The Bomb

Sir:

A blessing on TIME'S April 12 article on the H-bomb . . . The religious tone of the article was pleasantly surprising, and points to the trouble we seem to be in today ... It may be that the ultimate destiny of man is fast being revealed . . If today's renaissance of religious feeling becomes grounded in Yankee Puritan ideals and faith, then we have every good reason to believe we will come through this vale victorious . . . R. DUDLEY BENNET New Haven, Conn.

Sir:

... I believe the Communists would not hesitate at all to bomb New York, Washington, or any of our great cities. However . . . in the case of our H-bomb war, Malenkov and the Praesidium would stand an excellent chance of being among the first victims. I presume even Communists have some affection for their children and perhaps even for their wives. As the Negro spiritual has it: "There ain't no hidin' place down here." Those men would not be willing to die, not even that Communism might live . . . JANE L. WRENCH Columbia, Mo.

Off-Beat Characters

Sir:

I was especially interested in your April 5 references to Sadakichi Hartmann in Gene Fowler's book [Minutes of the Last Meeting]. As I knew him 20-odd years ago, Hartmann was an off-beat character who ... resembled an aged water sprite. And much of the time he imitated an old satyr aprowl. At times he could be utterly beguiling. At others, a deadbeat . . .

Painter John Decker may score in Fowler's book for his good cooking, but on the day I visited his studio he had an open can of some foodstuff . . . the blue and white label read "Fix FOR HUMAN USE." It was issued by the WPA. The dark walls of Decker's depressing menage were covered with "brown-sauce" paintings--one of which was Queen Victoria with a W. C. Fields head [see cut]. Another, after Da Vinci, had Fanny Brice's face......

Decker dispensed with me by saying,"John Barrymore left less than a minute ago. He was sitting right there," and pointed to a still-warm chair. I coveted the chair and sat on it in a feminine trance . . .

ADRIENNE TYTLA East Lyme, Conn.

Broadsides from Paris

Sir:

I must express my surprise at being branded, by implication, a defeatist [ in "Waiting for Dienbienphu," TIME, March 29]. I am no more a defeatist when I wish a cease-fire in Indo-China than President Eisenhower was when he decided in favor of a cease-fire in Korea.

Regarding the EDC: I agree with a great many French statesmen or soldiers--including General de Gaulle, Edouard Herriot, Marshal Juin--in considering that scheme as a terrible danger for my country.

JACQUES SOUSTELLE National Assembly Paris

Congressman's Record

Sir:

During the eight years since I was defeated for re-election to Congress by Richard M. Nixon in 1946, I have refrained from public comment on Mr. Nixon . . . [but] I cannot, in justice to a record of which I am sincerely proud, keep silent [on TIME'S Jan. 18 statement recalling Nixon's attack on Voorhis during the 1946 campaign] . . . Even if it were true that "only one piece of legislation bore Voorhis' name," that would be no reflection whatever on the worth of a man's service in Congress . . . Most bills bear the names of committee chairmen. The point, therefore, is an altogether technical one. But the plain fact is that, for example, bills for the benefit of veterans did bear my name as author ... I was the original author of the legislation that established "Employ the Physically Handicapped Week" . . . The so-called "rabbit bill" was of benefit, it is true, only to a comparatively few small farmers. But to them it was important . . .

There was and is a Voorhis Act, bearing my name and commonly known as such, requiring registration of all officers of political organizations (such as the Communist Party) which are controlled by foreign governments . . .

It seems to me that the following events are, any one of them, of considerably more importance, and I believe they are good evidence of the fact that my record in Congress was a worthy and substantial one:

A LIFE poll of Washington newspaper correspondents in 1939 rated "Jerry Voorhis first in integrity, fifth in intelligence, and among the 14 most able members of the House."

A poll conducted among members of Congress themselves by Pageant Magazine in August 1946 rated Jerry Voorhis second to Congressman Wadsworth in putting national issues above local ones and showed that my fellow members considered me the "hardest-working'' member.

The distinguished group of citizens appointed by Collier's Magazine in 1946 to make that magazine's award for distinguished congressional service included my name as one of 14 House members from which the final selection of Congressman Jesse Wolcott was made.

The MARCH OF TIME itself selected Jerry Voorhis as the typical Congressman for its "Spotlight on Congress" program during my last term of office.

JERRY VOORHIS Winnetka, Ill.

Bringing Home the Mangel-Wurzel

Sir:

In an article on Britain's Chancellor of the Exchequer "Rab" Butler, TIME [April 5] says: "He spent summers picking mangel-wurzels." This evokes a picture of long summer days spent gathering something resembling scuppernongs. Does TIME imagine that mangel-wurzels grow on trees, or on vines? A mangel-wurzel is a variety of beet, only larger and considerably less tasty, grown as a cattle food. A mangel-wurzel is a stubborn root that parts company with the earth only after a vigorous tussle, and I don't envy Rab Butler his summer, even though he was paid 8-c- an hour.

MARY STRICKLAND

New York City

P:TIME'S thanks to Scuppernong-Fancier Strickland for a fuller explanation of the problem.--ED.

Murrow v. McCarthy

Sir:

. . . Everyone recognizes and deplores McCarthy's high & mighty tactics, but E. R. Murrow is smoother and so subtle that it's very difficult to recognize the Red line he's pitching on See It Now. For this reason, I think that he is infinitely more dangerous . . .

E. B. LYON Raleigh, N.C

Korean Story

Sir:

I am sure that many readers like myself read with understanding pity the pathetic story of the little Korean boy, "A Chance for Ronnie" [TIME, April 5], but my blood boils when I think of the father, a U.S. Army colonel, who could so callously desert his child and its mother . . . This certainly is a cockeyed world when military authorities will pry into the motives of one colonel for confessing to the use of germ warfare by American flyers in Korea and allow another colonel who is guilty of a heinous offense to go free . . .

F. W. CLARK Las Cruces, N. Mex.

Sir: Re Ronnie Kim's father: I extend respect for TIME'S restraint in its terse acknowledgement of the colonel's part in Ronnie's existence--no stones for daddy, who so richly deserves them, but only high praise for the superb Grace Kim, the Korean nurse who adopted Ronnie. However, I have not reached TIME'S commendable state of quiet in regard to the guilty. I feel a suffocating anger when I think of the anonymous colonel . . .

What kind of a man can have so little respect for himself or human kind that he will treat [a woman] with such incredibly sordid shabbiness . . . and ignore the offspring of his own body? . . .

HAZEL E. HESTER Atlanta

Monkey Shines

Sir: Re The Diaries of Lewis Carroll [TIME, March 29]: please, either tell me where I can buy a frictionless pulley, or give me the answer to the Rev. Charles Dodgson's puzzle.* NELL COUFAL Omaha P:As the Rev. Charles Dodgson (Lewis Carroll) supplied no answer to his own puzzle, see below for one reader's solution.--ED.

Sir: . . . The solution seems obvious. As long as the monkey merely hung onto the rope, both the monkey and the equivalent weight would be at rest: the resultant of forces exerted on the rope would be zero . . . But since we have a frictionless pulley, and since the problem was posed by that eminent mathematician, Charles Dodgson (Lewis Carroll), there would doubtless occur what is known in scientific circles as the Cheshire Cat Effect: both the monkey and the weight would disappear into the substance of this marvelous pulley--monkey tail last--and never be seen again. Q.E.D. ("Damned Queer Effect").

JAMES A. RAY Memphis

Shakespeare's Lady Friend

Sir: . . .It was a great satisfaction to me, and I'm sure to other Shakespeareans, to learn in your April 5 issue that Mary Fitton was the "dark lady of Shakespeare's sonnets," whom we've been trying for years to identify . . .

The dark lady was a married woman who broke her bed vow (Sormet 152), but Mary Fitton was single when she was William Herbert's [later the Earl of Pembroke--1580-1630] mistress ... He refused to wed her . . . After bearing three illegitimate children to three different men, she married rich and died respectable. But--alas for the supporters of the Fitton-Herbert theory--Mary inconveniently turns out, from the evidence of her portraits, to have been not dark but fair, with light brown hair and gray eyes. For hair, Shakespeare's dark lady had "black wires"; for eyes, "pitch balls . . ."

WILLIAM PEERY Austin, Texas

*Given a monkey and an equivalent weight, one at each end of a rope running frictionless over a pulley attached to the ceiling, what would happen if the monkey tried to climb up the rope?

This file is automatically generated by a robot program, so reader's discretion is required.