The Knowland Stand

Sir:

As a shot-down R.A.F. pilot I spent four years and 359 days in Germany reflecting on the virtues of appeasement of totalitarian governments and cannot but be dismayed at the ostrich-rump aspect presented by so many British leaders today. Your Senator Knowland seems to me to be your most intelligent and sensible statesman, and it is ironical that he is today doing his best to apprise the free world of its dangers from the world-Communism concept in precisely the same way as Churchill warned Britain [in 1938-39] of Nazi strength and aims . . . Peaceful coexistence is a dangerous delusion, comparable with "peace in our time."

H. M. MURRAY

Jakarta, Indonesia

Sir:

Frankly I am shocked at the attitude taken by Senators Knowland and Johnson on the question of Communist China's admission to the U.N. I ... am opposed to the admission of Communist China to our world congress, but . . . being a world power (which she definitely is), she has valid claim, and I think it would be narrow and stupid for the U.S. to withdraw from the U.N. One cannot bargain with a nation if one avoids it. One cannot run away from one's enemies. I say, meet with the Communist Chinese. Rather lose pride across the conference table than lose lives across no man's land . . .

JAN HARTMAN

Columbus, Ohio

Sir:

It would be a great tragedy if the U.S. followed Senator Knowland's demand . . . The result would be the same as our refusal to join the League of Nations.

GORDON ROEDER

Northfield, Vt.

Sir:

I wish to commend . . . Senator Knowland's objection to Communist China's membership in the U.N. ... I think the objection of the majority of American voters to China's membership is not that we object to China's or Russia's Communistic effort but to the wayCommunism . . . has always been administered by sordid racketeers in total disregard of their subjects' rights . . .

M. H. JAMES

Rocky Ford, Colo.

Hollywood Will Little Note . . .

Sir:

Congratulations to you on your magnificent article in connection with the great Yankee victory at Gettysburg [TIME, July 5]

It is refreshing to get the proper perspective in connection with such matters. The way Hollywood buckets out Confederate propaganda you would think it was a sin for any man to have defended or fought for the U.S. during the days of the Rebellion.

JAMES J. ATKINS

Sea Breeze, N.Y.

Sir:

... In Providence I ... met quite a number of veterans of the Battle of Gettysburg and always figured that their story was very exaggerated. After reading your story, with its descriptive . . . cyclorama . . . I have a very guilty feeling for ever having doubted their stories. I now can understand, 40 years too late, why they had reason to be so proud of their Rhode Island Red Hot Artillery.

THOMAS H.D. WINDER

Attleboro, Mass.

Unhappy Motoring

Sir:

I have been reading with interest your articles on automobile dealers and their woes, especially "Auto Bootlegging" [July 12]. Though it is obvious that dealers and manufacturers have their problems, I just can't feel too sympathetic. The plain truth ... is that new cars cost far too much. My husband is a captain in the Air Force, and if we traded in our 1951 Studebaker ... on any new car in the moderate price range, the monthly payments for 24 months would be from 16% to 20% of his pay . . .

We would like a new car (who wouldn't?), but we plan to drive our present one for quite a few years to come . . .

BARBARA B. WILCOX

Albuquerque

The Last Yard

Sir:

Your July 12 coverage of the demise of the last great, and perhaps greatest, yacht-building institution--the Henry B. Nevins yard--brings considerable remorse to people who watch the changing American scene with an evaluative eye. The economic phenomena which have brought such great institutions as this to their knees can only be described as ''creeping socialism," and it is, in my mind, gradually undermining the whole structure of American society . . . Although I ... would never be able to own one of Mr. Nevins' boats ... I would and will defend to my death the rights of more fortunate people to acquire such property . .

DEAN L. JACOBY

Alton, Ill.

Sir:

Your article on Henry B. Nevins was extremely good. It is unfortunate, however, that neither was the Baruna mentioned nor her picture printed ... In the 6-meter class you did not mention . . . Llanoria, which is the newest and best of the 6s he built. She was twice Olympic champion and winner of the One-Ton and Seawanhaka Cups . . .

JULIAN K. ROOSEVELT

New York City

P:The yawl Baruna was built by the Quincy Adams Yacht Yard. For a picture of Nevins' Llanoria, on which Reader Roosevelt sailed as a crewman when she won her Seawanhaka trophy, see cut.--ED.

Some Semantic Evening

Sir:

As a former victim of IFD (Idealization-Frustration-Demoralization) and a former student of Semanticist S. I. Hayakawa, allow me to offer a ... realistic bravo for your article [July 12] expressing his thoughts on popular song lyrics ... It may help offset the frustration and demoralization that are so prevalent these days due to our willingness to rear another generation on word symbolism . . .

MARIE PROCTOR

Broomall, Pa.

Sir:

. . . Does Dr. Hayakawa feel that these songs of "ineffectual nostalgia, unrealistic fantasy, self-pity, etc." are, as the record men claim, what the public wants? ... If the good doctor can supplement his diagnosis of the "disease" with a possible formula for the cure, I will pledge myself to the fight . . .

HAL LEVY (ASCAP member)

Sherman Oaks, Calif.

Sir:

... I think the lyrics of Ira Gershwin and Lorenz Hart will live on long after Dr. Hayakawa has taken his "research" to a place where he will find his "perfect" lyrics. The truest meaning of his IFD is more probably Insane, Frantic and Deaf.

JOHN HUTCHINSON

San Diego

Anxious Addict

Sir:

The conclusion of Drs. Hammond and Horn that "regular cigarette smoking causes an increase in death rates from heart disease and cancer" [TIME, July 5] seems to me to overlook, at least as far as heart disease is concerned, the real cause. The majority of cigarette smokers belong to the "nervous" type, and heart disease is to a considerable extent of psychosomatic origin. The fact that cigar smokers are much less affected and that the death rates of pipe smokers are not at all different from those of nonsmokers points in the same direction ... It is quite possible that in many instances of premature death it is not the cigarette that kills, but rather that those who are susceptible to heart disease because of their emotional makeup smoke cigarettes.

J. CHORON

London

Sir:

Before Drs. Hammond and Horn get too far out on a slender statistical limb . . . they should consider a possible and likely selective factor: those who go for heavy cigarette smoking are apt to be the same anxious, hard-driving (or driven) fellows who in disproportionate numbers are headed for heart trouble, cigarettes or no cigarettes. Smoking and heart ailment may come to be associated by way of a third set of factors, rather than one causing the other.

QUINN McNEMAR

Stanford Calif.

Poets & Peasants in Chicago

Sir:

As an admirer and reader of Chicago's Poetry, I have followed the TIME accounts of Ellen Stevenson's aid to this magazine [TIME, May 24 et seq.] with the greatest interest. ... In your July 12 issue you have referred to Poetry as the "flat-broke association's outlet for its members' rhymes." . . . One suspects that TIME suspects that no "highbrows" or "longhairs" read their magazine and can therefore have a chummy sneer with the uninformed . . .

JOANNE DE LONGCHAMPS

Reno

Sir:

. . . Poetry is not "an outlet" for the "rhymes" of members of the Modern Poetry Association; it is the foremost organ of modern poetry in contemporary America . . . One understands TIME'S interest in its middlebrow clucking at Adlai Stevenson's ex-relatives, but what can TIME possibly gain from sly, schoolboy innuendoes? . . .

PAUL FUSSELL JR.

New London, Conn.

Glaring Limbs

Sir:

Re "Paperback Recession" [TIME, July 5]: I have heard . . . people say that they will not read a paperback in any public place. Why ? The cover! A person with any degree of pride . . . would hesitate to sit in a bus, subway, plane or train with a picture of some naked limbs . . . glaring boldly from the cover . . .

I nearly didn't buy [Hemingway's] To Have and Have Not simply because of the cover. I knew I'd feel like a damn heel going up to the clerk and paying her for the book . . . For years publishers of hardbacked books have seen fit to limit their covers to the title and the author's name--a very satisfactory arrangement.

MICHAEL B. McHALE

Whittier, Calif.

Ode to Miss Mabel

Sir:

I must thank you for your June 28 article on Miss Mabel Whiteside. It is a thrill to her old students to see her appreciated . . . We not only learned Greek and the classics from her, but we learned about life ... I am not exaggerating when I say I could not keep house, watch over a family or enter into any community activities without the philosophical teachings of Miss Mabel.

KENEY (SHROPSHIRE) ROSEBERRY

Paris, Ky.

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