The Ultras

Sir:

Your treatment of "The Ultras" [Dec. 8] was very good. I know two of the gentlemen evaluated therein, and consider your treatment of them to be both fair and accurate. I wish to take issue with you on the final conclusion that "the real danger to the nation lies from without" at the present time however.

The Communists--like Adolf Hitler--have a nasty way of telling exactly what they plan to do and then doing it. As concerns the U.S., they have from the beginning said that they would force the capitalistic countries to "spend themselves to destruction." This we are doing beautifully from within. They also conquer by infiltration--especially through capturing the minds of our youth with ideas that seem highly idealistic on the surface but are pure poison underneath. Have you talked with high school and college students on this subject lately? I have--and felt the hair rise on my neck.

Communists expect to take our country through a voluntary surrender. Sentiment is already growing in that direction--this despite those (including the "ultras") who are fighting it with every means at their disposal.

GEORGE WEDBERG Bridgeport, Conn.

Sir:

Congratulations on the consistency of your article against anti-Communists--you even misspell our name.

You edit with a left-wing slant, just as we thought you would--you ignore the doughnut but magnify the hole! This is a biased pro-socialist attack on the anti-Marxists.

After three pages of ridicule of anti-Communist organizations, you run only a single paragraph about the Communist Party, U.S.A.

You completely prove our contention that Americans have much to fear from proCommunists within the U.S.

You brainwash your readers with consummate skill.

Again, you prove that your former editor, the late Whittaker Chambers, was right-fellow travelers are helping the atheistic Reds to destroy America. If you succeed, may your Red gods have mercy on you!

HARRY T. EVERINGHAM Executive Vice President We, the People! Chicago

Sir:

My name is included in the article about "rightists" as distinguished from "respectable conservatives." I am characterized as dedicated to "smoking out liberals in the community." I am quoted as saying, "We don't want our children to play with their children."

Your article fails to mention that the people you call "liberals" in this connection are a group of identified Communist Party members who have attempted to take over the community organizations in my neighborhood.

I resent being smeared by your magazine because I am opposed to Communism.

MARVIN BRYAN Executive Producer Wonderland Productions Hollywood

Sir:

Your article was superb. The public should be informed about these organizations. The American press has been woefully negligent in telling our people just what has been going on in the land of the free and the home of the brave.

DELBERT D. UPDIKE New York City

Find & Fashion

Sir:

An excellent job in reporting the World Council of Churches meeting in New Delhi [Dec. 8]. Keep pricking us now and then, so all of us will find and fashion into Christian worship and witness that unity which none of us have perfectly, and no existing church has the right to claim it represents.

(THE REV.) ROY S. BUFFAT SR. The First Presbyterian Church Cobden, Ill.

Sir:

The statement that "it is the scandalous disunity among Christians that has alienated men and cheapened the church" is pure hogwash.

Just what is wrong with having different churches and denominations as long as they are united in Christ? True, there are many serious problems in the Christian church, but I fail to see how the World Council of Churches will solve them. If you put some good and some bad apples into a basket, the rotten ones will soon spoil the others. This is happening now among the members of the W.C.C.

RICHARD PEIRCE Wheaton, Ill.

Sir:

A difficult and complicated subject to say the least, the ecumenical movement and its development requires highly skilled, sensitive and informed reporting from first to last. These qualities stand out in every paragraph of this outstanding TIME story.

FLETCHER COAXES Director National Council ot the Churches of Christ New York City

Hunger in China

Sir:

Congratulations for your straightforward report on hunger in China. Words and pictures continue to haunt--these are people, suffering and enduring.

Can we not lift our lamp beyond the golden door and, without regard to politics, share our plenty with them?

ELAINE LEWIS Washington, D.C.

Sir:

Maybe it would be wise to group the strategic bombers and deliver our surplus foods to these unfortunate victims of Communism. Would such action really jeopardize our national security ?

RALPH BLUMHARDT Trenton, N.J.

Sir:

When a nation with nearly 800 million people is trying to pull itself out of a hole by its bootstraps, it is going to have all kinds of problems. The thing that is really important is that it is working very hard trying to overcome its economic and financial difficulties, for which the Western powers are in no small degree responsible.

Until the American people and their representatives realize the real problems that these underdeveloped nations are forced to face, Communism will continue to make progress--simply because we are not mentally able to deal with hundreds of complexities with intelligent compassion.

You are therefore not helping the U.S. by printing such one-sided material. On the contrary, you are doing definite harm.

VICTOR W. STRACKE Appleton, Wis.

Sir:

Do not bury Red China so quickly. Just as the U.S. fed crumbling Russia during the famines ot the '20s, our allies such as Canada now nurse struggling China. The time will come when ridicule and derision will no longer be able to belittle China's might.

TOBIN MARKS Bethesda, Md.

Added Notes

Sir:

Music Editor Murphy's selection of "greatest" sopranos [Dec. 8] will provoke no violent disagreement from me, but I do object to the exclusion from his list of another supreme artist in the field, the ravishing Victoria de los Angeles.

DONALD J. EVERS Chicago

Sir:

Also, what about Anna Moffo?

MRS. W. L. BOCKENKAMP St. Louis

Sir:

How dare you mention the word "soprano" without including Zinka Milanov.

LUCINDA PEARSON New York City

Sir:

Elisabeth Schwarzkopf.

LEON GILBERT JR. Washington

The Great Gripe

Sir:

The Great Gripe [Dec. 1] is a reflection of more than discontent with inadequate facilities. The mutterings are an attempt at articulating a valid criticism of the colossal waste, the studied inefficiency and the incompetent supervisors characteristic of so large a part of our "modern" Army. This is not something one becomes easily resigned to accept.

Necessary hardship can be endured, but the "usual snafu" has become more than this. I hope that the griping becomes loud enough to prompt revisions in an outmoded system.

JOHN D. JACOBS Alamosa, Colo.

Sir:

My husband was recalled Oct. 1 with the 108th New Jersey Air National Guard, and is now in France for an indefinite stay. I'm left at home with our three children and don't feel one bit patriotic, because I think that the Government is taking the easy way out by recalling men who have family obligations and career commitments rather than planning a proper draft program for single young men.

MRS. C. P. RAPIER Colonia, N.J.

Sir:

As the wife of a recalled reservist and the mother of two small children, I ask you to let it be known that some of us have the intelligence to realize why we are being asked to bear with the inconvenience of this thing.

MRS. CHARLES G. STUVENGEN San Francisco

Sir:

All this Great Gripe by the reserves makes one think of the fireman called away from his cribbage game because the fire department wanted him to go put out a fire, and moaning that he has to go out in the cold while the ''other citizens" are home watching TV.

RENE FAZLOLLAH Tucson, Ariz.

Eyes & Nays

Sir:

Your coverage of my talk on ''Facts and Fancies about Eyes" [Dec. 8] is particularly pleasing to me as I hope it is to my ophthalmological colleagues. The reception of this talk by the nation's press and by TIME indicates that these elemental facts of eye use should have been long ago made public, and I am profoundly impressed with the authenticity and precision of your reporting of my statements. You may hear some grandmothers objecting, but I am gratified.

I feel like the star of a new play, "How to Succeed in Medicine Without Really Trying."

MORRIS KAPLAN, M.D. Denver

Sir:

TIME presented the opinion of a single ophthalmologist in such a manner that the reading public may have been given to believe that Dr. Morris Kaplan's views are accepted ophthalmological fact. Nothing could be further from the truth.

Many prominent practitioners and researchers hold completely different views than Dr. Kaplan about the good or bad effects of the eye habits of our children. An example of just one of the bad habits Dr. Kaplan is unconcerned about, that can result in a need for glasses, is the habit of children reading too close. This habit creates an excessive lenticular convexity which, over a period of time, causes a focal point in front of the retina, thereby producing a myopic or nearsighted condition.

DR. SHELDON STONE, O.D. Milwaukee

Sir:

Dr. Morris Kaplan's future is not in sight.

E. R. LIGON, O.D. Lafayette, Calif.

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