Wait for the Draft?
Sir:
I noted with interest in your Oct. 16 issue that General Hershey says: "Those veterans still within the draft age couldn't have seen much service." He should have defined "much."
I am a veteran of three years service and still under 26. I saw 2 1/2 years service overseas . . . This may not seem like a long time to General Hershey sitting behind a desk in Washington, but to me it was . . .
JOSEPH H. RAWLS
Richmond, Va.
Sir:
... As a veteran rifleman in the Marine Corps who saw two years service, two bloody campaigns (Peleliu and Okinawa), and received two wounds (one in each campaign), who will not be 25 years old until next month, and who knows that a lot of my buddies were my age or younger ... I hope you will print this letter so that Hershey's remark may at least be placed in perspective. It was precisely the youngsters who were doing the bloody work--so they only saw two years service (a short time?) . . .
GEORGE ALLEN
New York City
Sir:
. . . During the last big hate I served four years, mostly on sea duty, with thousands of navy enlistees who are still of draft age . . .
It wasn't bad enough that we younger fellows got a rotten deal on the navy point system for discharge (in which age, not length of service, counted the most); now they want to send us back again, and let hundreds of thousands of over-draft-age vets who saw less service than we did stay home.
It's kind of like the guy at the carnival that sticks his head through the canvas to have baseballs thrown at it. If he's good he can duck the baseballs for quite a while, but the more times he sticks his head through the canvas, the more likely he is to get beaned. How many wars do we have to live through before we get beaned? . . .
If the world lasts long enough for me to have a son who, during a future war, says, "Dad, I'm going to enlist; my country needs me," I'll tell him: "Don't be a jerk, son; patriotism is for fools. Wait for the draft". . .
ROBERT E. BARTOW Toledo
Montana Cowboy
Sir:
In your Oct. 16 Art section, Texas' Tom Lea was compared with such oldtime Southwesterners as Charles Russell and Frederic Remington.
I believe you will find that Russell was not from the Southwest. He was a Montana cowboy and did most of his paintings in Great Falls, Montana.
THOMAS HAGAN
Glendive, Mont.
P: TIME'S Art writer has just been moved to a smaller office on the Northwest (or Montana) corner of the TIME & LIFE Building.--ED.
A Shade More Southern
Sir:
In its Oct. 16 review of my novel, The Barons, TIME guessed wrongly in one small, but important, particular. The city of Susquehanna is not ... in Delaware. A careful reading of several passages having to do with travel would have revealed that Susquehanna lies southwest of Wilmington, across the frontier of Delaware, in a state that at first glance would appear to be Maryland. This state (whose name escapes me) borders on Delaware for some 100 miles ... In character, speech, and appetites, its inhabitants are a shade more southern than Delaware's, which doubtless accounts for the differences your reviewer noted between my Barons and Delaware's Du Ponts.
CHARLES WERTENBAKER
Sag Harbor, N.Y.
Atomic Bomb Booklet
The Oct. 2 issue of TIME mentioned a booklet called You and the Atomic Bomb issued by the N.Y. State defense commission "for free and wide dissemination." When I called the defense commission, I was told that these booklets are being sold by LIFE for 10-c- a copy. How come?
COLIN A. CARTER
New York City
P: TIME erred. LIFE, which printed the booklets for the New York State Civil Defense Commission, is making them available to the public at no profit. Single copies are 10-c- each. For other cost prices on a quantity basis, write to Dept. E, LIFE, 9 Rockefeller Plaza, New York 20, N.Y.--ED.
Which Programs Do You Like?
Sir:
... You say that the BBC survey system "dwarfs such U.S. research organizations as Nielsen" and others [TIME, Oct. 16].
Here are the facts. As you state, the BBC staff interviews 3,000 individuals each day (once a day). Nielsen Radio-Television Index, on the other hand, uses Audimeters (automatic electronic recorders) installed in typical homes throughout the U.S. to obtain an accurate record of radio and TV listening from about 2,200 receivers used by some 1,600 families--amounting to more than 5,000 individuals . . .
The total annual expenditure for Nielsen Radio-TV Index services is about $2,600,000 --which compares with [the BBC] figure of approximately $280,000 (-L-100,000) . . .
However, the quality of the research work is even more important than the quantity . . . A survey system that relies on a single interview to obtain a record of radio listening or TV viewing ... for an entire period of 24 hours involves so many errors (in memory) that it would not be acceptable, in the U.S., as a measure of audience size . . .
A. C. NIELSEN President A. C. Nielsen Co. Chicago
P: Nielsen's Audimeters indicate what programs radio and TV sets are tuned to. BBC surveys, besides counting the audience, tell how listeners like each program. U.S. pollsters make no attempt to gather audience reactions.--ED.
Teacher Training & the Public
Sir:
Re your Oct. 16 summary of LIFE'S article on teachers' colleges . . .
I have been connected with normal schools and teachers' colleges 38 years and can tell far more fantastic tales than "John William Sperry" did. The intellectual level is often Y subzero. Incidentally, the ignorance of educators concerning liberal arts is often more than matched by the ignorance of liberal arts professors concerning the processes of learning and teaching . . .
But let us add some important points to Sperry's own efforts to be fair . . . Normal schools and teachers' colleges of today are enormously improved over those of 25 years ago . . . Most important of all, the basic criticism lies elsewhere. The public flatly refuses to support teacher training . . . The problem is not merely financial; social prestige is even more important. Sperry's comments are important: "Most people take [the reprehensible conditions] for granted"; "the professional educators have no alternative". . .
WILLIAM H. BURTON
Director of Student Teaching Apprenticeship Graduate School of Education Harvard University Cambridge, Mass.
Sir:
What has this scheme of education done for us? It has produced millions who border on the illiterate in reading, writing, and arithmetic . . . Public school education has been taken over by a coterie of spurious experts who have erected it into an esoteric "science". . .
During the war the armed services uncovered an appalling degree of rank illiteracy among school graduates. For this we can thank the modern "educators" who flourish in the teachers' colleges. Their emphasis is on methodology, you know . . . You don't have to know anything to teach it, they say. You just have to know how! Mirabile dictu!
If we do not go back quickly to the days of readin', writin' and 'rithmetic, to classrooms where substantial knowledge is transmitted, where discipline prevails and where the thinking process is incited, we will lose our heritage. We are on the brink of it now.
JULIUS SUMNER MILLER Professor of Physics and Mathematics Dillard University New Orleans
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