Tito & Co.

Sir:

From all the sparkling gems you distribute so generously week after week in your publication, the column "Dear Comrade" [June 6] is the Kohinoor! The Voice of America should broadcast it--not one time, but again and again, in all languages, so that people all over the world know what the Bulganins and the Khrushchevs and the Molotovs and all the other Kremlinitwits and Moscowards had to say about "Dear Comrade" Tito before they went to Canossa!

FRANZ TRAUGOTT

Providence

Sir:

I was disappointed to note a tinge of snobbery in your recent article on Marshal Tito. I believe that his rise from the son of a poor peasant to the Communist President of Yugoslavia is a story in many ways paralleling the traditional American Horatio Alger legend . . . I, therefore, rue the day when we look down upon a man for being, not a Communist dictator, but "The Peasant's Son."

EDWARD J. McKiNNEY Ithaca, N.Y.

G.A.W.

Sir:

G.A.W. [June 13]--next? G.A.P. (guaranteed annual profit for businesses)? G.A.I. (guaranteed annual income for professional persons and farmers) ? G.A.C. (guaranteed annual commissions for salesmen) ? What about day laborers and migratory workers? Why not a G.W.F.M. (guaranteed weekly filet mignon) for all of us?

F. INISTORE GODFREY Baltimore

Elephants, Anyone?

Sir:

. . . At the present time I'm working for civil service up in Alaska. I'm an ex-coast guardsman . . . only 22 years old . . .

My contract is up in September . . . All I want to do is get home the cheapest way possible. I live in Delano, Calif. I thought that if I could buy an elephant and ride it home, I could sell it at above or the same cost I paid for it. If you would tell me where I could buy one and the cost, I would appreciate it . . .

JIMMIE HUGHES

Adak, Alaska

Vaccine Snafu (Contd.)

Sir: These doctors and educators et al. who so promptly damn politicians for the unfortunate difficulties in the path of the Salk vaccine distribution [June 13] should be reminded of the one sure way to get rid of our politicians--establish a dictatorship.That will do the trick--if they want to pay the price.

LAMBERT FAIRCHILD New York City

Opinion & Desegregation

Sir:

I protest! To call our nation's highest court an "inept fraternity of politicians and professors" is mockery beyond forgiveness [June 13]. Agreement or disagreement with a decision from the court is no basis for such a smear as printed by the Richmond News Leader. Those who criticize so noble a tribunal behind the cloak of a free press are not worthy of the freedom they possess. Clear-thinking Americans cannot help respect the determination of the U.S. Supreme Court to keep America the "land of the free."

HOWARD D. MOORE Independence, Mo.

Criminal & Moral Codes (Contd.)

Sir:

Re "Sin & Criminality" in the May 30 issue: . . . To make criminal any sexual activity in which husband and wife engage with mutual consent and love is . . . ridiculous. What married people do in bed is no more the business of lawmakers than is the way they cook their eggs when they get up ...

The general American attitude that conventional sexual intercourse is the only "proper" expression of sexual desire--and, worse, the legislating of that attitude--is a hangover from the Puritan fathers, from whom so few of us descended. The prudery and naivete of such an attitude must also make us a laughingstock in nations of more wisdom and maturity.

CONSTANCE MACMILLAN

Buffalo

Visiting Teacher

Sir:

. . . I would like to add my complete appreciation of Carmelite Janvier. We are the parents of a mentally retarded child and two wonderfully normal children, and we feel personally that our lives have been enriched and matured by this experience, especially because we have come to realize how perfectly wonderful people like Teacher Janvier are!

MRS. KENNETH D. JOHANSEN Seattle

Sir:

. . . It does my heart good to see such a wonderful woman get the credit that she so richly deserves.

HAROLD SCHWARTZ 2nd Lieutenant Orlando A.F.B. Orlando, Fla.

Two for the Show

Sir:

The decline of the theater [June 6] stems not so much from the lack of good plays and good authors as from the growing influence of our noted theater critics, that small and parasitic group of men who feel it is their sacred duty to protect the theatergoer from being exposed to anything but superior spectacles on the legitimate stage . . . I have often wondered why our plays should be so meticulously hand-picked by a small group of intellectual supermen. Through individual tastes we choose our food and manage to survive, and even though not all of us are gourmets, we enjoy eating . . .

It is not "Ibsenitis" that is killing the theater; it is ''Critic-itis." Maybe, if we divided the number of critics in half, the number of theaters may double again.

HENRY ROGERS

Norristown, Pa.

Sir:

The opinions of Walter Kerr on the state of the American drama are interesting and thought-provoking . . . As a teacher who finds it professionally necessary to talk about the drama but who cannot afford the cost of contemporary playgoing, I submit that the real thing wrong with our theater is economic. Only the fashionable and well-heeled can afford theatergoing in our time . . .

Some huge foundation giving millions away for evaluations of education might do well to set up a fund to provide inpecunious college professors with ticket money for the drama . . .

RICHARD J. STONESIFER, PH.D. Franklin and Marshall College Lancaster, Pa.

Bonjour Jeunesse (Contd.)

Sir:

Thank you for Stanley Karnow's excellent analysis of the problems facing France's youth [May 30]. It helps us Americans in Paris to understand the situation we see about us.

However, I think the article underestimates the thoughtful seriousness and hopeful determination of many of France's young people. For example, the recent student pilgrimage to Chartres . . . was a pledge of their resolve to work for a really Christian future for their country.

I would like to see TIME begin to give more publicity to the positive and hopeful aspects of France's situation. Those who are working so hard to better things for their country could use the encouragement . .

(MRS.) BARBARA LANCASTER Paris

SIR:

. . . HIS FRAGMENTARY AND DISTORTED WORD-PICTURE OF THE YOUTH OF FRANCE WAS AS UNFAIR AS IT WAS UNTRUE. KARNOW MERELY APES THE KREMLIN'S DESCRIPTION OF OUR OWN YOUTH IN THE U.S. HE GROSSLY INSULTS THE INTELLIGENCE OF TIME'S VAST AUDIENCE NO LESS THAN HE DOES THE FRENCH PEOPLE.

A. N. SPANEL CHAIRMAN OF THE BOARD INTERNATIONAL LATEX CORP. PRINCETON, NJ.

Sir:

A French TIME reader and the mother of a student (law, alas), I really feel I must congratulate you on your article . . . There is not a word you write that I can't subscribe to ...

MRS. R. H. CARO Nice

Sir: Congratulations to TIME'S correspondent in Paris on his article, "France: the Younger Generation"; he has hit all his nails squarely on the head, and seldom have I read an article so deeply comprehensive--and sympathetic--of all the ills that plague France at the present time as reflected by French youth and interpreted through American eyes. Even after years of close and happy association with my French friends, I still never fail to be appalled by the very typically Gallic shrug of the shoulders accompanied by the timeworn and threadbare excuses which reach back to the War of 1870 and the Prussian occupation of Paris . . .

CARL B. HUMPHREY

Casablanca, French Morocco

Sir:

A little over a year ago I was one of the youths in France that Mr. Karnow has written about. It was striking that the situation, as he describes it, is exactly the reason I left there. But I wish I could agree with what he says about sex. . .

Concerning the educational tools being rusty, I can also tell you that when a youngster of 16 or 17 gets out of high school, he knows much more than his American counterpart, much less about baseball, but certainly more about arts and sciences . . .

C. V. RACINE South Bend, Ind.

Prose & Poetry (Contd.)

Sir:

I add a hearty ditto to all you have to say about Dylan Thomas [May 30], but I am amazed, confused, and decidedly annoyed at the offhand manner in which you have dealt with Robert Frost . . . Did you seek to vault Thomas even higher in the literary castes by forcing Frost nearly out of the picture ? . . . Perhaps I misunderstood; I certainly hope so.

DONALD C. REAM Philadelphia

Sir:

. . . You say that the public expects its poets to be "boisterous, dissolute, sometimes repellent." If it is the literate public you have in mind, I hasten to inform you that it expects nothing of the kind. On the contrary, it demands that a poet be a gentleman, in the most significant sense of the word. Lice and low company, added to booze and borrowed breeches, are the marks of the charlatan, not the true poet . . .

GERTRUDE GOEBEI

Cincinnati

Seaway

Sir:

It is unfortunate that the article on the St. Lawrence Seaway neglected to mention Milwaukee's excellent present harbor facilities and plans for future development . . .

JAMES H. BRACHMAN Milwaukee

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