Fallout

Sir:

Since the bomb tests on Christmas Island are nearer to our shores than Japan's, why aren't we protesting to the British?

MRS. MARVIN N. NELSON Provo, Utah

Sir:

Your June 3 summary of the bomb tests is an excellent example of concise reporting of a complex subject. One of the larger pitfalls involved in the fallout problem is that of assuming that science and research will take care of the matter in good time. As a member of the scientific fraternity, I should say that although we have done little to dispel the idea that researchers can invariably come up with the right thing at the right time, this is far from true; scientific methods are reasonably above reproach, but those who use them are subject to human shortcomings. The simple principles by which we have so far lived are now inadequate. The difficulties of formulating new principles might be neatly resolved by a Second Coming, but rather than wait for that, we had all better try to think the matter through at once.

WESTON H. JENKINS Corning, N.Y

Sir:

I see a poignant tragedy of shortsightedness in the present discussion about fallout and the relative merits of clean versus dirty bombs, especially from the point of view of a shock hydrodynamicist. War has always been a stupid, nasty and insane business, at best, and the present orders of magnitude on civilian targets lends little sense to the hypocrisy of trying to distinguish between useful and useless killing.

F B PORZEL Chicago

Sir:

More and more of us are getting the fallout blues as we become increasingly aware of the dangers:

Ashes to ashes,

Dust to dust.

If the Bomb doesn't get you,

Radiation must

P. H. BAEZ

Sausalito, Calif

Writer's Cramp

Sir:

Re the Kazan-Schulberg motion picture A Face in the Crowd: your review is stupid.

JOHN STEINBECK Paris

P: Reader Steinbeck's needle seems to be stuck. Wrote he to TIME, Dec. 26, 1955: "TIME'S Nov. 28 review of Ten North Frederick by John O'Hara is stupid."--ED.

Gift from Seoul

Sir:

In compliance with Emma J. Jonis' wish for a Chinese painting as expressed in your May 27 Letters column [Reader Jonis praised TIME'S May 6 "Masterpieces of Chinese Art," wished she owned one called Mist in Wooded Mountains], I hasten to offer her my own work entitled Home Beyond the Mist.

BEATRICE TANG

Embassy of the Republic of China Seoul

P: Reader Tang's original (see cut) has been forwarded to Reader Jonis.--ED.

Surgeon, Heal Thyself

Sir:

Dr. Sadao Ohmura [who removed his own appendix--June 3] certainly did not prove that Japanese are more dexterous than Westerners.

While in private practice in North Carolina several years ago, my father, Captain J. S. Brown Jr., U.S.N., also removed his own appendix. That, however, was only the preliminary. While aboard the U.S.S. Melville in England during the war, he performed an emergency double herniotomy--on himself, of course.

JANE BROWN ATTAWAY Walterboro, S.C.

Sir:

Would it interest Dr. Sadao Ohmura to know that in 1929 a Swiss lady surgeon performed an appendectomy on herself for the purpose of studying the efficacy of local anesthesia ?

M. VOEGELI, M.D.

Gokliwil-ob-Thun, Switzerland

Sir:

Isn't the do-it-yourself rage going too far? ALEX EISENSTEIN

Chicago

How to Be Saved (Contd.)

Sir:

Patricia Zeis says, "Billy Graham, I think, is doing a good job in bringing irreligious people toward (not to) God, but to what is he going to convert Catholics?" May lie he could convert them from Pope and priest to God, and from the saints and the Mother of God to Christ.

P. I. PRYOR Bethpage, Tenn.

Sir:

I suppose Patricia Zeis expects an answer: "To Christians, Patricia, to Christians."

(S/SGT.) RAUL MORI Ruiz U.S.A.F. Barksdale, La.

Sir:

It is incredible that anyone should have such little respect for another's religion as to compare it to a contagious disease from which children should be protected.

NORA P. DARLING

Chicago

About the Budget

Sir:

The battle of the budget should be called the battle of the 1958-60 elections. I have lost my respect for both contestants. They use the budget and the Senate for political purposes. They ought to hire a hall.

ARTHUR E. WYNN Forest Hills, N.Y.

Sir:

It is with some relief that I read in your June 3 issue that at least some of the asinine, scatterbrained braying in Washington about tax cuts has toned down. I wish some of those loudmouthed Texas Democrats could come to Greece and see foreign aid and the military in operation.

(T/SGT.) GERALD L. NORWAY U.S.A.F. Athens

Sir:

If the President would be concerned about eliminating some of the waste that exists in the expenditure of Government funds, there could well be a reduction in the budget. We who have been employed by companies engaged in doing Government work here and abroad are aware that more than 50% of Government money is wasted.

F. H. VERNON San Francisco

Sir:

I was shocked to read in your May 27 issue of the congressional mutilation of the USIA appropriation. As one who has now been two years on the firing line where Russian propaganda is most active in "smearing" the U.S., I am impressed with the important part the U.S. Information Libraries play in setting the record straight'. Words are cheaper than planes and guns; ideas are more powerful even than bombs. It is the worst kind of shortsighted folly to spend billions for armament and foreign aid and then, for want of adequate funds for the USIA, fail to explain our actions in terms that will bring us the understanding and support of the uncommitted world, which holds the balance of power.

ROBERT D. VOLD, Bangalore, India

Crossed Reference

Sir:

Who wrote the article in your June 3 issue headed "Miltown? No Martinis!"? The bird who pecked out another story in the People section concerning the search in the Library of Congress for an old song wanted by a Congressman? The Library of Congress system bears about the same resemblance to the Dewey decimal system as I'd Rather Be a Lobster Than a Wise Guy bears to Beethoven's Ninth Symphony. Two institutions as holy as the Library of Congress and the Martini are not laughing matters to me.

JOSEPH HANSEN Los Angeles

Sir:

"The everlasting glory of the Dewey decimal system" in no way assisted the L.C. in its search for the song about the lobster. The Library of Congress uses its own system. MARJORIE W. SCHAAP Hollis, N.Y.

P: TIME got caught in a lobster pot behind the stacks. -- ED.

The Road to Buenos Aires

Sir:

As an Argentine citizen I wish to extend to you my heartiest congratulations on your June 3 article "The Rocky Road Back." You have accurately described events that took place during the twelve years we lived under the shadow of a ruthless dictator who ruled the country by fear and played havoc with its economy.

AILEEN

San Francisco

Beck's Ploys

Sir:

Dave Beck, and more, should well be on Seattle's conscience. All major candidates for high public offices appeared last fall on a statewide, Teamster-sponsored TV program in unanimous condemnation of a right-to-work measure. Why should any American be compelled, as a condition of his employment, to become a member of a union such as Dave Beck's?

PERRY M. ACKER Seattle

Joyce Revisited

Sir:

Enjoyed your June 3 review of Letters of James Joyce. TIME modestly forgot to mention what it did to publicize Joyce and his works, from Judge Woolsey's ruling on Ulysses* to Finnegans Wake. It was TIME which helped to introduce James Joyce to America's Main Street.

RICHARD P. PETTY Detroit

P: TIME'S two cover stories on James Joyce ran Jan. 29, 1934 and May 8, 1939 (see cuts).--ED.

Light on the Dark Continent

Sir:

Your May 20 article on "Middle Africa: Cradle of Tomorrow" is one of your finest. It is interesting, well written and beautifully illustrated. It provides a capsule course in the economic geography of a fascinating region.

EUGENE P. PRICE Professor of Economics Milligan College Milligan College, Tenn.

A Certain Smile

Sir:

Regarding the deep medical problem posed [May 27] as to whether the electrician with the weak heart died from walking up a flight of stairs, a stomach full of iced beer, or an overdose of marital relations in which he indulged at least four times a week: no matter why he died, he must have died with a smile on his face.

EDWIN L. JOHNSON Whittier, Calif.

Sir:

Human nature being what it is and sex desire so imperious, it may be far safer for men and women to have sexual intercourse frequently enough so that they do not build up undue tensions regarding it.

LEMON CLARK, M.D. Fayetteville, Ark.

Sir:

Dr. William Dock's findings should be published only in medical literature and not rubbed in on the public at large. I love skin-diving, spearfishing up to eight hours a holiday, and do appreciate being married.

GUENTER SCHAEFFER Rio de Janeiro

* Privately printed in Paris in 1922 and smuggled into other countries for over ten years, Ulysses, on the strength of Manhattan's Federal Judge Woolsey's decision that it was not obscene, was legally published in the U.S.

(1934) for the first time in any English-speaking country.

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