Pork & Foreign Aid

Sir:

I am an open critic of the present Administration and of President Eisenhower. However, I think that his budget is not only justified but needed. Mr. Eisenhower's halfhearted presentation of the budget may prove to have been another costly bungle. His decision to toss it into the lap of Congress implied that he did not really believe in it.

R. ROSENBERG Brooklyn

Sir:

Frantic advocates of deep cuts are, not so strangely, very quiet on one sure way to reduce federal spending by millions of dollars. Federal pork-barrel appropriations for local projects are made under the time-honored system of "you vote for mine and I'll vote for yours." On this subject it appears that the word is "shhh !"

RAYMOND H. SMITH Mount Vernon, N.Y.

Sir:

Most of us complain about high taxes; maybe they keep us from getting that current model car, color TV, or hifi, but these things are luxuries, not necessities. If part of the tax money goes to foreign aid and helps bring some ragged, hungry child in another land a few necessities, we are proud.

MRS. RITA ALTOFT Hastings, Mich.

Sir:

We, the International Cooperation Administration, thoroughly agree that increased foreign investment would help reduce the need for Government economic assistance abroad, have for some time been taking steps to encourage the flow of private investment. Essentially, the steps are: 1) the Investment Guaranty Program through which, in essence, ICA issues insurance policies to new capital going overseas, guaranteeing them against expropriation, guaranteeing convertibility of profits and the original investment into dollars, and guaranteeing against war risk; 2) further, ICA has worked with different governments to reorganize their tax structures, etc. in order to further encourage incoming foreign investment; 3) ICA has adopted a policy aimed at reserving about 25% of the local currencies generated through the sale of agricultural surplus in order that the funds may be relent to private business in that country.

WILLIAM J. CALDWELL Director of Public Reports International Cooperation Administration Washington, B.C.

Sir:

One of the largest deterrents to private foreign investments is the U.S. Government. When private capital abroad gets into local squabbles, the State Department is usually the first to "take it easy" or "do not strain relations at this time," etc. When the banana-republic dictator Nasser decided to nationalize someone else's Suez Canal, nations prepared for war in order to protect it, but we succeeded in helping to give it to the nationalizing thief.

W. C. HELLER Flourtown, Pa.

Sir:

Why the squawks about waste in Washington? It is everywhere. It is America's middle name--waste food, fuel, time, energy. When conservatism begins at home, it may spread to Washington.

EDGAR B. VAN OSDEL Pasadena, Calif.

The Senator's Liver

Sir:

TIME'S May 13 story on the passing of Senator McCarthy is the only one I've read that suggests he drank himself to death.

GEORGE GODSOE New York City

Sir:

Man's cruelty to man was never more evident than in your article.

GEORGE G. HYLAND Boston

Sir:

You attribute the cause of Senator McCarthy's death to cirrhosis of the liver, which you imply resulted from heavy drinking. Newspaper accounts disagree with you. They state that he died of hepatitis of the liver, a virus disease.

MARY T. O'TooLE Yonkers, N.Y.

P: Senator McCarthy died from a flare-up of cirrhosis of the liver. The symptoms were similar to those of hepatitis; in fact, cirrhosis of the liver is sometimes called chronic hepatitis.--ED.

Marse Monty's Gaffe

Sir:

Field Marshal Montgomery's criticism of Lee and Meade at Gettysburg is ludicrous when you remember that Montgomery himself was probably the greatest battlefield procrastinator since Longstreet, the man who really lost Gettysburg. Lee will be remembered for more than Gettysburg when Montgomery is remembered only as the capital of Alabama.

GLENN C. COWART

Fort Worth

Stem to Stern

Sir:

Architect Saarinen's pedestal-based chair [May 13] may be good for legless beings; bipeds need a chair with legs to twist ankles round and spars to hook heels on to.

FRANCIS FLEETWOOD EVANS Winnipeg, Man.

Sir:

The heavy figure of a man, sitting on a chair with a thin stem, is in no proportion at all, and therefore not beautiful. I know it is stable, but it doesn't look it.

CORNELIA FERENCZ Boston

P: See cut.--ED.

Sir:

What a fine solution Saarinen has found to the "clutter of legs" problem. The resulting "slum" of pedestals will give a busy housewife I know three less legs to dust.

JAN IRWIN Pacific Palisades, Calif.

How to Be Saved

Sir:

Let me explain why Father Kelly advised Roman Catholics not to attend Billy Graham's meetings: We Catholics consider our faith as a precious gift from God, to be protected and safeguarded against loss. Why should it be jeopardized by being exposed to some possible mass hysteria? If there were an epidemic of scarlet fever in a certain area, we would keep our children away.

GERTRUDE A. QUINN Cambria Heights, N.Y.

Sir:

Billy Graham, I think, is doing a good job in bringing irreligious people toward (not to) God, but to what is he going to convert Catholics?

PATRICIA ZEIS Woodhaven, N.Y.

Sir:

Until Billy Graham returns to his own backyard--the South--and expounds on his white supremist brethren (a subject he has evaded), his words are nothing but a "sounding brass and a tinkling cymbal." MILDRED L. HANSEN

Bismarck, N. Dak.

Family Circles

Sir:

The person who writes under the name of Peter Vansittart [The Game and the Ground--May 6] is not my nephew nor the nephew of my late brother, Lord Vansittart. I have never heard of him before .

SIBELL VANSITTART London

P: TIME, along with Novelist Peter Vansittart's publishers, misplaced the tables of consanguinity, should have said he is a distant cousin of the late Lord Vansittart, onetime (1930-38) Permanent Under Secretary of State for Foreign Affairs.--ED.

Mental Health

Sir:

TIME'S May 13 article on the National Institute of Mental Health reports plans to drop Dr. Scher's unorthodox program for treatment of schizophrenics. The most important fact is that the patients have shown a remarkable degree of recovery. We can testify eloquently, since our son is a patient in the project. Condemned as "hopeless" before coming under Dr. Scher's care, he is now able to visit with friends, and say with some conviction, "I am winning." If the project is terminated, the search for a "breakthrough" in the treatment of schizophrenia will suffer a major and costly setback.

HELEN AND JESSE ROBISON New York City

By Any Other Name

Sir:

Had you asked Federal Prisons Director Bennett for a word to describe those officers who man our prisons, I do not believe he would have chosen the term "screw" [May 13]. The Federal Prison Service designates prison guards as custodial officers.

GEORGE H. GREENE Canon City, Colo.

The Inner Urgers

Sir:

Motivation research [May 13] has made it all so delightfully clear! I thought we wanted new paint in the kitchen because scaling old paint was drifting down onto the stove. Not at all. Secretly, I want to return to the sturdy security of my playpen. Did I buy that new hair dryer because I was catching colds after washing my hair? Don't be simple. Deep down I felt the need of one because my neighbor doesn't own a dryer. Now do I lord it over her!

EMILY CRESWELL Phoenix, Ariz.

Sir:

I never use ready-mix cake mixes, and I adore baking. Those MR idiots [who claim that "baking a cake is, traditionally, acting out the birth of a child"] must all be men. No woman wants to go through labor every week. My last labor nearly three years ago is still too fresh in my mind to recall any enjoyment connected with it!

VERONICA BIALIK Menlo Park, Calif.

Falling Out with Schweitzer

Sir:

Albert Schweitzer's plea for the discontinuation of H-bomb tests due to the strontium 90 danger [May 6] receives the reply of Dr. Willard Libby, top nuclear chemist of the AEC. Schweitzer is "gently" reminded of the greater risk to freedom-loving people were such action taken. I propose that Dr. Libby be gently asked whether the potential danger of an H-bomb race is worth the effort. Let us not cast aside the request of a scientist of humanity who has ceased to distinguish between people and who rather holds all of life in reverence.

KAREN JENSEN HECKMAN

Boulder, Colo.

This file is automatically generated by a robot program, so reader's discretion is required.