The Kennedy Cabinet

Sir:

I think John Kennedy's appointment of his brother to the Cabinet has lowered the office of President to the level of ward politics.

GEORGE JORGENSEN Chicago

Sir:

Your main article under "The Nation" in the Dec. 19 issue has left me quite appalled. You note random thoughts of the President-elect in regard to the mistakes made by his predecessors. I feel that I as the daughter of Mr. William H. Woodin must go to bat for a great American who gave his life for his country and now cannot speak for himself. The events and history of the late 1920s and of the early 1930s prove, I am sure, the worthiness of the former Secretary of the Treasury William H. Woodin. Furthermore, Mr. Roosevelt had known my father for many years and had great confidence in his reports and criticisms of financial and banking conditions both here and abroad. Mr. Roosevelt appreciated the services of his first Secretary of the Treasury very much, and he often proved it.

MARY WOODIN MINER New York City

The New Germany

Sir:

I find your story on West Germany's Franz Josef Strauss most interesting. The rapid German recovery from World War II does not come as any great surprise to me.

During that war, at the ripe old age of 19, I had, as did many other young American G.I.s, the expense-paid tour of Britain, France and Germany. The one thing that has always stuck in my memory is the way the industrious Germans began to rebuild their homes and factories while the dust of their destruction was not yet settled. Let's give the Germans and Minister Strauss the nuclear warheads and the choice of when to use them. The Russians would not be so foolish as to provoke a conflict with a strong military and economic alliance of the U.S. and Germany.

EMMETT BAILEY Durham, N.C.

Sir:

Shades of Hermann Goering! Give Herr Strauss nuclear weapons and a brass band, and the tune would be: "Here we go again!" As an ex-prisoner of war, I say raus mil uns!

JOHN R. BURROUGHS

Steamboat Springs, Colo.

Exodus

Sir: As an ex-prisoner of famed Acre prison and as an ex-member of Haganah, and altogether one of the boys your critic might call "terrorists," I wish to compliment you on the fair report about this film.

Permit me, however, to protest vehemently against your last remark about "blind hatred that excuses the Jewish terror," which your reviewer claims to be not different from the extermination activities of the Nazis! To us Israelis who have fought for our freedom as an ill-armed minority against a well-equipped army (and for a just cause), a comparison to mass slaughter--by an organized military power--of innocent defenseless people, is just shocking.

GEORGE P. TAUSSIG

Kfar Shmarjahu, Israel

Sir:

Congratulations on your review of the new movie Exodus. It is high time that the shabby portrayal of history implicit in the book was called to task, and it is unfortunate that this historical fallacy was re-created in the film.

A movie of this sort will do little to help the American people understand the real situation in the Middle East, and those Americans of the Jewish faith who reject the Zionist idea will find that not only the Middle East and the Arab position have been distorted, but also Judaism itself.

ALLAN CHARLES BROWNFELD Williamsburg, Va.

Reunion of Protestants?

Sir:

The yen of Christian churchmen for achieving church unity is more pathetic than peculiar to behold. It is pathetic because it reveals quite clearly that even after some 2,000 years of bloodshed, burning and all manner of proselytizing in the name of the Christ Jesus, Christians still are impelled by his example but unable to comprehend the principle of his action.

American churchmen, like American politicians, are not leaders but followers, and their trail blazer clearly is not the free and sovereign individual but, rather, "the organizational man." The promoter of church union appeals to churchmen as the promoter of the business merger or industrial combine appeals to politicians.

WILLARD R. CLARK La Grange, Ind.

Sir:

TIME did an excellent job on the characteristics of the major Protestant denominations considering reunion but made one major error. The Methodist Church does not have a purely memorial view of the Communion and never has held such a view. Article 18 of the Methodist Articles of Religion states clearly: "The bread which we break is a partaking of the body of Christ; and likewise the cup of blessing is a partaking of the blood of Christ." As further explanation, it reads: "The body of Christ is given, taken and eaten in the Supper, only after a heavenly and spiritual manner. And the means whereby the body of Christ is received and eaten in the Supper is faith."

Thus the Methodists agree with the Presbyterian and Protestant Episcopal churches' concept of the Communion, a basic factor in our conversations toward unity. (THE REV.) WILLIAM BLAIR GOULD Wesley Foundation University of Nebraska Lincoln, Neb.

Sir:

If Protestant Episcopal Bishops Lichtenberger and Pike would spend more time figuring ways to bring more unchurched people into the Episcopal Church instead of supporting new and better schisms and possible heresies, the church would be much better off.

THOMAS B. MEADE Hawthorne, Calif.

Tongue Untied

Sir:

You stated that Beatrice Anna Cabot Lodge was trilingual (Spanish, French, Italian). Doesn't the daughter of an American ambassador speak English?

RUTH H. ROZDAY Sewickley, Pa.

Sir:

Miss Beatrice Anna Cabot Lodge speaks English and, what is more, speaks it quite well for a girl. I have heard her.

ROBERT SELLMER

Madrid

Tourist Trap

Sir:

You have done a salutary examination of one of the main reasons why thousands of Europeans manage to resist the attractions of tourism in America. I hope your article may help tourists from other countries to receive the same facilities of pleasant and visaless travel that are enjoyed abroad by American citizens.

SIR WILLIAM P. HILDRED Director-General

International Air Transport Association Montreal Sir: You are quite correct that "one way to get the gold back is to lure European tourists to the U.S." This is a positive approach v. the negative one proposed in some quarters--to reduce travel allowances of U.S. tourists abroad.

It is still to be hoped that the Magnuson bill will be passed so as to provide an Office of Tourism under the Department of Commerce. This will be a most effective means of creating a two-way tourist-traffic flow, bring the gold back, and let our friends abroad see the U.S. and meet its people firsthand in their own habitat.

JOHN YOUNG JR.

General Allied Chairman American Society of Travel Agents, Inc. New York City

Sir:

Visiting the U.S. last summer as a tourist, I found the time waiting for visa well worth while. The people are friendly and the expenses reasonable. As an average worker I always look back with pleasure on my visit to the U.S.

LARS NYLANDER Jonkoping, Sweden

Decisions, Decisions

Sir:

In your report on Playwright Ionesco, you use the rather intriguing infinitive "to maderize." I don't know whether to thank you or sue you. Que jaire?

THOMAS F. MADER

Jamaica, N.Y. P: White wines too long in the bottle become "musty, flat, brown and unpleasant," according to Alexis (The Wines of France} Lichine. The condition is known as maderization because the white wines then look like Madeira wine--ED.

City of God & Man Sir:

You have rendered a great service by your cover story on Father John Courtney Murray, S.J. It gives a most interesting background to the intelligent dialogue between Protestants and Catholics which spread into the public domain for the first time as one good result of the recent election campaign.

While the scope of your story was a little limited by its professed character as a review of Father Murray's book, I suggest the omission of two elements which are basic to the argument.

Father Murray would probably not go as far as Hegel in thinking of the state as a divine creature created by God for our protection and guidance. But I am sure he would not go as far either in the other direction as most of our practical and professional political scientists in this country in considering the state as only a tool of the people in solving their community problems, which therefore they may denounce, cheer for, or ridicule as they like.

But the more important omission is that of the origin in the Puritan revolution of some of our basic American ideals of democracy and pluralism, too.

According to Professor Gooch, the leading historian of the 17th century, and A. D.

Lindsay, Master of Balliol, the small independent religious congregations of that day, Quakers, Separatists, Levelers and Diggers, developed, from the Protestant doctrine of the priesthood of all believers, the conviction that all government rests upon consent of the governed.

This is always attributed to John Locke, who wrote it to justify the Glorious Revolution of 1688.

But in 1647 Colonel Rainborough in the Putney Debates on manhood suffrage put it to Oliver Cromwell, "I think that the poorest he that is in England hath a life to live as the richest he; and therefore truly, sir, I think it's clear that every man that is to live under a government ought first by his own consent put himself under that government." While St. Robert Bellarmine is entitled to the greatest credit for his unpopular thesis in those days that the authority of the Pope over heads of state was only indirect and spiritual, this is not nearly as important to Jefferson and Madison as John Locke and the Puritan revolution.

And finally, the personal conscience, which we Protestants try to derive from the direct access to God and express as the duty of private judgment, is essential to the dialogue.

This was strikingly evidenced by the statement Nov. 19 on personal responsibility issued so emphatically as the only pronouncement after the meeting of all the American Catholic hierarchy.

It surely implies for Catholics the liberty of conscience so basic in intelligent Protestant thinking.

CHARLES P. TAFT Cincinnati

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