Boyle's Law

Sir:

In using the term "burrocracy," in TIME'S Oct. 8 article on Bill Boyle, I wonder if you noticed also the fitness of "burr-ocracy."

ROBERT M. COOPER Princeton, N.J.

Sir:

... If President Truman reads it without a shudder he is made of strange stuff . . .

LOUISE F. HAMILTON New York City

Sir:

Artist Chaliapin certainly caught the mood in the [Boyle] cover.

The donkey (left side of picture), not famous for brains, with the sanctimonious halo above his head, his squint eyes looking down his nose, the self-satisfied smirk, really cinches it with that right fore hoof "kicking in."

LARRY G. BENOIT Jackson Heights, N.Y.

P:No halo. That was supposed to be a small but ominous cloud.--ED.

Sir:

. . . The Senate investigators should burrow much deeper, and much higher.

A. SCHWEIER St. Louis

Sir:

... As I remember it, Boyle's law is: "The volume of a given mass of gas at constant temperature varies inversely as the pressure." Perhaps, in politics, your Boyle's law should read: "The volume of political graft varies directly with the pressure of press criticism which is brought to bear upon it."

FRANK BRYAN

Groesbeck, Texas

Sir:

There's another factor in the equation: corruption in business produces corruption in government. The businessmen who fill the waiting rooms of ... Washington law offices are the ones who dangle the carrots before the officials' noses. They seem to me as culpable as anyone . . .

LEE C. MCDONALD Cambridge, Mass.

Sir:

. . . Government by crony goes back much farther . . . Tacitus, Roman historian, speaks of Felix, governor of Judea in the ist Century: "This man did not think it necessary to impose any restraint on his desires. He considered his connection with the emperor's favorite as a license for the worst of crimes."

C. R. ZIMBELMAN Bremerton, Wash.

Bertie & the Beast

Sir:

Many thanks to TIME, Oct. 8, for ... English-hating Bertie McCormick's letter to a British monthly, and the BBC's trial of the Loch Ness monster.

English visitors to both Chicago and Loch Ness are invariably asked on their return home, "Did you see it?" Almost always they have to reply, "Well, no, not really." Many of us here have come to believe that both monsters are mythical. This is sad because we are rather proud of both of them. Now, once more, we can happily discuss whether it really has nine humps, and whether he really has a near-English accent.

G. A. HEARN Buckinghamshire, England

Writ in Sand

Sir:

Re your Oct. 8 Navajo sand-painting: Some years ago the Museum of Modern Art had a group of Indians giving a demonstration of this extraordinary art. It was a religious ceremony, and the picture was swept out each afternoon with ritualistic exercises . . .

Did [an] artist do TIME'S picture from memory or how did you manage to appease the gods?

MARY B. OGDEN Utica, N.Y.

P:I Navajo Medicine Man Billy Norton of Gallup, N. Mex. did a large (100 sq. ft.) ceremonial sand-painting especially for a TIME photographer.--ED.

The Day Olney Was Found

Sir:

The intrepid team of astronomers from Indiana University who made the long trek to find out the exact location on the map of the geographical center of U.S. population [TIME, Oct. 8] might have saved the wear & tear on their seagoing sextants by consulting a member of the local Boy Scout troop.

With a copy of the U.S. Geological Survey's topographic quadrangle "Newton, 111.," edition of 1943, and an elementary knowledge of map reading, it should not have taken more than three minutes to determine that "latitude 38 degrees, 50 minutes, 21 seconds and longitude 88 degrees, 9 minutes, 33 seconds" was located near the center of Section 25, Township 5 North Range 9 E, 100 feet south of an east-west road; about 4,000 feet east of the Mt. Olive Church.

It would plot with the scale on the map 53,600 feet (10.1 miles) due south of the high school in the town of Newton, and 49,600 feet (9.4 miles) northwest of the high school in Olney, 21,000 feet west of Dundas and 2,820 feet south of the Richland and Jasper county line. A farm house (probably Snider's) was located 250 feet to the west and the elevation above sea level of the plotted point would be 503 feet . . .

GERALD FITZGERALD Chief Topographic Engineer U.S. Geological Survey Washington, D.C.

P:< Sir:

The worthy citizens of Olney are indignant over TIME'S attitude of amused superiority toward their city.

The upright citizens (I do not speak for the horizontal tavern-frequenters) are prouder of their 22 churches than of the six bars. And of the fact that we have been a center for oil activity during the past 15 years. And of the $1,500,000 high school now in process of construction. And of the new 110-bed hospital which is to be built with combined county and federal funds . . . And of our native sons among whose number are three major generals . . .

Among ourselves we bemoan local politics, and at taxpaying time our concerted howl can be heard from here to there, when in outrage we maintain that we have higher taxes than anybody else anywhere--and why not with the new school and hospital? But when we are attacked by an outsider, we are one cohesive family, and the aggressor had better choose his weapons! . . .

JOHNSIE M. FIOCK FILDES Olney, Ill.

Guns & Efficiency

Sir:

The efficiency of Red China's administrators is due not to "brain washings" [TIME, Oct. 8], but rather to the guns they carry on their hips, plainly marked with a red rag so that the people will not fail to see what can make them efficient.

As for Red China's administrators being incorruptible--Communist papers are always decrying the inroad of corruption in the ranks of Red administrators . . . Tax collectors are constantly stealing grain from the taxes they collect. Judges have stolen the rings, watches, fountain pens and money of the prisoners they have condemned to the gun--the symbol and cause of Red China's efficiency.

FRANCIS ARTHUR New York City

Tryout

Sir:

Anent the Sept. 10 treatment of King David in verse. Why not try this on your victims ?

King David and King Solomon Led merry, merry lives With many, many lady friends And many, many wives.

When old age o'ertook them With many, many qualms King Solomon wrote the Proverbs, King David wrote the Psalms.

RANDOLPH BIAS Williamson, W. Va.

Shootingest

Sir:

While reading the Sept. 24 Pacific edition of TIME, I ran across the following: "U.S. Marines ... wielding flamethrowers and bayonets, aided by planes, Army artillery and tanks . . ."

Sir, what has happened to the famed nth Marine Artillery Regiment? We have four of the shootingest artillery battalions in Korea. Not only can we shoot, but we can hit what we see. The 3rd Battalion has expended over 300,000 rounds of 105-mm. ammo since [it] landed at Inchon on the 23rd of September . . .

(SGT.) HUGH W. DAVIS 1st Marine Division, F.M.F. c/o Postmaster, San Francisco

Hear, Hear!:

As an American who has lived for the past two years in Britain, I should like to add an emphatic "Hear, hear!" to Lord Samuel's tribute to the BBC's Third Programme [TIME, Oct. 8] ... Since we first became acquainted with this remarkable broadcasting achievement, my wife and I have repeatedly, albeit less eloquently, voiced this same thought. Here indeed are the greatest products of the mind and soul of man poured out to a nation, freely available to all ...

It is to be hoped that the directors of the Ford Foundation or other philanthropic institutions in the U.S. (or the members of Congress) may have been impressed by the Third's astonishingly low budget. Two million dollars (or $10 million if it would take that in the U.S.) could be spent in no way more enriching to American fife than to provide us with a year of an American Third. GEORGE B. MUNROE

Office of the General Counsel, HICOG c/o Postmaster, New York City

For Ike

Sir:

Party affiliations should have nothing to do with the choice of Eisenhower for President. What the country needs, and what people of all parties must recognize by now as of basic concern to us all, is an incorruptible administrator. Although Taft, Warren or Senator Douglas might fill the bill, not one of them has sufficient popular appeal to defeat Truman, which is, after all, the primary objective.

In answer to Mr. Raymond H. Smith [TIME Letters, Oct. 15], Eisenhower, as President and Commander in Chief, would have far more influence over "preparedness" in Europe than he has at present. Furthermore, as a man of obvious intelligence and integrity, and owing no favors to any political machine, he could choose the best men in the country, regardless of party, to make up his cabinet . . .

ANN ATWOOD WORCESTER Cleveland

Early Norse

Sir:

Your Oct. 8 article on the Kensington rune stone is interesting. More exploration for Viking evidence should be made on the west coast of Labrador.

Most of the sailings from Greenland to America were made along an established route . . . The purpose of these voyages was to gather wood . . . Since this wood was carried on the current out of Hudson Bay, it is very likely that the Norsemen would seek its origin. This would lead them westward from Greenland through Hudson Strait down the west coast of Labrador, with its thousands of sheltering islands, [into] James Bay . eventually coming to the Albany River. The route up this river is an old one. It has few portages over 25 chains, and the trail takes one ... to the head of Lake Winnipeg, not far from the mouth of the Red River of the North, up which one was able to canoe almost to the vicinity of Kensington, Minn .

PAUL R. FOSSUM Tacoma, Wash.

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