Sin & Sweden
SIR:
JUDGING BY YOUR APRIL 25 ARTICLE, SWEDEN IS THE MOST CIVILIZED COUNTRY ON EARTH. OUR WAY OF LIFE IS BASED ON RIDICULOUS HYPOCRISY.
ROBERT MILLER
LONDON
Sir:
Rarely have I seen such a piece of unfair and misleading reporting as Joe David Brown's article about sin & Sweden. To say that Mrs. Ottesen-Jensen's views on sex relations are typically Swedish is wrong; to let a 19-year-old boy, as a final note on Swedish manners, declare that he would never marry a girl because he made her pregnant is foul.
SVEN BACKLUND
Press Attache
The Swedish Embassy
Washington, B.C.
Sir:
. . . A shameful and despicable article . . .
AKE BONNIER
New York City
Sir:
I was very much shocked when I read the article . . . Are we who read this to understand that such teaching is accepted on the school curriculum by the Board of Education there? . . . Anyone with any normal amount of intelligence isn't going to believe such trash ! "Trash" is certainly the only word for this entire idea. "Love" certainly isn't even connected with such filth . . .
FAITH SMITH
State College, Pa.
Sir:
May I comment on your report? . . . Abortion must be approved by at least two doctors, in many cases by the Swedish Medical Board. Women seeking abortion are also studied by social workers, and an attempt is made to help them whether they get an abortion or not . . . Unlike most Roman Catholic countries, Sweden has little prostitution. The illegitimacy rate is far lower than in most Roman Catholic countries, and many children born out of wedlock are legitimized by subsequent marriage. Quoting a Roman Catholic priest on Sweden would be a good deal like quoting a Communist on American democracy ! . . . The most shocking aspect of your attack is the slandering of Elise Ottesen-Jensen. She has fought the abortion evil for decades, one of her weapons being the maintenance of a home for unmarried mothers . . I have lived in many countries and, for my money, the Swedes have as high a standard of ethics as any people I know.
WILLIAM VOGT
National Director
Planned Parenthood Federation of America
New York City
Sir:
. . . Sweden has one of the highest living standards in the world, its people are healthy and happy, and its women are beautiful. Perhaps the pretty girls would not give Mr. Brown a tumble, and his male ego has been injured . . .
EDITH S. ROMBERG
New Haven, Conn.
Sir:
. . . Poor old Joe David Brown! His querulous and high-minded lament from Sweden should gain him a quick return ticket to the good old U.S.A. where sin and sex are packaged more temptingly in well-stacked pinup girls . . .
BERNICE D. HALL
Rye, N.Y.
The Man on Formosa
Sir:
Your April 18 story of President Chiang Kai-shek is far above the average treatment of that controversial figure . . .
Out of my own years in China and . . . out of personal contacts with him and more numerous ones with close associates of his, I recognize the near-impossibility of an objective yet living portrait . . . You have come within a very few percent figures of achieving this.
I stated on my return from China in 1946 . . . a hundred years from now I believe historians will give the Generalissimo a high place among his contemporaries. This is my continued judgment.
FRANK T. CARTWRIGHT
Administrative Secretary for China and Southeast Asia
Division of World Missions of the Board of Missions of
The Methodist Church New York City
Sir:
. . . Chiang is a dismal egotist with a devoted following of stupid, ruthless, cowardly gangsters. Chiang & Co. can no more be offered to the free world as China's answer to Communism than Senator McCarthy can be tolerated as America's answer. Shame on you for publishing that tearful eulogy . . .
WINIFRED SWANSON
Palmer, Mass.
Sir:
. . . I think the article is the clearest, fairest and most balanced statement I have seen about Chiang Kaishek, and the cause that he represents, in any current publication. I lived in Nanking from 1932 to 1936 when I was on the faculty of the University of Nanking . . . I have a great admiration and respect for the Generalissimo, for his integrity, patriotism and courage . . . The decade from 1927 to 1937 was generally considered the best period in Chinese history from the standpoint of efficiency and integrity, and it was only the pressing necessity of battling with the Japanese that knocked awry the Nationalist government and its reforms . . .
W. REGINALD WHEELER
New York City
Sir:
Chiang Kai-shek may once have been useful to China. It does not necessarily follow that he is still useful . . . You place so much importance on Chiang's constant striving to do what is right for "his" people. Why is there not a plebiscite on Formosa, then, to discover just what the people think is right? . . .
LILA WOLF
Los Angeles
Sir:
. . . Since 1944, there have been so many half truths and slanted accounts of Chiang in our newspapers and columnists' writings that it is refreshing to see your impartial and unbiased account . . . You admit that Chiang had some faults, some bad features in his government; but what puzzles me is that he commanded the respect of the nation, that he fought off the Japanese from 1937 to 1946.
Even though the Japanese were able to sweep through almost to Australia during the war, they never conquered China . . .
(THE REV.) JOSEPH D'INVILLIERS, S.J.
Loyola College
Baltimore
Sir:
From one of Hong Kong's 670,000 anti-Communist refugees from Red China . . . congratulations on your story. You are one of the few American publications still able to retain an independence of opinion about Free China amid the maelstrom of lies. It seems that many--including Americans--are convinced that we Chinese want Mao Tse-tung and not Chiang Kaishek. As long as Chiang and Formosa exist, the free and enslaved Chinese will live and fight on in hope . . .
VAN CHENG
Hong Kong
F.D.R. & History
Sir:
Surely the book by Professor Robinson [The Roosevelt Leadership--April 11] will be condemned by most Americans . . . We Britishers will never forget what we owe to that great man . . .
A. S. HERBERT
Northwood, Middlesex, England
Sir:
I believe in F.D.R.'s greatness, and in the necessity for the New Deal in the setting in which it took place. Both, however, must stand the test of rigorous analysis, and I therefore welcome Professor Robinson's book . . . The political habit of undermining popular respect for the opposition by the use of picturesque epithet is as old as the nation. I can think of many real classics stretching all the way back to Washington's Administration, when John Adams referred to Alexander Hamilton as that "little West Indian bastard." . . . To hold F.D.R. responsible for McCarthy because F.D.R. had striking success in stigmatizing his opponents seems to me to overlook the long history of political invective, and to ignore the real (and much more dangerous) roots of McCarthyism.
M. SWEARINGEN
Professor of American History
Ankara University, Turkey
Far from Montezuma
Sir:
Georgia is a nice state. It has mountains and plains and forests, and even a gold mine or two. It also has a lot of nice people. Some of them live in Macon County. That is a nice county. It has . . . a couple of towns called Montezuma and Oglethorpe, but it does not have Tuskegee Institute [April 18].
Tuskegee is about 100 miles westward, smack in the middle of Macon County, Alabama.
A. S. KYLE
Louisville
Statistician at No. 10
Sir:
In your narrative of the retirement of Sir Winston Churchill, you state [April 18] that "next morning several hundred were still waiting and guessing" in Downing Street. As the Cabinet assembled, I took a count. There were only 47 people in Downing Street (including myself) as Mr. Harold Macmillan entered No. 10. I did not take a count when Sir Winston drove off to the palace, but I should guess 500, not "more than 2,000 gawpers." As one of the gawpers, I suggest that Sir Winston was wearing not a frock coat but a morning coat.
D. W. BROGAN
Cambridge, England
P: Professor Denis Brogan is an old hand at explaining Britons to Americans and vice versa, but TIME'S London crowd-counter stands by his original estimate. As for Churchill's fancy trappings, worn on his way to Buckingham Palace, let Reader Brogan take another look.--ED.
The Tax Gatherer
Sir:
Repugnance to tax collectors may be a "persistent infantilism" [April 18], but the notion that we must continue our present methods of taxing income is persistent nonsense. Our Federal Government could even increase its tax revenues without employing inquisitorial methods or relying on self-assessment--a device which rewards skulduggery and penalizes the unsophisticated and the honest. For small taxpayers with income other than wages, it is often more difficult to compute the tax than it is to pay it . . .
GLENN E. HOOVER
Oakland, Calif.
Sir:
I never read such a bunch of rubbish. If the Government didn't take its pound of flesh out of every paycheck, there would be a hell of a lot of people they would have to beat it out of on April 15 . . .
ARTHUR G. ROE
Seattle
Sir:
Your article regarding taxes was a masterpiece . . . The American people can afford to be slightly subversive.
HARRIET LEE
La Habra, Calif.
Sir:
. . . My conclusion is that all existing taxes should be abolished . . . The rightful and natural revenue of government should be ground rent, determined by the site value of land . . .
HELEN C. WALLACE
San Francisco
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