Physicists' Beacon
Sir:
While it would seem inappropriate for me to comment in general on the article under Education in the Nov. 8 issue of TIME, for whose veracity and good sense responsibility must as always rest with the Editors, there is one point which will surely arouse in the whole scientific community, and in men of learning everywhere, so profound a revulsion that I cannot pass it in silence. That has to do with the evaluation of Einstein, and of his place in science, which no time, no age, and no frivolity can alter, and of the debt that we owe, and that all who follow us will owe, to him. It would seem that the issue goes beyond that of good taste, that it touches on an appreciation of the timeless nature of truth, without which the life of the mind can have no meaning, and without which the very notion of education would be a rather odd one. When, if ever, Einstein shall have ceased to be a beacon to physicists, physics will have ceased.
ROBERT OPPENHEIMER
The Institute for Advanced Study
Princeton, N J.
P: TIME reveres Einstein perhaps as much as Reader Oppenheimer does, would be the last to belittle the great physicist for no longer being able to keep up with a conversation which he alone was able to start.--ED.
Backstage Peek
Sir: Did Oppenheimer hop on TIME'S Nov. 8 cover as a result of Dewey's defloration? Did you "stop the presses" . . .? Let us readers backstage to peek at the pied type and the cover that fell to the floor around dawn Wednesday.
DELOS V. SMITH JR.
Hutchinson, Kans.
P: Reader Smith will be disappointed: 1) the 72-hour press run of the Oppenheimer cover was completed long before the first vote was cast; 2) there wasn't a single stick of scrapped type in the shop (the four-page election section was written, edited and printed the day after the election, as planned).--ED.
Let's Eat
Sir:
Congratulations on an excellent expose ol the fallacies in the Neo-Malthusian school of economists' argument in reference to population and food supply [TIME, Nov. 8] Those chappies are long on theory and dialectic, short on soil science . . .
Conservation, unfortunately, is more a religion than a science in the minds of some of its fanatics. They write only of disasters, ignore the progress.
ROBERT G. BOWMAN
Department of Geography
The State University of Iowa
Iowa City, Iowa
Sir:
"Soil mining & erosion are still causing inestimable damage, but not so much as before."
TIME estimates the inestimable and unscrews the inscrutable!
UPTON SINCLAIR
Monrovia, Calif.
Sir:
It was with more sorrow than anger that I read your comments ... It is a misleading, irresponsible article . . .
As I see it, the main damage from your article is that it gives to the uninformed the impression that the science of conservation is a nasty, discredited work, a project of crackpots and visionaries
RAY E. GILBERT
Division of Biology
University of Utah
Salt Lake City, Utah
Sir:
My heartiest congratulation ... All they past errors are forgiven thee . . .
CLEMENT S. MIHANOVICH
Department of Sociology
St. Louis University
St. Louis, Mo.
Sir:
Concerning your article on Neo-Malthusianism, there is a good deal of room for argument about the various points raised.
However, TIME, instead of presenting these arguments impartially, has seen fit to publish a violently partisan attack on the conservationists (Vogt, Osborn et al.) . . . making light of the extinction of animal species, and referring to those who do not agree with the conservationists as "real scientists," as though some of the country's leading biologists and ecologists were snake-oil artists . . .
L. SPRAGUE DE CAMP
Lansdowne, Pa.
Sir:
THANKS TO TIME FOR NEEDED ANTIDOTE TO RECENT SCARE BOOKS RE FOOD AND PEOPLE. BIOTIC POTENTIAL OF SOILS IS NOT A CONSTANT BUT RATHER A FUNCTION OF ADVANCING SCIENCE APPLIED TO BOTH CROPS AND SOILS . . . PRODUCTIVITY OF U.S. FARM LANDS IS RISING NOT FALLING.
BUT TIME'S ENTHUSIASM HAS RUN TOO FAR. FORECAST OF MALTHUS IS STARK REALITY FOR AT LEAST HALF OF THE WORLD POPULATION. OBSTACLES TO GREATER PRODUCTION ARE NO LESS REAL BECAUSE THEY ARE ECONOMIC AND SOCIAL RATHER THAN TECHNICAL. HOW IS THE APPLIED SCIENCE ESSENTIAL TO GREATER OUTPUT TO BE CONVEYED TO A BILLION ILLITERATES? ...
WE WILL EAT HEARTILY IN U.S. WHERE WE ARE 6% OF WORLD POPULATION WITH 12% OF WORLD FOOD, BUT LET'S NOT BE BLINDED BY OUR PROVINCIALISM TO ENORMITY OF ROADBLOCKS TO A WORLDWIDE RISE FROM POVERTY.
HERRELL DEGRAFF
Professor of Land Economics
Cornell University
Ithaca, N.Y.
Sir:
In TIME'S smug and complacent dismissal of William Vogt's ideas on world population and world food supply, there were numerous references to "the real soil scientists" who assured TIME that everything will be O.K.--the technologists will find a way to feed everybody . . . That crops can be grown on intensively cultured and fertilized areas of poor soil is not news . . . Where is the unlimited supply of fertilizer coming from--particularly the phosphates ? . . .
A. STARKER LEOPOLD
University of California
Berkeley, Calif.
P: The Department of Agriculture, calculating the phosphate requirements of an expanded food production program, says that the known world reserves should last 5,200 years.--ED.
Artistic Perspective
Sir:
Reader Mayell complains that Artist Artzybasheff's key is too large for the keyhole [TIME Cover, Oct. 25].
Has Mr. Mayell never heard of perspective? The keyhole is behind Dr. Menninger, while the key is in front of him.
CONRAD WILLIAMS
Lafayette, Ind.
Sir:
Your Artzybasheff Nov. 1 cover predicted almost exactly the proportion of the electoral votes received by Truman and Dewey--14 donkeys and 8 elephants . . .
W. L. COOPER
Puerto de Luna, N.Mex.
Governmental Gulf
Sir:
. . . The election of Mr. Truman is a calamity, to Democrats as well as to Republicans . . . For it is the election of an individual who stands pretty much by himself, rather than the election of the leader of a party who is prepared to carry through the party's program.
Of course, the same could have been said of Mr. Dewey if he had been elected . . . One of the reasons for Mr. Dewey's great silences was that he could not take a stand on any important question without alienating an important section of the so-called Republican Party . . .
Our Constitution provides an iron curtain and an unbridgeable gulf between the Executive and the Legislature. The Executive--President, Cabinet and the rest--are not responsible to Congress and so do not have control of Congress . . . [Our elections] are not . . . declarations by the electorate on important issues before them, but merely variations on old copybook maxims such as "Don't change horses in midstream" or "People do not generally vote against prosperity."
Our constitutional system is adequate, probably, for the government of one of our smaller New England states. But when it produces such irresponsible candidates as we have ... it is apparently not adequate for our purposes. How can the Executive be made responsible to the Legislature at all times, and so given really effective control of the Legislature for the positive government of our country?
W. D. F. HUGHES
Portland, Me.
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