Enigmatic Actor

SIR:

CONGRATULATIONS ON TIME'S FEB. 27 ASTUTE AND KEENLY OBSERVANT ARTICLE ON BILL HOLDEN. BUT HE IS STILL AN ENIGMA, ISN'T HE?

DEBORAH KERR

HOLLYWOOD

The Trouble with Harry

Sir:

The Feb. 13 picture of "Mr. Democrat" was most appropriate. It used to be Pendergast peering over Truman's shoulder; now it's Tammany Hall's Boss De Sapio. All are of the same ilk and bilk. When Truman complains, "We have lost heavily among the millions of uncommitted people in Asia," he seems to have forgotten under whose administration it was that the Chinese Commies were called "merely agrarian reformers." There are thousands of American casualties of Korea who weren't nearly so happy on "Harry's Night Out."

CARROLL WILLIS Wichita, Kans.

Sir:

Judging from snatches of his memoirs and recent remarks, Mr. Truman is apparently convinced that he didn't say what he said, or do what he did.

ELIZABETH HAMM

Los Angeles

Capital Punishment

Sir:

They do not often have free votes in the House of Commons; usually the whips are on, and members are as near as makes no difference compelled to support their party . . . There is a lesson for everybody in [the free vote on capital punishment--Feb. 27] --a lesson alike for those who have despaired of Parliament and for those who have kept their faith in it. It is a first sign of a real revival of parliamentary freedom, and, whatever the merits of their particular votes, the young Conservatives have deserved well of the country by their courage.

CHRISTOPHER HOLLIS (Tory M.P. for Devizes 1945-55) Punch London

Moving Mountain

Sir:

As the long-suffering driver of Adlai Stevenson's plunging Sno-Cat, I have in the past few days been called everything from assassin to near hero and perpetrator of overambitious publicity stunts. Now, I have further been taunted by having my beloved Mt. Hood spirited across the river to Washington on the pages of TIME, Feb. 27. Please, sir, desist from this journalistic gerrymandering; give us back our mountain and let Washington Republicans be content to scare Adlai with such common threats as airplane trouble.

JOHN C. MACONE

Timberline, Ore.

Sir:

Maybe faith can move mountains, but you hoods can only steal them.

STEWART HOLBROOK

Portland, Ore.

Experiment & Accomplishment

Sir:

It is refreshing to come across a commentary on contemporary painting by a magazine that is neither cowed nor won over by the flood of inanity, fantasy and "uglification" now so widely acclaimed as art of importance and value. Your critic appears to be one of the few reviewers who have managed to maintain a sense of balance between experiment and accomplishment, between painting as a manifestation of skill, taste esthetic and plastic achievement as opposed to the accidental drippings, smearings anc daubings of the abstract expressionists.

JAY LAVENSON

Philadelphia

Sir:

That anyone can take these ravings and doodlings seriously is symptomatic of our morally degenerate and neurotic generation.

DAVID WEISE Los Angeles

Sir:

TIME should be congratulated for allowing so much space to be devoted to an important subject. In addition to the fine color reproductions, the writing is penetrating and fair.

HAL W. METZGER New York City

Sir:

You know full well that abstract art is the biggest racket since astrology.

L. K. CHESTER Mayo, Yukon Territory

Sir:

It suddenly dawned why these paintings give me no "expression" or "impression." These men have nothing to say, and then state their profound nothingness brashly and loudly. After having declared themselves, they attempt to browbeat you into thinking you are somehow inferior because you don't like their "works." The only reaction I get is: Who do they think they are kidding?

LENNA M. RASMUSSENS Torrance, Calif.

Sir:

I thought you did a good job in presenting why some of the abstractions should be enjoyed. But then you go back to your high altar and pronounce to the world that maybe we should wait around until art becomes meaningful. If Art--literature, drama, art, architecture, etc.--has to wait until the public gets some meaning out of it, then the artist might as well resign; possibly he must anticipate the public reaction by a number of years, and not get bogged down in the current trivia of semantics.

PETER NEW Des Moines

Sir:

I was delighted to behold the reproduction of Pollock's Scent; it is an almost exact replica of the pattern of the linoleum on my kitchen floor. I had no idea I was possessing such a treasure of "breathtaking frequency and single-mindedness."

EARLE GOODRICH LEE St. Paul

Sir:

You have done the public a distinguished service in your exposition of modern abstract painting. I particularly like the gallery of intimate portraits, from the you-be-damned defiant scowl of Jackson Pollock to the somewhat uneasy omniscience of Mark Rothko.

W. S. CROLLY

Cassadaga, Fla.

Scorpion Tip

Sir:

While expressing the great satisfaction we derived from your remarkably discerning Feb. 13 analysis of Ransom!, we must in honesty take some exception to its scorpion tail-tip. We find you a little illogical in saying first that "The ransom that is intended to purchase the life of a kidnaped child is more likely to buy his death," and then accusing us of having gone on "to make the usual Shubert finish about the might of right." Quite possibly we were somewhat overawed by a sense of responsibility in urging our special convictions on such a subject before a vast and general audience; but does Truth require that Right must always be defeated? Isn't this attitude merely one of the many tired literary cliches currently fashionable?

CYRIL HUME RICHARD MAIBAUM 20th Century-Fox Beverly Hills, Calif.

The Lonely One (Contd.)

Sir:

Your Feb. 20 story on Frank Lausche contains more reasons why he should never be President than why he should be. Let us pray that neither he nor his ilk ever gets into the White House.

CAROLINE APPLETON Oak Park, Ill.

Sir:

What a continuing tragedy that Roman Catholicism stubbornly refuses to emerge from its Dark Age practices, with its mysticism, Latin mumbo-jumbo, and a blatant intolerance (along religious lines, not racial), and actual political persecution in those localities where such is possible. My humble purpose in writing the above is to call attention to the tragedy wherein our ablest presidential candidate, other than Eisenhower, namely Lausche, will be denied the privilege of his potentially great service to the people of this country.

H. S. SMITH

Fairmont, S.C.

Sir:

The suavely conventional Mr. Stevenson will have little trouble from the transparently opportunistic Mr. Lausche. The Democrats will be much better off running a paper doll that they can call their own than a Cellophane pol whose flirty-flirty eyes wink faithlessly at gods, men and political orthodoxy.

DONALD RALBOVSKY Washington, D.C.

Mails in the Red

Sir:

The attitude of TIME, Feb. 20, toward Postmaster General Arthur Summerfield's report to the President and Congress for a more realistic approach to postal costs is commendable. Postal operations require constant and daily supervision to improve the service and give people the service they desire. I know--I have been at it for over 32 years, but you can't expect $5 service for 50-c-.

VINCENT E. CARMICHAEL

Scranton, Pa.

Sir:

Postage rates should not be raised--they should be canceled. Ordinary mail service within the U.S. should be as free as are the county agent's extremely valuable services to the farmer. If we are going on the theory that a service department of the Government should be operated for profit, then the farmer should be handsomely billed for the county agent's services, and a good stiff admission charge should be placed on all national parks and forests.

JOHN L. ANDERSON

Glen Gardner, N.J.

Sir:

The postman was scarcely out of the door today when we threw away 43 pieces of bulk-rate mail. Increasing the postal rates on this bothersome junk would help our postmen and, most of all, the Post Office Department. They have to handle it and run up a deficit doing it. But this could never happen, since it would mean increasing rates on magazines and newspapers, too.

SIMONE BROCATO, M.D. Columbus, Ga.

Looking for Bridey

Sir:

Your reviewer was flippant in his Feb. 20 review of The Search for Bridey Murphy, and indicated that he was afraid to face the issues involved. Although they have not had time to check all of Bridey's story about her life in Ireland in the last century, there is little, if anything, which the searchers have found to contradict it.

F. M. B. MORTON East Marion, N.Y.

Sir:

A newspaperman from Denver was being interviewed here in connection with his recent visit to "locate" the birthplace etc. of Bridey. He had visited Cork and Belfast and appreciated the tremendous help given him by the local people throughout, though he said they were "laughing up their sleeves" at his research.

JOE KEANE Limerick, Ireland

Promoting Christianity

Sir:

Anent Mr. David P. Leas' letter [about the five missionaries killed by the Auca Indians in Ecuador--Feb. 13]: "Why go into Auca territory?" I answer in the words my husband wrote in his last letter to his parents: "Ours is to preach the gospel to every creature . . ." Mr. Leas is sure that the Lord must be interested in the Aucas "just as they are." God is interested in all mankind just as he is--so interested, in fact, that He sent His Son to die for him. The only trouble is that the Auca doesn't know that yet. The five men intended that they should. "Stay out of the jungles of Ecuador?" Not until every creature has had the chance to hear. I, for one, am staying.

MRS. P. JAMES ELLIOT Shandia, Ecuador

Neuberger & Nosedives

Sir:

Your Feb. 6 "Two Nosedives" on Senator Neuberger will doubtless be well received by Oregon's reactionary G.O.P.s. Possibly Neuberger's comments on the President's health in connection with the forthcoming campaign were illadvised, but they hardly justified the crocodile tears of William Knowland. TIME'S resume of the Al Sarena investigation, however, constitutes, if not a nosedive, at least a pratfall. Those of us who were familiar with the mine before it was glamorized by the Al Sarena label know it as a forlorn hope. Your whitewash of the case might serve its purpose elsewhere in the nation, but in Oregon it is generally conceded that an obsolete mining law and political influence have been used to take a sizable bite out of our national forest . . .

FRANK HOOVER Rogue River, Ore.

Sir:

The "dive" I chuckled over (TIME'S naivete) was Al Sarena's mining of timber--but best expressed by Congresswoman Edith Green's quatrain:

I thought that I would never see A mining claim that was a tree; Mines are mined by fools we see, While Al Sarena mines the trees!

JOHN LOW

La Crosse, Wis.

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