Lowell's Pluto
Sirs:
ALL HONOR TO GREAT LOWELLS (TIME, JAN. 18) BUT PLANET PLUTO DISCOVERED BY FARM BOY CLYDE TOMBAUGH AT LOWELL OBSERVATORY, FLAGSTAFF, ARIZ.
JOHN C. McPHEE
Phoenix, Ariz.
> Percival Lowell did not "discover" Pluto. He figured out that a ninth planet must exist and predicted where it would be, in 1914. He died in 1916. In 1930 the planet was discovered, right where Lowell had said. His brother, in his biography of Percival, calls it "the planet he found but never saw."--ED.
Sequels
Sirs:
Too often newspapers and magazines forget all about yesterday's hero. You get me all worked up to the hot point, and then you never tell me the answer. Example: whatever became of Editor J. B. Powell (TIME, Sept. 7), who when last heard of had gotten the keys to the city and gangrene?
DENNIS JACKSON
New York City
> John Benjamin Powell, pre-Pearl Harbor editor of the China Weekly Review, came back to the U.S. late last summer, was carted straight off the exchange ship Gripsholm to Manhattan's Harkness Pavilion to be treated for: 1) gangrenous feet suffered in a filthy, ice-cold Jap prison cell; 2) emaciation that had reduced him from 160 pounds to half as much. Last week imperishable, cheerful Editor Powell was still convalescing, expects to be for many more weeks. But he now weighs 110, one foot is healed. When the other is ready, Powell will begin arduous exercises, finally will be fitted with artificial feet (a job made easier by U.S. doctors, who saved his heels). His days and nights he spends receiving visitors and answering letters, reading (mostly books about the Far East and detective stories) and writing. One of his articles already has been published by Reader's Digest; a book he is writing, for Macmillan Co., about his experiences in China between the two World Wars, is "about half done."
Unable to break a long standing habit, Powell works mostly at night, most of the time flat on his back because he is still too weak to sit up more than an hour a day. One night he almost suffered a serious eye injury when a heavy book fell from his hands as he dozed.--ED.
Impeachment
Sirs:
For 25 years I have been trying to teach American History students that Johnson was impeached. I must confess I haven't had complete success. Maybe your movie critic was one of my ex-students. At least, the following quotation from the Jan. 11 issue, "Johnson . . . who narrowly escaped impeachment by a righteous Congress," leads to the suspicion that one of my students went East.
MITCHELL P. BRIGGS
Professor of Social Science
Fresno State College
Fresno, Calif.
> TIME should be impeached for sloppy usage. Impeachment means "a calling to account for some high crime or offense before a competent tribunal." President Johnson was impeached but not ousted.--ED.
"Who Guards the Guard?"
Sirs:
Your Nov. 23 issue carried a full-page advertisement by the Koppers Co. showing a soldier-guard standing out in the rain, with the title under it "Who guards the guard?" The answer: we do.
Enclosed are photographs showing a prefabricated sentry house which we are manufacturing, which allows a 360DEG visibility by the use of a Lumarith dome, and the base of it is a tobacco hogshead. The total cost of this unit is less than $25 and shelters the sentries from rain, snow and wind, and yet does not detract from their efficiency. It is made so that it can be shipped in sections and assembled in approximately 20 minutes and if the need calls for moving, can be quickly unhooked, taken down and moved to another location.
ALSEN D. THOMAS
The Travelodge Corp.
Lynchburg, Va.
How the Starfish Does It
Sirs:
The rest of the zoological world may still be in the dark regarding the methods used by the starfish in a successful attack on an oyster (TIME, Dec. 28), but here on the banks of the Raritan any attentive zoology student can offer enlightenment to the bewildered--for the true facts of the case have been presented to us by Professor Thurlow C. Nelson, who for years has been a leading authority on oyster life.
As soon as a starfish attaches itself to an oyster the latter closes its shell, and (as already has been demonstrated) because of a powerful system of interlocking muscles, it is then able to withstand the application of a pressure greater than any commonly attributed to the strength of a starfish.
If allowed to remain undisturbed, however, the oyster will relax its muscles slightly, opening the shell and drawing in some of the surrounding water. The starfish, in the meantime, has been secreting an acid digestive juice in large quantities from great glands which fill all of its five arms. This fluid acts as an "anesthetic" on the muscles of the oyster, rendering them flabby and useless, after which it becomes an easy matter for the starfish to devour its prey. . . .
WILLIAM OFFENKRANTZ
Rutgers University
New Brunswick, NJ.
Failure of a Mission
Sirs:
Congratulations to TIME for printing as its lead article (Jan. 11) the distressing recall of the Chinese military mission from Washington. It is high time that our leaders and people realize that we can lose China to Japan if the Chinese lose faith in us. ...
Having lived 17 years in Korea under Japanese rule, learning to know both people and their languages, I know what it will mean when the exceedingly clever Japanese propagandists prod the overpatient Chinese with the loss of face suffered by one of China's great generals in Washington. . . .
Of all the divergent motives which drive our allies on, those of the Chinese are nearest our own. . . . The Chinese have been practicing democracy since before Western civilizations even learned the word. China is the one hope of building peace and decency in the East after victory. If she should fall because of lack of help from us, both moral and material, then there is little hope for any rebirth of freedom and peace in the Pacific.
To many Americans, China seems to be a remote mass of men way off at the other end of the earth. It is time to wake up! Young China of today is progressive, full of life and idealism, and she still has one of the largest populations on earth with perhaps the largest store of untouched resources and markets of any nation in the world. China as a friend will be more valuable to us in planning the shape of things to come after the war than Great Britain or Russia can ever be, with their own ideas of Empire and Communism. . . .
PAUL S. CRANE
Baltimore
The Civilian Pays
Sirs:
One of the "horrors of war" not yet mentioned is the long underwear we in Wisconsin have donned for the duration! (Duration of war and underwear both.)
A. ADAMS
Madison, Wis.
Earthquake for Japan
Sirs:
Regarding "Temblor for Tojo?" in your issue for Jan. 11:
Sanriku*, which you state to be a small island in Japan, is an old, now rarely used name for that northeastern region of main-island Japan now covered, approximately, by the prefectures of Aomori, Iwate and Miyagi, whose shores were washed by a bad tidal wave in 1896. But your faulty knowledge of Japanese geography, and readiness to parade it, appear to be no worse than that of the great majority of so-called experts and correspondents on Japan. . . .
A big earthquake in 1891, a tidal wave in 1896, another big tremor in 1923 and two middling ones in 1927 and 1933 (for both the Tango quake of 1927 and the Tanna one of 1933 were very limited in intensity and area affected, as I know from contemporaneous observations and official reports)--and a famed seismologist perceives a ten-year cycle based on the law of averages. Isn't science wonderful? How on earth is it done?
Not to mention that as a lover of accuracy I raise my eyebrows at Father Lynch's assertion that the 1891 earthquake (the "Nobi" or "Mino" quake) practically split Japan in half, which is making a mountain of little more than a molehill.
Science, my eye. Tut, tut.
JAMES W. SCHNEIDER
New York City
Sirs:
Concerning your article on Japanese earthquakes (TIME, Jan. 11), inform Dr. Joseph Lynch, S.J., that he is right. There will be an earthquake there this year--a hell of a big earthquake. Manmade.
JACK SLOAN
JOHN VAN AALST
JOHN VOURNAKIS
Ellington Field, Tex.
The First Booby Traps
Sirs:
In TIME of Jan. 4 under Army & Navy there is the statement, "Antipersonnel mines are a development of World War II."
For your information, I have received permission from Charles Scribner's Sons to quote from the book entitled, Lee's Lieutenants, by Douglas Southall Freeman, and published by Charles Scribner's Sons.
The quotation shows that anti-personnel mines were used against the American Indians and also in the Civil War. It further shows that we have now got over some of our fastidiousness in methods of killing people which apparently existed during the time of the Civil War. The quotation:
"The object of Hill's wrath was a North Carolinian, 59 years of age, a graduate of West Point in the class of 1827, and former Lieutenant Colonel of the 4th United States Infantry. A man of fine appearance and of pronounced patriotism, Gabriel Rains was at heart a scientist, and was more interested in explosives than in field command. In 1840, while campaigning against the Seminole Indians, he first had experimented with booby-traps. On the retreat from Yorktown he had planted several of these in the way of the Federals and thereby had delayed somewhat the pursuit. He was gratified, but some of his superiors were convinced that these 'land torpedoes' were not 'a proper or effective method of war.' Rains consequently was forbidden to use more of them. He protested vigorously that his device was permissible, and he asked, in effect, how its use differed from the employment of outranging naval guns. Missiles from such ordnance, he told D. H. Hill, had been 'bursting with awful noise and scattering their death-dealing fragments among the innocent and unoffending, fiendish acts unknown among civilized nations, reversing the scriptural text that it is better for 99 guilty persons to escape than for one innocent to suffer.' As this analogy was not allowed, a suggestion previously made by the Secretary of War was adopted. Under orders of June 18, Rains was assigned to the river defenses, where the use of torpedoes was 'clearly admissible.' A time was to come when his 'sub-terra shells' were a welcome adjunct of the Richmond defenses." *
New Orleans
* To be quite accurate, Sanriku ("Three riku") comprises the pre-1871 provinces of Rikuoku (now Aomori prefecture), Rikucho (Iwate prefecture) and Rikuzen (Miyagi prefecture). The boundaries of the prefectures and provinces mentioned do not correspond entirely.
* Name withheld by request.
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