MacArthur Coverage

Sir:

Some say your magazine is [editorially] slanted. I won't argue that, but your April 30 cover story on MacArthur is the epitome in reporting and intelligent analysis. Your presentation of the selfish political angles as well as the sound and honest elements of the whole affair is like a pine tree in a cotton patch . . . You have become the weight of balance on the scale of sensible opinion . . .

(SGT.) HARRIS SLOTIN, U.S.A.F. Sampson AFB, N.Y.

Sir:

I have just finished your account of the MacArthur story. It is a masterpiece of reporting; fair, temperate, balanced and comprehensive.

LABAN LACY RICE Ware Neck, Va.

Sir:

The covers of your April 30 issue portray ham on the front as well as ham on the back . . .

E. P. DAVIS, M.D.

Oklahoma City

Mules for Missouri (Cont'd)

Sir:

In a national crisis, someone usually comes up with a brilliant idea. Such a one is Robert F. Love [who wants to launch a fund to buy a haberdashery store for President Truman--TIME, April 30, Letters].

I enclose my check for $1 payable to "Back to Missouri Club." For this dollar, I would appreciate getting Membership Certificate N01. ...

I nominate Mr. Love as Secretary-Treasurer of the club.

T. W. E. LA PLANTE

St. Cloud, Minn.

Sir:

Mr. Robert F. Love . . . has bombastically suggested that we who do not want Mr. Truman for President for another term should chip in $1 and buy him a haberdashery store. . . I'll bet Mr. Love could have cracked some side-splitting jokes about Lincoln's background, had he been a pundit of that day.

This may come as a shock to Mr. Love, but I am neither a haberdasher nor a Democrat.

JOHN S. EATON Middlebury, Vt.

Thirty-two readers volunteered to contribute. TIME is returning their checks or cash.--ED.

Distant Galaxies

Sir:

Re TIME'S April 30 Science article, "The Great Event": I have many times read about the inane theory of the expanding universe. It is simply an illusion that may be viewed by anyone driving along a highway . . . when objects . . . seem to be moving in different directions at varying speeds. I am more confirmed in my theory than ever after reading "What [the two cosmologists of the Gamow school, Drs. Ralph Alpher and Robert Herman] find harder to explain is why the earth should happen to be at the exact center of the great expansion . . ."

F. Y. DABNEY Vicksburg, Miss.

Sir:

. . . You state that we find it hard to explain why the earth should happen to be at the exact center of the expanding universe. Nowhere in our work is it either implied or stated that the earth is at the center of the universal expansion . . .

RALPH A. ALPHER AND R. C. HERMAN The Johns Hopkins University Silver Spring, Md.

TIME erred in implying that Cosmologists Alpher and Herman did say so. All the distant galaxies appear to be receding from the earth. This is hard to explain on the basis of one central explosion, unless the earth should happen to be at the point from which the galaxies are receding. No cosmologist, of course, believes that this is the case. A better explanation is that space itself is expanding, making each galaxy move away from the others.--ED.

The Crimson & the Blue

Sir:

In your April 30 coverage of the Cambridge v. Harvard race, Harvard's Coach Tom Bolles is quoted as being worried about only one race, that being the Harvard v. Yale race [in June]. Since when is a coach blind to all but one contest?

Cambridge, one of the smoothest crews that this country has seen in a good number of years, has won a big race, and all credit to them . . .

SCOTT HYLEN

Springfield, Mass.

The Law & The Life

Sir:

Re your April 30 article covering the case of the Labrenzes who refused for religious reasons to allow a blood transfusion to save the life of their child: the whole subject appears to me to involve ... the fundamental right of society to prohibit suicide or murder by religious tenet . . . The Chicago court's action in denying the parents' right to murder their child by a default based on religious principle is a healthy indication . . .

ELMER SCHLAGETER

Englewood Colo.

Sir:

. . . Mr. Labrenz was quoted as saying, ". . . we do not have control of life." How illogical can one be? The child needed a transfusion to live; but Labrenz and his wife refused to permit the transfusion; therefore, the child dies, though they "do not have control" of her life. Instead of each of them having a Bible in hand, one should have been studying an elementary text on logic.

... A psychoanalyst would probably point out that their "faith" may be resting upon a perverse, egoistical ardor for a form of self-perfectionism among the ranks of Jehovah's Witnesses . . .

HUGH S. MOORHEAD JR. Chicago

Picture Switch

Sir:

In your May 7 story on President Paul A. Wagner of Rollins College you say that Wagner is "showing the strain of the campaign."

As one of Wagner's closest friends I would agree with you. I don't even recognize him in the picture which you printed. By the way, whose picture is it? WELLS D. BURNETTE Vice President Roosevelt College Chicago

P: Rollins' Alumni President Howard Showalter Jr. TIME'S apologies to him and to Rollins' Wagner (see cut) for a baffling mixup in the picture department.--ED.

Dangerous Blondes

Sir:

In your April 30 report about Mr. Ivor Brown's [resurrected words] you gave the sample word "amygdaline" as a fitting epithet for ladies who are "almondlike" blondes.

To those who know anything at all about organic chemistry, the adjective probably carries some more intricate humor. Amygdalin is a glucoside obtained from almond. On hydrolysis, it yields three appropriate fragments: i) glucose which is the sweetest, life-giving, naturally occurring sugar; 2) benzaldehyde which is the starting material for many artificial perfumes, and 3) hydrocyanic acid which is a sweet, almond-smelling gas but one of the deadliest poisons known . .

GEORGE CHANG

Minneapolis

Codex Sinaificus

Sir:

In your April 30 article "Treasure in Microfilm," reference is made to the "4th Century Codex Vaticanus, a Greek Bible with the oldest and most important extant copy of the New Testament."

The Codex Sinaiticus is equally old and its New Testament is complete. Missing from the New Testament of the Codex Vaticanus' is a portion of Hebrews beginning at 9:25, the pastoral Epistles, the Epistle to Philemon and the Apocalypse.

Father Lowrie Daly could stop off on his way home from Rome to see the most important, and possibly the oldest Greek New Testament--at the British Museum.

ROBERT C. DEAN

Gambier, Ohio

Old Ivory

Sir:

I was very surprised to read in your April 2 issue that Henry James invented the [term] ivory tower . . .

Any Roman Catholic schoolboy throughout the world can tell you that "ivory tower" (Turris eburnea), is one of the invocations of the Litany of the Blessed Virgin, and has been since the 16th Century . . .

PIEDAD DE SALAS

Madrid

What to Do With Old Profits

Sir:

TIME April 30 reports that Beardsley Ruml suggests that corporations may avoid the excess-profits tax by having no excess profits, by allotting to the research department the equivalent of what would have been excess profits. There is a simpler way: the money might be donated to an educational institution, Dartmouth College, for example, of which Beardsley Ruml is a trustee. And there is a still simpler way. Let the officers vote themselves bonuses so as to wipe out what would have been excess profits.

During World War I ... the president of a giant steal [sic] company voted himself a bonus of about $1,500,000. Thousands of officers of our corporations are today doing the same thing, but so far none has broken that enviable record . . .

G. F. HULL

Dartmouth College Hanover, N. H.

P.P.P.

Sir:

I have read with interest your April 23 report on Dr. Paul Hutchinson's evaluation of U.S. Protestantism ... It is evident that he belongs to the P.P.P. (Protestant Pessimist Party). It has become the fashion among certain clergymen and religious writers in Protestantism to decry the contribution made by the churches to which they belong . . . Intelligent Roman Catholics realize that little good is done by that kind of public self-flagellation . . . There are faults in the Catholic Church, too but why, they reason, wash the family laundry in public?

. . . There are still thousands of dedicated ministers, ranging from Liberal Harry Emerson Fosdick to Evangelist Billy Graham, who have been making a worthwhile impact upon the life and thought of America . . .

LEONARD GITTINGS

Granville, Ohio

Sir:

May I register my agreement with Christian Century's Editor Hutchinson on most of his points in regard to 50 years of Protestantism . . . However, as to his point on Protestant preaching . . . that is, that the pulpit today speaks from Romans 7:19 ("For the Good that I would I do not: but the evil which I would not, that I do") I have found differently.

We publish extracts from two local sermons each week as a part of our religious coverage. In the period of a year I have run across only one minister preaching "man's innate sinfulness." On the other hand, at least seven of ten sermons published contain some form of the message "For God so loved the world that He gave His only begotten Son . . . etc."

GEORGE L. BERONIUS Religious Editor Los Angeles Times Los Angeles

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