The Sainted Brethren
Sir:
Governor Dewey is quoted as saying, through the medium of an aide, that he never criticizes other members of his party publicly [TIME, Dec. 1]. It is to be hoped that Governor Dewey does not regard politics as a game wherein the Republicans are always and automatically right, and the Democrats usually wrong.
For Dewey to state in effect that he criticizes publicly members of the opposition party, but never his sainted Republican brethren, is to reduce almost completely the value of his public criticism in the minds of thinking people. Intellectual honesty requires that politicians support what they believe in and oppose what they don't believe in, regardless of party lines.
WM. J. GAFFNEY Pasco, Wash.
Brotherly Feeling
Sir:
IN YOUR ARTICLE OF DEC. 8 ON PANAMA
[YOU SAY] THAT I AM "A BITTER ENEMY" OF MY BROTHER ARNULFO ARIAS. ALTHOUGH I HAVE DISAGREED WITH SOME OF HIS POLITICAL VIEWS, THIS DOES NOT BY ANY MEANS JUSTIFY SUCH ASSERTION. . . .
HARMODIO ARIAS Panama
> TIME'S readers, including many in Panama, will be pleasantly surprised to hear that "bitter" is too strong a word for ex-President Harmodio Arias' feeling toward his brother, ex-President Arnulfo.—ED.
Obfuscated Choctaw
Sir:
Your review of the cinema, The Lost Moment [TIME, Dec 8], based on the adumbrated novel by Henry James, the scribbler (to use the vulgar expression), is sufficient, I think, to suggest the ponderous prose, the—some personages might almost label—circum-locuted prose of Henry, the dear fusspot, James, but, may one reflect, and I do appreciate your unwonted forbearance, that the pages of TIME are not precisely the place—one may relievedly observe—where one expects to encounter . . . the ambiguous, attenuated, ' grayed verbiage, the niceties of the vaporous review mentioned somewhere above . . . .
New York City E-LAKES
Sir:
Veritably, The Lost Moment critique, though divertingly atmospheric, was a lost moment, for such abstruse phraseology, almost senza cerimonia, as it were, substituted a fabulous if rather obfuscated Choctaw for simple English though the need for the substitution remains ineluctably TIME'S. Well would we, with James, delicately strangle the scrivener of that apotheosis of the superficial.
MURRY HARRIS
TOM MOORE Phoenix, Ariz.
Sir:
A la Dick Tracy I must ask, "What did he say?"
P. H. RICHER Austin, Tex.
> He said that James wouldn't go for it.—ED.
Man of the Year
Sir:
As the person whose rise to fame is based on the essential principle that government by the people must be based on law and order ... I nominate Robert Schuman, French Premier, as Man of the Year. . . .
M. P. SWEENEY Cambridge, Mass.
Sir:
. . . Generalissimo Chiang Kaishek. At no time in history has a man defended the liberties of so many with so little. . . .
GEORGE ATWOOD Sacramento, Calif.
Sir:
.... Walter Winchell ... for his sincere fight against Communism.
FRED W. MARKLAND Jacksonville, Fla.
Sir:
. . . President Truman ....