"The Whole Must Fall"

Sirs:

The debacle of the London conference; the grim, plain, unheeded words of our scientists regarding the future of the atomic bomb; the President's absurd advocacy of universal peacetime, military conscription; the stupid reliance of our military leaders on outworn techniques of warfare; the tragic lack of statesmanship, realism and vision on the part of the world's government leaders in spite of the obvious desire of the world's peoples for a genuine peace and not an armed and jittery truce--all these portents mean but one thing: that the Third World War is in the making and can confidently be expected to break out within the next ten to 20 years.

Two alternatives and two alone are open to people who are willing to take their heads out of the sand, to newspapers who are willing to stop whistling in the dark and begin to talk. The first alternative is a genuine people's movement throughout the world which consists of a hearty refusal to back their governments in any program of "preparedness," be it window dressing like "peacetime conscription" or serious, scientific preparation to "push a button," together with an equally hearty demand that their respective governmental representatives meet promptly to write a world constitution and to set up a world government.

The second alternative for any realistic person with the interests of his own home and family at heart, as well as the survival of the human species, is to find a barren spot in Death Valley, a lonely crag in the Rockies, or an inaccessible farm on the Great Plains, learn the essentials of subsistence living, and settle down with a fearful prayer in his heart that perchance he will be among the scanty remnant of folk who may remain after the Atomic Age is over.

Unless the first alternative is nurtured by such magazines as TIME and by the outspoken honesty of such leaders as we have, never in history did men die more stupidly and foolishly than in World War II, unless it be in the future World War III.

WILMA C LUDLOW

Williamsburg, Va.

Sirs:

The bomb has served the purpose for which it was conceived. Let one more be made and dropped on the two-billion-dollar project; let lips be sealed as to its secret; let each nation agree to punish by death any outlaw who presumes to foster its search. . . .

To share the bomb is only to increase the danger. By disposing of the bomb we may again be a member of our "One World" federation, on equal terms with all, and in a position to prove our good will.

We have lived generations without atomic energy. In the name of humanity let us do it again!

CLARA ALDEN PETTENGILL

Los Angeles

Sirs:

If the now still but never small voice of an 18th-Century poet can possibly be heard above all this atomic bombast, may I commend to the attention of your readers and the "bomb committee" the following excerpt from Pope's Essay on Man?

. . . From Nature's chain whatever link you strike,

Tenth, or ten thousandth, breaks the chain alike.

And if each system in gradation roll,

Alike essential to the amazing whole:

The least confusion but in one--not all

That system only, but the whole, must fall.

Let earth unbalanced from her orbit fly,

Planets and suns run lawless through the sky;

Let ruling angels from their spheres be hurled,

Being on being wrecked, and world on world;

Heaven's whole foundations to their center nod

And nature trembles to the throne of God.

All this dread order break--for whom? for thee?

Vile worm!--oh madness! pride! impiety!

J. NORMAN MCKENZIE

Boston

Who's an Arab?

Sirs:

TIME does an excellent job in reporting history but a more questionable one in grading it. In your issue of Oct. 29, you give King Ibn Saud a "flunk" in ancient history, ethnology, and arithmetic. While granting that the King's mathematics seems dubious, I must protest your flunking him in ancient history and ethnology for his statement that the Canaanites were Arabs, as I think most scholars would admit that they were.

Let us turn the false sentimentalism which surrounds Zionism to a practical sentimentalism and make homes for the refugee Jews in our own communities rather than insist that the Arabs of Palestine give their country entirely over to a people who once happened to rule it for a few centuries.

JOHN L. LAMONTE

Associate Professor of History

University of Pennsylvania

Philadelphia

P: With all respect to Reader LaMonte, there is still a reasonable doubt among scholars that the Canaanites were Arabs.--ED.

TIME'S Publisher

Sirs:

Having read your letter published today [TIME, Nov. 12] to us subscribers, I certainly do want to join you in every good wish to Jim Linen in his new job. I also want to extend congratulations to TIME for regaining the services of one of the ablest men I have ever known--and one of the nicest.

In my years of association with Jim during this war, I found him to be one of those rare people who would jump in, without hesitation and without argument as to the possible effects on his own personal prestige, and do a job that needed to be done in any remote part of the earth where the going was toughest and the situation most complicated.

Furthermore, I had the wonderful assurance that whenever Jim piled his great hulk into a bucket seat and started off for some sore spot, I could stop worrying about that particular problem.

Jim really knew as well as anybody what was wrong with our Overseas Operations in OWI and also what was right with them and he served mightily in correcting the former and promoting the latter. I am delighted that he has come back to such a fine job.

ROBERT E. SHERWOOD

New York City

Wooden Leg in a Forest Fire

Sirs:

"Navy Day," as stated by TIME [Oct. 29], was indeed a "stirring performance and great publicity show." Where ships could not go, admirals were sent to make pleas on behalf of the near-defunct battleship and cruiser. A great show, indeed--and all at the cost of the taxpayer.

The Navy today is in the same position cavalry was at the end of World War I. And by the time World War III arrives, a battleship will be about as useful as a wooden leg in a forest fire. I have spoken.

J. E. MILLER

Veteran of World Wars I & II

Chicago

Action Broken Off

Sirs:

TIME [Nov. 5] says that Admiral Ernie King sailed into the caucus room port "with all his guns blazing."

From where I sat the Admiral wore in with hatches battened for a gale, carrying a reefed mainsail. He dropped a kedge at the caucus room door, and rode up into the eye of a gentle breeze, and backed his mainsail. There he delivered a walking ladder of ranging shots, reloaded and waited for the enemy to reply. The shells of the unified command in Europe and the Pacific Ocean areas were laid into his rigging.

Considerable top hamper fell to the deck. The action was then broken off. The Admiral trimmed ship and hauled himself off the reef with his kedge, and stood off majestically down the corridors of the Senate Office Building.

The battle was over. No decision.

NELL ABERNATHY

Washington

Hullabaloo Absorbed

Sirs:

I have noted with great interest the hullabaloo caused by the proposed merger of the armed services. It seems to me that the obvious solution has been neglected. If the Army is serious (which we of course assume) in its desire for a unified command, the obvious solution is to have the Marine Corps absorb the Army.

HENRY SAMSON

Lynn, Mass. Captain,

U.S. Navy

Fuehrer Principle?

Sirs:

I am sure that TIME will be unwilling to let Business Week stand accused of favoring the "Fuehrer principle" as a result of this strange misquotation in your Oct. 29 issue: "Business Week, which had looked uneasily on Franklin Roosevelt for twelve years, came right out and said that what the country apparently needs is 'a return to one-man government for a while.' "

What Business Week reported to business as news (in its Oct. 20 Washington Bulletin) was this:

"Judging by tales from the grass roots, the country would welcome a return to one-man government for a while."

As your more careful staff readers of Business Week well know, this magazine could never be imagined as saying that any country needs one-man government.

I know something about the slips that are risked between reading and writing for a fast news schedule, and I do not take this slip that got by as a fair sample of TIME'S policies or practices. But as a fair sample of these, I shall appreciate 'your setting the record straight for your readers.

RALPH SMITH

Editor

Business Week

New York City

P: Does Editor Smith hold that the country accepts the "Fuehrer principle?"--ED.

Autumn Shower

Sirs:

Your article,' "Autumn Story," in TIME [Oct. 15] was the best summary of Europe's situation that I have ever had the pleasure to read. It so simply but vividly describes the "trials & tribulations that the people of Europe have endured and will endure even more in the future. The thoughts of the common man & woman are enumerated again & again with clarity. Let us have more of these most interesting articles. After some of the vague, incoherent explanations by some of the world statesmen and experts on such matters, this article is like a cool shower of rain on a parched field in the summertime to my confused thoughts pertaining to the European problem.

(RM 1/c) JACK HAIZLIP

% Fleet Post Office

New York City

Morsel of Interest

Sirs:

Please tell why you left the one morsel of tense interest to all out of the Braden story [TIME, Nov. 5]: howinell does one pronounce Spruille?

R. J. MORROW Ashtabula, Ohio

P: Rhymes with fuel.--ED.

TIME & Tar

Sirs:

A few days ago I received a small book, Under Nazi Terror, written, published and printed by a nephew of mine in Denmark. In it I found an anecdote in which your publication is mentioned. Here it is, freely translated:

"An old fisher in Esbjerg (a port on the west coast of Jutland) had gotten hold of a new copy of TIME which had been thrown down from an airplane. He was sitting in a cafe where there were many Germans, and, while spreading the magazine over his table so as to irritate the Germans, one of the German officers finally came over and asked sternly, 'Where did you get TIME?' To which the old tar answered with a smile, 'I subscribe.' "

I thought it would interest you to hear this little tale because it again proves how well known and highly esteemed TIME is in Denmark.

JENS A. MEYER

St. Paul

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