer who had played for the Lushkar team. He could not, of course, eat with the alien . . ." His own choice; not that of his hosts. His religion would not have permitted him to eat the alien's food, drink his wine. Altering "alien" to "mess" clearly implies Kipling meant the native had been excluded, perhaps by racial prejudice . . .
J. VALE DOWNIE
Beaver Falls, Pa.
P: Kipling also believed that there was ambiguity in the phrase "he could not ... eat with the mess"; he therefore altered "mess" to "alien" in later editions. Editor Maugham's version was set from early editions.-- ED.
Who Taught Teacher?
Sir:
Your report [Sept. 7] on Albert Lynd's sizzling new book Quackery in the Public Schools is a cheering note of hope to those who are justifiably alarmed at the incredible stupidity and totalitarian tactics of some of the "educators" to whose care they must entrust the training of their children . . .
But, at the same time, another article (in the same section), mentions a new high school where, "through an elaborate closed TV circuit, observers can tune in on any classroom at any time." This is something right out of George Orwell's 1984 ... It's going to be a long pull, Brother Lynd.
IRA M. FREEMAN
New Brunswick, N.J.
Sir:
I am disgusted by your repeated attacks on American education, of which your review of Lynd's book is just another example. All your "oceans of piffle" are based on the same hackneyed theme that if only John Dewey and William Heard Kilpatrick and their ideas had never existed, then education would be far better than it is ... Your war should not be directed against educators who are earnestly attempting to improve the profession but against conditions which foster substandard teaching . . . Substandard teaching has its origin in the community, not with John Dewey . . .
LESTER H. ROSENTHAL
Saratoga Springs, N.Y.
Sir:
I am very grateful for the review of my book . . . but I am sorry you used the phrase "Oceans of Piffle" as the heading of the article. It is a felicitous one to describe much of the content of Educationism, but it is not original with me. In my book I quoted it, with credit, from Professor Harold L. Clapp of Grinnell College, a scholarly critic who discerned the shoddiness in Educationism long before I did.
ALBERT LYND
New York City
Sir:
. . . Permit me to say sadly, "How true, how true." The fact remains that despite all of this effort to try to make children happy in school, it leaves them uneducated for the most part . . . School should teach people how to study . . . how to read, how to concentrate on really tough subjects, to persevere in them and to conquer them . . .
As a member of the armed services, I am faced, for the first time in my life, with a group of men who are near illiterates. They do not read to enlighten themselves, or to inform, or even to entertain. If it hasn't got pictures, most of them are stuck. What is the result? In a first-class bureaucracy like the modern army or navy or air force, with its myriad regulations which one must be able to interpret and analyze to get along, we have boys who do not know what they are doing, or why, and never will . . .
DAVID W. BROWN
San Antonio
Sir:
The review brings to mind a comment from a teacher (in Texas) about some children from California schools, which have gone, to put it mildly, hog-wild over modern education: "They're pretty weak on the fundamentals--they can't spell, and they don't write legibly ; they can't read well, and they don't know much about arithmetic. But they're beautifully adjusted--they just know that they know everything" . . .
BARBARA MARSH
San Diego
The Ten Lost Tribes
Sir:
Whilst appreciating the honor TIME [Aug. 31] bestowed in featuring the teaching of the British Israel World Federation . . . I would like to correct the impression made by the use of the word "cult." As the Oxford Dictionary defines this as a "system of religious worship," the federation pleads "not guilty," for it is an interdenominational organization; it has no church status ... It is an organization ... of all the recognized Christian denominations . . . We believe in the Second Coming and the establishment of His Kingdom on Earth [and] in the continuity throughout history of the whole House of Israel from whom the Celto-Saxon race is descended ... It is not to be dismissed as a heresy or a spare-time hobby . . .
HAROLD E. STOUGH
Secretary
The British Israel World Federation
London
Sir:
. . . The British-Israel theory is complete nonsense, as anyone with the slightest knowledge of history, anthropology or philology can tell. Using the same method of the similarity of names, it is possible to "prove" that the American Indians are descendants of the ancient Greeks: the Kiowas came from Chios, the Croatans from Crotona, the Aleuts from Eleusis, the Chilkats from Chalkis!
. . . Actually, there is no mystery about the fate of the Ten Tribes. Most of those exiled to Media died of harsh treatment; the Assyrians were the Nazis of their day; the few survivors intermarried with and were swallowed up by the natives of the region . . .
MORRIS SILVERMAN
Assistant Professor of History
Yeshiva University
New York City
* Alowishius Gas N' Oil,
Defender of his native soil,
A colonel of horse
In the mechanized force . . .
He led his troops to the battle scene,
He led them full of gasoline
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