Man of the Year

Sir:

Let's look at the accomplishments as we wind up the old year; 1954 could be called the Year of Settlements. The old grievances over the Suez Canal Zone, Iranian oil and Trieste were brilliantly negotiated and settled . . . EDC may be dead, but the Western European nations and their allies . . . have virtually completed the structure for Western defense, with German participation. The Indo-China war, which has long drained one of our allies, was halted (granted, not settled). True, the shadow of Asian Communism has continued to spread, is still moving rapidly and is as yet unchecked, so 1955 will be no time to relax.

This year saw some great strides towards unity of purpose, with Dulles and Eden either behind the scenes or directly at the conference table; the Man of the Year must surely be one of these two, with Mendes-France a close second.

CHARLES R. KAMM

Cape Town, South Africa

Sir:

May we propose the names of Ezra Taft Benson and Arthur V. Watkins to share the honor? It is fitting that these Utahans epitomize the renaissance taking place in American politics, wherein honesty, virtue and human dignity are the prevailing guideposts directing governmental relations . . .

WILLIAM & EUNICE KNECHT

Canonsburg, Pa.

Sir:

I would like to propose . . . Carlos Castillo Armas . . . What Armas and his Army of Liberation did here is of importance to the free world. He deserves your recognition . . -

ELEANOR L. BURGE

Patulul, Guatemala

Sir:

. . . Richard Neuberger--Senator--elect. Oregon's first Democrat in 40 years.

D. D. MOREY

Portland, Ore.

Sir:

. . . Charles E. Wilson, of course. Not for his great ability . . . but for the guts, the clarity of vision, and the very pleasing naivete which promoted his famous "dogs" statement . . .

ROY G. WESTERDAHL

Brewster, Wash.

Sir:

May I suggest . . . you give careful consideration to one who, by the sheer force of his fighting personality, has revitalized American interest in U.N.--Ambassador Henry Cabot Lodge?

C. H. BROLEY JR.

Lenox, Mass.

Sir:

. . . Evangelist Billy Graham would make a splendid choice . . . He has influenced vast multitudes . . .

(REV.) HERBERT H. EHRENSTEIN

Bethany Baptist Church

Philadelphia

Sir:

. . . Walt Disney. Who has done more for our children? . . .

DOLORES P. OCHS

Akron, Ohio

Sir:

Neither you nor I can escape it. Joe McCarthy should be on your cover. But after it's over, for the love of Heaven, destroy the plates.

CHARLES H. JOGGARD

Woodstown, NJ.

Friend, Foe or Fringe?

Sir:

Thanks for your sarcastic tone when referring to McCarthy in "Joe & the Handmaidens [TIME, Nov. 22]." That he should be permitted to escape censure is unthinkable. A two-year-old receives a sound spanking when he is obnoxious. Why not McCarthy ?

ELLEN WOODFORD

Ardmore, Pa.

Sir:

Your "get McCarthy" diatribe sounds like Pravda on Trotsky. Such foaming at the mouth! With adjectives, yet! "Snarling," "whined," etc. Clear-eyed, noble liberals and the skulking, beastly villain, right out of stock. Like another Cato, your every issue croaks: "Delenda est McCarthy!"

JAMES J. MCCORMACK

Houston, Texas

Sir:

Your anti-McCarthy blatherings annoy me no end . . . A consideration of objective facts is sufficient to dispel your ill-conceived notion that the Senator is a fiend in human form . . .

JAMES P. WARD

Philadelphia

Sir:

Re those who were indignant at the launching of the "Ten Million Americans for McCarthy" drive: This movement represents one of the prettiest compliments our nation has received since UNIVAC predicted a Democratic victory, for it is based on the assumption that we have only 10 million morons in a population of 163 million--a daintily narrow lunatic fringe that any country might be proud of.

WEARE HOLBROOK

Hartsdale, N.Y.

What's Her Line?

Sir:

Re your Nov. 15 "So Lovely & So Bruised": Miss Dorothy Kilgallen's "report" of the LSheppard] trial, as seen in your printed excerpt, is one of the most glaring examples of the ever-increasing, detestable "trials by newspaper" . . . Unconsciously, Miss Kilgallen designed her narrative to display one emotion for one person: quivering sympathy for Mrs. Sheppard . . . After a gruesome, adjective-laden description of the slides of the dead woman, consider the effect of the sob sister's subsequent sentence: "No wonder at all that Dr. Sam (meaning the defendant, I presume) cried. He could remember well, without looking."

How low can you hit a man, innocent until proven guilty? How patronizing can the holier-than-thou press be? How much deeper can the newspapers knife into "freedom of the press"? . . .

WILLIAM JAMES HICKEY

Ithaca, N.Y.

Sir:

"Horrorthy Spillgallen?"

J. E. DRAIM

Lieutenant, U.S.N.

Carmel, Calif.

France & Mendes-France

Sir:

Re your Nov. 15 "Down Comes the Tricolor": Perhaps I'm what the new "saviors" of the world would call old-fashioned and reactionary, but I was deeply grieved upon learning of France's abandonment--without even a popular referendum--of her majestic Indian territory of Pondicherry . . . If this deliberate withdrawal from French territory is a part of Mendes-France's new cooperative and "advanced" program, then I pity the fate of the remainder of the French Republic's pride and glory.

GEORGE C. KENNEDY JR.

Philadelphia

Sir:

France has again shown that it is the most aggressive nation in Europe, beside Russia. What a shame to blackmail Germany and try to force her to give up the Saar . . .

S. GEORG

S--ao Paulo, Brazil

Sir:

. . . The French people resent foreign meddling in their own affairs ... As for the argument that France is carelessly surrendering large hunks of territory . . . to the Communists, the French can ask: Who delivered Poland, Hungary, Rumania, Czechoslovakia, part of Germany and of Korea, and China . . . to the Communists? . . .

ROBERT FERRET

Colomba, Guatemala

The Queenship of Mary

Sir:

The Nov. 8 article on the Queenship of Mary was very fine . . .

THOMAS KELLY

Otway, Ohio

Sir:

. . . If Roman scholars would study the New Testament, nowhere would they find any evidence that Mary had any influence upon Christ during any period of his life. Therefore it is sane and right to assume that if she had no influence then, she certainly would have none now

BILL KURSCHINSKI

Waterloo, Ont.

Sir:

It seems that the more Pope Pius XII pleads and prays to Mary, the stronger Communism in Italy gets. Doesn't it seem logical to believe the Roman Catholic Church is made up of fallible men capable of making serious blunders and teaching errors?

JOHN T. SONIAT

New Orleans, La.

Hooligan's Wake

Sir:

It wouldn't make sense for the word "hooliganism," as used by the Russians, to derive from Happy Hooligan of a long-ago U.S. comic strip [TIME, Nov. 8]. Happy was a harmless wight who was always being socked, never did any socking. Doesn't the word really come from a family of notorious ruffians, active in London at the end of the last century, named Hoolihan or Hooligan?

BERTRAM BENEDICT

Washington, D.C.

P: Eric Partridge (Dictionary of Slang and Unconventional English] refers to the "lively, rough but not criminal Houlihan family in London, 1895," also "a gang of roughs led by one Hooley."--ED.

The Case Against O'Casey

Sir:

Re "O'Casey at the Bat" [TIME, Nov. 15]: Being an Irishman, or partly one, I find it slightly painful [that] Sean O'Casey . . . respects a political organization which has slain and tortured uncounted millions all over their world--with their "inexhaustible energy, the irresistible enthusiasm of their Socialist efforts" . . . O'Casey may be a "roguish wordmonger," but so was Goebbels and Pravda ... He is entertaining, but he is also bitter . . . There is too much of his "failing desires" to make him palatable to anyone who knows there is a God.

R. SWAIN Los Angeles

The Most Hated? (Contd.)

Sir:

I would respectfully like to remind Mr. Owen J. Stubbs [TIME Letters, Nov. 15] that ... in Africa, the ancestors of the "backward and unambitious race" were manufacturing iron while their contemporaries in Europe still were dabbling with bronze . . . and that if Africa is a dark continent, it was the "Christian guardians" who plunged it into darkness. Those "guardians" [who] destroyed a fine young civilization by the wholesale kidnaping of its members for the slave trade . . .

WAYNE C. LOCK WOOD

Newark, N.J.

Sir:

. . . Being an African, I can testify to the role of the white man in any part of Africa: Let me tell Mr. Stubbs something . . . for years the white man has been Africa's burden . . .

MRS. RICHARD R. ASHBURN

Sandusky, Ohio

Sir:

The letters by Trouwer and Stubbs re Daniel Malan were read with a great deal of interest ... so much cannot be said for your comment to them . . . For Heaven's sake try to mind your own business for a change . For a nation that is trying to promote peace and understanding, you are doing an excellent job of thwarting that possibility. It is very evident that you haven't the remotest conception of the actual conditions in South Africa . . .

G. W. STEGMANN

Fredericton, N.B.

The Gallant Fellow

Sir:

... As one who had the privilege of visiting Andre Derain in his studio at Chambourcy, and also of drinking some vin ordinaire with him at one of his favorite bistros ... I can vouch for the fact that he was a ban vivant, and, meaning no disrespect (as I consider him one of the two or three painters of his epoch whose work will really endure), I wonder whether you are ... in error in reporting his words ["Some red, show me some red; before dying I want to see some red, and some green"--TIME, Nov. 1]. Instead of asking to see "du rouge, et du vert" ("some red, and some green"), I wonder if he did not really ask for "du rouge, et des verres" ("some red wine, and some glasses"). I am sure the gallant fellow would infinitely prefer to be quoted as having said this . . .

HORACE TITUS

New York City

Horrible Moments

Sir:

Horrible moments always seem to last longer than they actually do, so it is no wonder that 37 years of Communist rule in Russia seem to be "67" to TIME [Nov. 15].

MARTIN VISSAK

Willimantic, Conn.

P: Printer's devilment.--ED.

The Election & After (Contd.)

Sir:

TIME [Nov. 1] was the only national publication to see, in advance, that the people of South Carolina would elect J. Strom Thurmond, the first write-in Senator in American history.

As the "Washington correspondent" who originated the "lethal" interview with Harry Vaughan, I am pleased to know that it was considered timely enough for inclusion in the same story. You may be interested in knowing that the South Carolinians who beat Boss Edgar A. Brown, nominee of the state committee, now call themselves "pencil-totin' Democrats."

FRANK VAN DER LINDEN

Washington, D.C.

New Marx in Production

Sir:

Re "Capitalist Revolution [Nov. 8]": During the past 20 years the cause of the change in the economic aspects of our country can be traced largely to the corporation's reconstruction in the image of our Federal Constitution. That is what has given the corporation its soul and, at the same time, achieved for us the benefits which Marx foresaw as essential, but could not accomplish with the limited means then understood by corporations and governments. Next in importance, and a corollary of the corporation's ability to produce plenty, is the revolution in the incentives which cause men to work. That is its regenerative power.

When it comes to creating the desire to work . . . saving for perhaps 15 to 50 years ahead is nowhere near as efficient [an incentive] as working to pay for a car to ride to work.

KARL HAARTZ

Andover, Mass.

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