Crown & Country

Sir:

I should like to send my very warm congratulations on the article on the Crown (June 29 Cover). If I may say so, it strikes me as being wholly admirable. It is most comprehensive and at the same time most understanding.

SIR SAVILLE GARNER High Commissioner for the United Kingdom Ottawa

Sir:

Your wonderful article should revive the pride of all Canadians.

DAVID E. H. FANGRAD Stratford, Ont.

Sir:

What would be interesting would be a poll of Canadians (particularly western Canadians) to see how many of us consider her our Queen. Almost without exception, my friends, relatives, acquaintances and myself would be fightin' mad to be referred to as "hers."

LARRY BEARER Calgary, Alta.

Sir:

The revolutions that went into ridding the world of the scourge of monarchy have not fully succeeded, as our cousins across the ocean persist in clinging to the idiotic idea that a whole nation is duty bound to support one family because they were born into that class.

STEPHEN C. SPILKY Brooklyn

Sir:

After having subscribed to your magazine for many years and read it in many places--in Madagascar, when you described the 1947-48 rebellion there; in Johannesburg, when you published your famous article about the dangers of living in that city; and in Kenya, during the Mau Mau emergency--I canceled my subscription and became one of your critics. As an Englishman, I felt that your reporting was a disservice to the British Commonwealth and the free world in general.

Since then I have surreptitiously bought your magazine from time to time, for it is so readable. I fell from grace again, and was delighted to read what you had to say about Queen Elizabeth's visit to Canada and about the Commonwealth generally. I might renew my subscription.

L. J. BARNETT Larchmont, N.Y.

Sir:

I wonder whether you may have had tongue in cheek when you explained Cwthmas as "an abbreviation of 'Commonwealthmas'; the 'w' is pronounced like that in the town of Ebbw Vale." I'm lost.

ELIZABETH M. KLEMM Golden, Colo.

> Ebbw Vale is pronounced Ebboo Vale, so Cwthmas is Coothmas. Both are more easily said with the tongue out of the cheek.--ED.

All in the Family

Sir:

Your July 6 story on the Soviet exhibition in Manhattan pictures Moscow fashions in furs. Fine and dandy. However, the "dolls" shouldering the furs are strictly made in the U.S.A.

These plastic mannequins appear to be of the same "family" that participated in the Nevada atomic bomb tests.

VICTOR TUDAN The Mannequin Shoppe Hartford, Conn.

Touring with Intourist

Sir:

I liked your June 22 story, "Rubbernecking in Russia," since I returned on June 10 from 15 days on the first American bus tour in Russia. I thoroughly enjoyed my stay, and I take exception to "the food is heavy and generally dull." At all times, I liked the Russian food; it was always different, and rather exciting as you never knew what, when or how long it took to be served. We had eggs, fish, cheese, etc. for breakfast.

RUTH G. BROWN Wellsville, N.Y.

Sir:

My husband and I recently returned from Moscow. We were de luxe $30-a-day-apiece customers. But though Intourist here assured us "a private guide, all transportation in Russia, room and bath, four meals a day and use of a private limousine," this is what Intourist gave us: a bedroom with sagging springs and thin pallets at the Metropole Hotel; pillows that might have been stuffed with scrap iron--so lumpy, so hard, so heavy were they; a big bathroom with a proportionately large drain smell; a face towel and a thin, worn, stiff bath towel apiece (unchanged during our five-day stay).

ELEANOR HOWARD Malibu, Calif.

The Strauss Vote

Sir:

The ousting of Admiral Strauss was a very serious affair, and it should have been conducted in an honorable, dignified, high-minded manner [June 29].

Instead, some of our "statesmen," O'Mahoney, Morse and Anderson (to name three), ran it like a prizefight. Their conduct--and that of some of their backers--has shamed us in the eyes of a great part of the world.

BETSY PITTS Bangor, Me.

Sir:

Hats off to Senator Margaret Chase Smith, whose search for truth culminates in an honest belief that disregards party dictatorship.

ELLA R. BLUMBERG Coral Gables, Fla.

Sir:

The jealous, petty sentimentality of Margaret Chase Smith against able General "Rosie" O'Donnell and competent Lewis Strauss in her "head-downward-and-hush-voiced" voting is the best argument I know against women in politics.

WILLIAM E. STUART-DONATHAN Washington, D.C.

Sir:

The saddest sack of the sad episode is William Fulbright. He heard the trumpet, but its sound was, to him, uncertain. Lacking courage to be heard voting either right or Democrat, he went to bed with his dilemma, and was had.

MORGAN A. POWELL New York City

Sir:

Connecticut should be proud of Senator Dodd. His summation is a study in penetration and clarity; the backhand to the "cult of the mediocre" hits at the crux of the matter, is so true and so generally applicable.

RICHARD A. WILLIAMS Wilmington, Del.

Sir:

You will understand, I know, the pressures which, until now, have kept me from sending you my thanks for the cover story of June 15 by your diligent and able staff. I saw at firsthand how widely they searched and how carefully they checked and rechecked their findings.

Only mortals thus deeply probed can experience the mingled emotions which a penetrating TIME analysis arouses. To the introspective subject, such a portrait seems like the reflection in the rippled mirror of a pond, darker than natural, with inevitable slight distortions--some an improvement on the visage of the sitter.

LEWIS STRAUSS Washington, D.C.

What God Hath Wrought

Sir:

Potato-peeling Pfc. Andrew God [June 29] has a last name that spoofs the self-assumed omnipotence of the peacetime Army system of military justice with beautiful irony.

DONALD H. ROBERTSON New York City

Sir:

My sympathies are with Pfc. Andrew God.

Fort George G. Meade, during World War II, was designated Army Ground Forces Replacement Depot No 1,. I was company mail orderly. The mail to troops overseas averaged about 5,000 letters per month for our battery alone. It was not unlikely or unreasonable that errors would be made.

One day two mail sacks of misaddressed envelopes were returned to the command for correction and reforwarding. The commanding general was ''disturbed"; our regimental commander (the only one) ordered my company commander to prefer charges against me and to specify that I had willfully misaddressed five envelopes out of the 5,000.

In addition to my duties as mail orderly I was company clerk. I believe I was the only person in the U.S. Army who had to prepare his own court-martial against himself.

GENE SMITH San Diego

> Reader Smith, like Pfc. God, was acquitted.--ED.

Sir:

Granted the Army looked a little ridiculous in the case of Pfc. God, but anyone who has served in the armed forces knows of this type of individual, who likes to make his own rules. One thing is certain: this "goof-off" is now performing duties that would make spud peeling a pleasure. I wholeheartedly hope so.

R. A. CHUNKO Trenton, N.J.

The Cool Cleric

Sir:

Psychopathic confusion expressed in "beat" lingo mixed with dropped names of religious figures is something, all right, but it is not religion. Paths to truth must begin in real humility, but there is little humility to be found at the Rev. Pierre Delattre's Bread and Wine Mission [June 29]. There, instead, one does hear and see plenty of loud sexual hysteria, warped non-poetry, and self-justification--all of these put forth in a religio-Pier Six, neo-Freudian patois.

JOHN ROCKWELL San Francisco

Sir:

I mean this Delattre fra, his pad's good for a gratis Khayyam bit any time. And like he don't bug you none. I mean, he's hip that God was not cool enough to make a religion for the really bright people. That's why God had to come to us to apologize for religion the way it is. I mean, like he doesn't expect us to buy that square jazz.

P. A. SIMS Norwalk, Conn.

Sir:

If the level of "beat" intelligence is so low that they cannot grasp simple religious truths without such childish distortions, the Congregationalists would have better luck opening a mission in a zoo.

CHARLES MARTIN Rockaway, N.J.

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