"Ye Fools and Blind" Sirs:

The atomic bomb [TIME, Aug. 13] remains the principal topic of conversation. It is of course too soon to try to evaluate its infinite possibilities for good and evil. . . . My initial reaction is a feeling of deep regret that science has apparently learned how to utilize atomic energy. I hold with Churchill that the secret of atomic power has been "long mercifully withheld from man."

It looks as if humanity is moving inexorably toward Armageddon and into the limbo of forgotten things, an oblivion of its own making. Only the remnant now left of what Mr. Wilson called the "enlightened conscience of mankind" can save the situation. Unless prompt action is taken it will again be "too little and too late," and this time destiny plays for keeps.

"Ye fools and blind" are words as applicable to our civilization (sic) as they were more than 1900 years ago.

W. G. MARTIN

Kerrville, Tex.

Sirs:

The United States of America has this day become the new master of brutality, infamy, atrocity. Bataan, Buchenwald, Dachau, Coventry, Lidice were tea parties compared with the horror which we, the people of the United States of America, have dumped on the world in the form of atomic energy bombs. No peacetime applications of this Frankenstein monster can ever erase the crime we have committed. We have paved the way for the obliteration of our globe. It is no democracy where such an outrage can be committed without our consent!

WALTER G. TAYLOR New York City

Sirs:

. .. It is of no use to cry that we should have suppressed our discovery of how to harness atomic energy. Other nations would have discovered it within a very short time. Indeed, it is to the good of the whole world that we, a normally peace-loving nation, did discover it first. But it is equally useless to say that because we are a peace-loving nation and possess the secret, the future peace of the world is assured. What nation, knowing that with atomic power we could utterly destroy it without warning and without harm to ourselves, would trust even the U.S. ? No. The only answer I see is strict international control. . . .

JOHN L. BALDERSTON JR. Oak Ridge, Tenn.

Where Was Private Cherepanov?

Sirs:

I have just finished reading "4 1/2 minutes of Death" [TIME, July 23]. I presume the man was really "dead." If the blood had not been injected in his veins, causing his heart to begin to beat and bringing him back to life, he would have gone to his grave.

What happened to the soldier's soul after his heart stopped? What happened when the doctor forced it to start beating again? Did the soul, when the heart stopped, depart on its long journey, or does the soul "stay around" for awhile after what we call "death," to make sure that the body has really died and is no longer a fit habitation for a living soul?

They did bring the soldier back to life, but where was he in the meantime? Was he in the same place or state, or whatever you choose to call it, that he would have been in if he had not been rescued from the grave? Where was Private Cherepanov in the period in which his heart did not beat?

Can these questions be answered?

HARRY D. RADCLIFF Deputy Register of Wills for Frederick County

Frederick, Md.

P: Not by TIME.--ED.

Geobaloney

Sirs:

In TIME [July 30] you ran a letter from a serviceman quoting a German woman who said " 'You speak of freedom ... of democracy. We know of your treatment of the American Japanese. We know of your race riots, the underhanded persecution of the Negro and the Jew. At least we Germans were not hypocritical. .'..'" The serviceman had no answer for her. I suggest one:

Every country has its lawbreakers, its bigots, and its brutes. Democracy does not sponsor or encourage them, whereas bestiality has been a prominent part of Germany's official program. A government can be judged by its aims, by the things it considers desirable. The German goal was to reduce mankind to the lowest common terms. Democracy's goal is to raise it to the highest.

[ARMY SERGEANT'S NAME WITHHELD] Fort Belvoir, Va.

Sirs:

... It appears that the German woman sold the two G.Is a large slice of geobaloney.

OSMOND SHREVE MOLARSKY Washington

Sirs:

. . . The capacity of our G.I.s to absorb such propaganda is far more disturbing than the ability of the Germans to create it. ...

Our domestic problems exist and must be solved, but occupied Germany is not the place to consider them, and such discussions simply becloud the issue of German war guilt. To borrow a twist from the world heavyweight champion, T Sgt. Joe Louis, a G.I. who isn't tongue-tied at critical moments: "There ain't nothing wrong with us that Mr. Hitler can fix."

CHARLES W. PACHNER Lieutenant, U.S.A.A.F. Westover Field, Mass.

Bold Young Men?

Sirs:

A close reader of TIME since . . . '39, I've learned in the ETO three things that some of you seem to overlook: 1) Not one in ten soldiers ever sees a foxhole. 2) Damn few "give" their lives. Except in that million-in-one Kamikaze case, the average G.I. merely takes unwillingly the first step to make it available. The volition is usually some nervous reaction such as fear, impatience, confusion. 3) In battle a lot of young men learn for the first time that young men can, do and, under the circumstances, are likely to die. That thought makes them, if anything, merely more cautious --if they get another chance.

So please let's have less about millions of combat veterans, thousands giving their all, and a generation of bold young men coming back to demand a more daring world.

(PFC.'s NAME WITHHELD)

% Postmaster New York City

Classicist's Delight?

Sirs:

Of Lenore Johannesson, Miss Canada [TIME, Aug. 6], you say: "They [a sculptor, a painter, a photographer] refrained from comment on her streamlined figure, which is neither Canadian nor classic." Then, presumably as the classic, you give us the measurements of Venus de Milo. It is not Venus de Milo who is regarded by classicists as having the classic figure. It is Venus de' Medici.

I don't recall de' Medici's measurements as to height, calf, and ankle, but I believe that elsewhere she is 36-25-42. Because of that 42 I rather suspect that nowadays she would be considered ... as being a bit too wide in the basin.

TOM LENNON New York City

P: Not so. De' Medici's figure [scaled], in figures: height, 5 ft. 3 in.: waist, 27.3 in.: hips, 36.6 in.; calf, 13.8 in.: ankle, 8.2 in. -- ED.

How Father Has Grown

Sirs:

In TIME [Aug. 6] Reader James Binder complains that upon reading TIME, his "insides feel jarred and as if they had been rubbed against broken glass." May I suggest that Reader Binder switch from the gastronomical to the mental process of assimilating TIME?

RAYMOND H. SMITH

Pelham Manor, N.Y.

Sirs:

The last line of Mr. Binder's complaint reads, "I will admit that your style used to be worse than it is now." This seems to be a situation similar to that of Mark Twain at 14 when he thought his father was perhaps the most ignorant man ever born. At 21 Twain was amazed at how much the old man had learned in seven years. . . .

WILLIAM BLAIR RICE New Albany, Ind.

Sirs:

... I would like to add my note of commendation to the editors of TIME. The English used is vivid, often condensed, always self-explanatory. It sounds a refreshing note in the wilderness of often-stodgy prose which no other known publication approaches. More power to your editors.

CHARLES GRAHAM THURSTON Oregon City Enterprise Oregon City, Ore.

Postscript to a Pause

Sirs:

To support his tardy but valid point that the U.S. is blundering politically by withdrawing its forces from Mediterranean Europe, your fast-stepping correspondent [TIME, July 16] should not have paused to slur as a "pretty bad job of reporting" the work of correspondents who covered the civil war in Greece.

We American and British writers were no more "cooped up in the Grande Bretagne Hotel" than General Scobie and his staff who lived there and worked next door. We went everywhere, unguarded under fire and even crossed the lines until forbidden to do so by the British military. . .

Please be reminded that every line we wrote passed through censorship. No "solid block . . . pro-EAM and anti-British" ever developed among the correspondents. Both Americans and British were subdivided into many degrees of experience, observation and understanding. . . .

GEORGE WELLER Chicago Daily News Chungking

P: To George Weller and other able correspondents in Athens, all praise for a job performed under difficult conditions of censorship. But it was also the opinion of the British labor delegation which investigated the Greek situation that the generally pro-EAM correspondents in Athens "seemed to think that Greece consisted of the Hotel Grande Bretagne."--ED.

TIME on a Raft

Sirs:

While on a "cargo run" between two of the Marianas Islands, the LST of which my cousin, Ensign Daniel Leavitt, is the navigator sighted and picked up a Jap on a foundered raft. . . . He was weak from exhaustion and evidently unarmed. They emptied his pockets anyway. My cousin writes:

"They contained a knife, a can-opener, a magnifying glass, and, believe it or not, a little map of the western Pacific torn out of the April 2 issue of TIME magazine. Just how or where he had gotten this last article I have no idea. It was carefully wrapped up in several layers of oilcloth. Heaven forbid that he tried to use the map for navigating. . . ."

... SALLY D. LEAVITT Saxtons River, Vt.

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