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TIME'S Dec. 24 review of Baby Doll is sickening. When you say an admitted stream of carnal suggestiveness is fit for your readers' attention because it is expertly served up, you insult your reader's moral integrity by implying that he has none. Elia Kazan may have had puritanic motives, but look at the lewd billboard and newspaper ballyhoo that sings the seductive praises of Baby Doll. Who's kidding whom?
HARRY PLATE
San Francisco
Sir:
Cardinal Spellman's condemnation of the motion picture Baby Doll has intrigued and greatly puzzled me. If it is a sin to see this picture, it must be assumed the cardinal himself has not seen it. But how can the cardinal condemn Baby Doll if he has not even seen the film? Could it be the cardinal has committed a cardinal sin?
WALTER GERSTEL
Berkeley, Calif.
¶ The cardinal did not see Baby Doll.—ED.
Inside the Outsider
Sir:
In your Dec. 17 People section, you printed a paragraph about me, stating that I had publicly announced that my book, The Outsider, was a fraud. What I actually said was that The Outsider is a fraud as a work of philosophy. When someone has written a book which expresses an intensely personal viewpoint, he is bound to feel a fraud when people hail it as "representing the younger generation, etc." Nevertheless, The Outsider was written with deadly serious intent.
COLIN WILSON
London
The Moral Heights
Sir:
Your Dec. 24 story on Israel's "Massacre of the Innocents" [48 Arab villagers were shot by over-zealous Israeli border guards on the eve of Israel's invasion of Egypt] does credit to the fundamental ethical and moral values by which humanity professes to live. What other leader and Parliament would make public such a disgrace voluntarily and display sincere contrition so quickly and compensation so readily without U.N. meddling.
I am sure that Nasser and the other Arab gangsters will never rise to Premier Ben-Gurion's moral heights. Israel has reached the pinnacle of ethical sensitivity.
RABBI MORTON J. SUMMER
Brooklyn
Learning the Hard Way Sir:
Concerning your Dec. 12 article on changing policies toward world Communism: it is rather sad to learn that the Hungarian tragedy was necessary to open the eyes of the world. That the average citizen, with his own troubles and worries to take care of, should have been misled by this flirtation of coexistence, seems understandable to me; not so, however, for people whose only job it is to concern themselves with world affairs and who bear the moral responsibility of leading their respective nations. All that has happened since the early days of Communism has not taught them a thing. All at once, Mr. Nehru and other similar "neutralists" give a second thought to their policy of how - close -to -fire -can -we -stand -withoutbeing-burned. I feel sorry—and frightened —for the free nations, should our future rest with such naive politicians.
ROGER C. VAN OPENS
St. Niklaas, Belgium
George Bernard & Shawm
Sir: