The Moral Equivalent Sir:

It is with deep satisfaction that I read, at last, in a national magazine the clear, simple statement of our only hope as individuals and as nations in the Atomic Age:

"The dilemma could only be solved ... by finding the moral equivalent of the atomic bomb" (TIME, Aug. 4).

The moral equivalent does not need finding. It needs only acceptance and action. It was written down for all to read 1,000 years ago:

"Thou shalt love the Lord thy God with all thy heart, and with all thy soul, and with all thy mind. . . ."

"Thou shalt love thy neighbor as thyself. On these two commandments hang all the law and the prophets" (Matthew 22: 37-40).

"On these two" . . . not on either one alone. . . .

The people everywhere are asking for bread and are given stones. Let the leaders of state and church teach and act upon the two great commandments on which hang all the laws, and we shall have a moral force more than the equivalent of tens of thousands of atom bombs.

LADD PAGE

Berkeley, Calif.

Writers Should Stick Together . . .

Sir:

"A writer," writes Ernest Hemingway (TIME, Aug. 4), "has no more right to inform the public of the weaknesses and strengths of his fellow professionals than a doctor or a lawyer has." But in The Torrents of Spring, Ernest Hemingway wrote: " 'Further beyond there would be Indianapolis, Indiana where Booth Tarkington lived. He had the wrong dope, that fellow.' . . . 'Nobody had any damn business to write about it [war], though, that didn't at least know about it from hearsay. Like this American writer Willa Cather who wrote a book about the war where all the last part of it was taken from the action in the Birth of a Nation.' " The Torrents of Spring also informs the public of the weaknesses and strengths of Sherwood Anderson.

In the Green Hills of Africa, Hemingway writes of Gertrude Stein: "It's a damned shame ... all that talent gone to malice and self-praise . . . she never could write dialogue. . . . She learned how to do it from my stuff. . . ."

. . . "Writers," writes Hemingway in TIME, "should stick together like wolves. . . ."

Could 90% Rotarian Ernest Hemingway be sheep in wolf clothing?

HAROLD PRZYGOCKI

Milwaukee

Democratic Conviction

Sir:

... In acknowledging the story about me (TIME, July 21), for which I thank you very much, permit me to make the following points:

a) My talks with the people are the result of a longtime democratic conviction and the corollary of my beliefs in the national political scene, and therefore are not demagogy.

b) I am not and never was a Communist. When I accepted the votes of the Communists, as did 15 other state governors, I" was interested only in the numerical expression of the party then duly registered in the Electoral Tribunal as a political entity. . . .

ADHEMAR DE BARROS

Office of the Governor

State of Sao Paulo, Brazil

P:Political opponents of Governor de Barros have accused him in the Brazilian House of Deputies of being a Communist, and have shown photostats of documents that, if genuine, would support their claim. TIME is glad to pub lish Governor de Barros' own statement that he has never been a Communist. -- ED.

Case Dismissed

Sir:

As a weekly . . . reader of your magazine, may I say I feel that your reference to Mr. Jacques Rouche, "removed from his post as a collaborator" (TIME, July 7), lacks the accuracy to which TIME readers are entitled. . . . Mr. Rouche was removed from his post [as director of the Paris Opera] six months after the liberation of Paris. He underwent trial under the charge of collaboration ; all charges made against him were dropped and the case dismissed. . . .

BENJAMIN GOBET

Geneva, Switzerland

Mikes for the Muezzin

Sir:

In 1943, two brother officers and myself, all of the British Army Broadcasting Service at General Eisenhower's Algiers A.F.H.Q., heard the muezzin's call to prayer for the first time, from the Kasbah's minarets. As a gag in the mess, I announced the formation of a new commercial project, "Allah Be Praised, Limited"; object: to wire the minarets for sound, and thus save the elderly muezzin from climbing the stairs to call the faithful to their devotions.

The gag caught on; soon the whole mess was discussing possible developments. The more expensive models were to incorporate pre-recorded calls to prayer; and a dummy muezzin was to pop up at the top of the minaret and go through the correct prostrations and contortions by means of an inexpensive and economical clockwork mechanism. The muezzin's job was to become a sinecure. We even planned an advertising campaign. . . . "Why Get Tired? Have the Mosque Wired ... by Allah Be Praised, Ltd.!" "TIME," indeed, "Marches On." Back in my old job as BBC announcer, I read in TIME (June 30) that in many of the larger cities of Islam, the muezzin now calls over a public address system. My scatty joke turns into reality. Did I, I ask myself, miss a great commercial opportunity? And if I did, who grasped it? The Americans, I'll bet. My old friend Lieut. Colonel "Andy" Baruch of Armed Forces Radio? His clever 2 i/c, Captain Stanley Miller? Whoever "cashed in" on the scheme, I do think they might allot me a block of founder's preference shares, and a directorship!

PHILIP B. P. SLESSOR

Late Chief Broadcasting Officer British Army

Broadcasting Service, C.M.F.

London

P:Andre Baruch, now co-master of ceremonies (with his wife Bea Wain) of a WMCA disc jockey program, admits considering Reader Slessor's notion but denies cashing in on it.--ED.

Boeings for BOAC

Sir:

There are a few points in connection with the piece on aviation in the Aug. n issue of TIME concerning BOAC which seem worthy of mention.

While not all BOAC aircraft are as modern as we would wish, due to the fact that England built no transport aircraft during the war under the Roosevelt-Churchill agreement, the conversions and intermediate models are giving a pretty good account of themselves. . . .

Across the Atlantic, where our equipment is as modern as that of any airline . . . BOAC frequencies have reached eight round-trips weekly, and during a recent period BOAC carried the highest number of passengers per plane between the terminal points of New York and Montreal and London. Incidentally, in addition to the five Constellations which you mentioned, BOAC will also, in the early part of next year, add six Boeing Stratocruisers.

G. A. W. WYNNE

Public Relations

Atlantic Division

New York City

The Price of Civilization

Sir:

May I offer a minor correction?

In your issue of Aug. 4, you quote me as saying:*"[The Fijis] are free from the influence of movies, radio, liquor and prostitution." This quotation should have been prefaced by the qualifying clause, "Until recently, the Fijis were free, etc."

I doubt whether there is any spot on the face of the earth where the advent of Western business, with its invariable accompaniments of liquor, gambling, prostitution and movies, has had graver consequences in debauching and demoralizing a people than among the inhabitants of the Fiji Islands, who had been lifted from cannibal savagery to simple but admirable Christian living in less than a century by the influence of Christian missions.

HENRY P. VAN DUSEN Sorrento, Me.

*TIME quoted from Religious News Service.--ED.

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