Letters, Jan. 25, 1954

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Man of the Year

Sir:

Congratulations . . . Few will disapprove of your choice of Man of the Year [TIME, Jan. 4]. Brave old Konrad Adenauer has shown us, by his determined stand against the twin evils of Communism and Naziism, that he is truly one of the greatest men of our age.

JAMES D. HAGAN

Pittsburgh Sir: Your choice was a logical one. Only a man with such driving spirit and high ideals could have lifted a nation from the doldrums of depression and put it in the forefront of a struggling world—truly a great man.

GEORGE B. GOMES Georgetown, British Guiana

Sir: Allow me to congratulate you on your cover ... To my mind it transcends in force, symbolism, and warning the famous "Dropping the Pilot" cartoon of Bismarck's time.

In 1909 ... I married a beautiful but dumb member of one of Germany's best cartel families—pure bourgeois and pure Prussian. Contact with the average middle-class German mind was such a shock that I was practically forced to make a study of history and of international relations. At that time the average German people suffered from a fanatical inferiority complex owing to the fact that, historically, they came on the scene too late to grab choice colonies . . .

It was obvious then (and it is still true) that though they can stoop to conquer, they will hate the whole world till they can dominate it ...

While shuddering for my children, I am, at 65, glad that I shall not live in the shade of that newly sprouting oak on your cover.

DOROTHY CABOT BEST Encino, Calif.

Sir:

... I missed treatment of the subject of the moral rehabilitation of Germany. Before we can affirm or negate that the re-emergence of Germany during 1953 has changed the world picture, we have to assess whether some of the fundamental issues have been met by Adenauer's Germany . . .

KURT R. GROSSMANN

Kew Gardens, N.Y.

Sir:

. . . Adenauer has the nerve to declare publicly that it was the German army and not the German people that capitulated, adding somewhat sinisterly, "and the world had better remember." The last time we heard that tune was when the man no German ever mentions nowadays proclaimed to a hysterical following that in 1918 it was the German people and not the German army that had surrendered . . . Don't let us in for a fit of collective amnesia again like after 1918.

CHARLES MARGRY Paris

Sir:

I am one of the foreign students in the U.S. from Nigeria, West Africa ... A statement made by Chancellor Adenauer runs thus: "We are not an African tribe, but a Central European nation proud of its country" . .

Who taught the Chancellor that the African tribesmen are not proud of their country? ... I know that Chancellor Adenauer will make a good leader in Germany, but I suggest he minds how he uses words when he is in an angry mood . . .

MATTHEW CHINENYE NDUKA Iowa Wesleyan College Mount Pleasant, Iowa

Business in '53

Sir:

An Oscar to your review, "Business in 1953" | TIME, Jan. 4]. An economic masterpiece, well within the grasp of the ordinary layman. A concrete answer to the perpetual peddlers of panic, who continually attempt to sell America short. . .

DICK COFFIN

Winthrop, Mass.

Occupational Bugaboo