Thunder from Down Under
Sir:
The new "maturity" which your April 4 cover story credits to Australia also applies to TIME'S coverage of that vigorous country. Congratulations for writing five meaningful pages of American prose on Australia without once using the words "kangaroo" or "boomerang," or evoking the usual images that these terms have contributed to a now outdated view of Down Under.
Robert Menzies may eloquently summarize the new Australian vigor, but the national motivation of which you speak comes directly from those dinkum "blokes, coves and coots" who see a job to be done and are quietly going about doing it, fortified by a slightly irreverent bush spirit and the best bloody beer in the world.
HENRY HEIKKINEN
Minneapolis
Sir:
Dobell's portrait of Mr. Menzies is a hideous physiognomical distortion. However, TIME'S writers were as flattering with their pen pictures of our P.M. as Australia's Dobell was awry with his brushwork.
HOWARD ROBERTSON
Brisbane
Sir:
Your feature confirms that our leading statesman, Menzies, is of world stature; your cover shows that our leading portrait painter, Dobell, does not make the grade.
SPENCER HASSALL
Sydney
Sir:
Looking at the portrait of Prime Minister Menzies of Australia, one feels that it is an excellent likeness, portraying not only his physical appearance but revealing his character as well. My congratulations to the artist.
LENA DILLAVOU HEDIN
Mexico City
Sir:
Maybe we all don't like Mr. Menzies as much as you say we do, but the story illustrates one point: the U.S. is becoming increasingly aware of Australia.
KEN COPLAND
Sydney
Sir:
You omitted a point of amusing historical significance to Americans. When Captain Phillip, R.N., founded the first Australian settlement that "warm January day in 1788," his express assignment was the establishment of a penal colony to replace that lost in America in 1785. The first Australian colonization was a direct result of the War of Independence.
BEN CARLIN
Falls Church, Va.
Sir:
You did not report that the Australian male still rules and has not yet become subservient to and dominated by the female of the species as appears to be the state of affairs in the U.S.—although it did take us some time to restore the position after the G.I. invasion of 1942-45.
E. L. HENZELL
Dayboro, Queensland
Sir:
You quoted a "senior Australian diplomat" as claiming that Australians "can talk to anybody in the world without any sense of innate inferiority." He must be a bigger nincompoop than most other brainless, unlettered Australian public servants, who banned Erskine Caldwell's God's Little Acre and threatened Tom Lehrer with imprisonment if he sang his songs in Adelaide.
How can such absurd, Dogpatch-like creatures be thought equal to civilized people?
A. CORVIN-ROMANSKI
Melbourne
Sir:
We knew that there would be great interest in TIME's Menzies cover and story, but we never anticipated the splash it caused. Ever since the magazine hit the stands, TIME and Dobell have been Topic A in Australia.