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In the year 1929, I paid a very delightful visit to a Scottish Rite Lodge of Masons in Constantinople. There was a banquet and facing me on the other side of my table was a medium-sized, modest man of cheerful, friendly and unassuming manner who did not use tobacco. We talked through an interpreter who sat at his side. I was very much interested to learn that this very modest gentleman with whom I was talking was General Kemal, the defender of the region which included Constantinople during the Great War. General Kemal the defender, when introduced, explained that while his name was Kemal and spelled exactly as Dictator Kemal spells his, there was no relationship. I doubt if your readers realized by reading your article that you were talking about two distinct outstanding Turkish characters, the Dictator Mustafa Kemal Pasha and General Kemal, the defender.
WALLACE K. WONDERS Detroit, Mich.
Let Subscriber Wonders henceforth beware of the exceedingly modest, middle-sized man who sat across from him at a Scottish Rite Lodge of Masons' banquet in Constantinople (now Istanbul). There is only one "General Kemal the defender of the region which included Constantinople during the Great War" and he is today the Dictator of Turkey, Mustapha Kemal Pasha.—ED.
Interchangeable Bolsheviki
Sirs:
In the May 23 issue of TIME you had the following:
"Contrary to popular misconception the Russian system today is not Communism, nor does the ruling Communist Party claim to have Communized Russia. According to Joseph Stalin, Russians are 'building Socialism,' will later attempt to build Communism."
This paragraph has aided me in winning a point in a discussion in which I maintained that Communism, Socialism and Bolshevism, the system of government Russia is now attempting, are fundamentally unlike, and as a result has prompted me to write you for material and a brief analysis explaining the differences in these forms of government.
JOHN BRINDA Chicago, Ill.
Bolshe in Russian means "larger." The Bolsheviki were at first merely the larger group or majority of the Russian Social-Democrat Party which split up in 1903 into the Bolsheviki, led by Lenin and the Mensheviki (minority). In 1918 the Bolshevik Party adopted the name Communist Party, of which Josef Stalin is now Secretary and as such Dictator of Russia.
Lenin used the terms "Socialism" and "Communism" as interchangeable synonyms. The basic doctrine behind both words is a concept of society in which the State would own all means of production and private, or "capitalistic," profit would be eliminated. Regrettable is the extreme looseness of meaning which: 1) permits James Ramsay MacDonald to call himself a "Socialist," although he does not strive for State ownership of the means of production; and 2) permits Josef Stalin to be known as a "Communist," although he recently restored to Russian peasants the right of private trade with its inevitable capitalistic profits (TIME, May 23).—ED.
Kudos
Sirs:
Under that intriguing heading "Kudos" you might next week include the following:
World School of Journalism (U. S. Branch):