Holmes Revisited
Sir:
Few things in your magazine have been more sane than the very accurate appraisal you give [Sept. 21] of the role of the late Justice Holmes as an opponent of order. The ridiculous pedestal on which modern skeptics and relativists...have put the master of "humbug" deserves to be toppled...
WILLIAM L. MAIER
Webster, N.Y.
Sir:
Justice Oliver Wendell Holmes will be honored for his opinions long after the editors of TIME stop foisting their opinions upon their readers.
MORRIS FRANKEL
Washington, D.C.
Sir:
...Justice Holmes actually believed and practiced what all judges of the Court have always professed, namely, that the Supreme Court is not a superlegislature, passing on the policy or wisdom of legislation, state or federal, but only on its conformity with the Constitution. The cause of liberty, of that social morality which we call justice, had his firm and unwavering support. He stood for freedom of thought and speech even though the freedom sought to be maintained was that of the poor and the obscure . . . All this is good American doctrine . . .
WALTER L. NOSSAMAN
Los Angeles
Sir:
I protest when you say: "Every year the free world sees more clearly that the appeal of Communism is not so much to the belly as to man's appetite for order--an end to contradiction and chaos." You are officiating at the burial service of Democracy. For contradiction and chaos are the essence of Democracy. When they die, Democracy dies with them; the baby is thrown out with the bath water. Unity, yes; uniformity, no...Let's keep our contradiction and chaos, even at the cost of consistency if necessary...I would rather go to hell with the banner of contradiction and chaos before me than be frog-marched into heaven under the mean whip of consistency. Because then, at least, I would go to hell a free man.
IRIS HARVEY
Shirley Hill
Brailsford
Derbyshire, England
Sir:
Congratulations on your excellent article, "A Clearer Voice?"...How much farther must American jurisprudence travel on a "restricted railroad ticket" before the impact of the tragically fallacious attempt to separate law from morality is fully understood?
GEORGE G. LORINCZI
Milwaukee
Atomic Boss
Sir:
...I sincerely believe we are all extremely fortunate to have such a man as the boss of our atomic weapons program [Sept. 21] ... Our so-called security and civil defense systems...are still "a big joke" We must be "educated" to realize we're on the verge of complete destruction, the atomic clock is running out of time, and it's now or never!...My personal recommendation is that we...arm to the teeth with superbombs and attack the Russians first...
VAN B. RUSSELL JR.
Civilian Personnel Division
Air Force Flight Test Center
Edwards Air Force Base
Edwards, Calif.
Sir:
...You make repeated mention of the "vague hopes" and the "moral confusion" of Mr. Lilienthal, Dr. Oppenheimer, and other Americans who share their views regarding the use of the thermonuclear bomb. By "vague hopes" you appear to mean the hope that another war can be avoided, and by "moral confusion" the belief that it is wrong to use such destructive power as the bomb affords.
The hope is not at all vague, and the morality not at all confused. The necessity that may some day force us to use the bomb will not make it right, and until war is actually upon us we shall surely be wrong in not pursuing wholeheartedly every decent means to its avoidance . . .
W. A. LANE
Greensboro, N.C.
Sir:
. . . Your article states that the radioactive dust scooped up by U.S. bombers was floating westward over the Pacific from Siberia. This may come as somewhat of a shock to you, but confidentially, the Pacific Ocean lies east of Siberia, not west.
BENJAMIN W. DAVIS.
Captain, U.S.A.F.
East Lansing, Mich.
Episcopalian Dignity
Sir:
Re President Eisenhower's remark that Episcopalians "are too darn dignified" [Sept. 21 ]: as a "too darn dignified" Episcopalian who voted for Mr. Eisenhower with the hope that he would, among other things, restore some semblance of dignity to the presidential office, I was sorely disappointed to learn that he would speak disparagingly of any denomination.
JOAN HARMANSON
Houston
Sir: A nondenominational Christian finds Mr. Eisenhower's quoted remarks a curious example of presidential manners...
NINA BURR
Elizabethton, Tenn.
Sir:
Being an Episcopalian, I would like to comment on the President's remark, but I'm "too darn dignified" to do it.
W. S. CHRISTIE
Indianapolis
Controversial Conversationalist
Sir:
Your review of Mr. Hutchins' Great Conversation [Sept. 21] points up the end of an era. Adler and Hutchins were the great reactionaries of philosophy at a time when it had reached a low ebb. Flying against the strong winds of experimentalism, their banner of Platonism called the unbeliever to return to the ancient modes of thought. Standing almost alone at times, they did us and the country a very real service.
Now, however, since most of our modern philosophers have turned from a headlong flight into change for the sake of change, the leadership of Adler and Hutchins seems puny indeed. It is now universally recognized that one must know what Plato said, but one must also know how much of it is the purest kind of tommy rot...
CLAUDE W. FAWCETT
San Mateo, Calif.
Sir:
I wonder if anyone is more profoundly confused, in this century of profound confusion, than Dr. Robert Maynard Hutchins is concerning the goals and functions of education?
What Dr. Hutchins is really advocating...is a return to educational escapism, wherein education becomes an end in itself, is totally severed from all worldly connections and relationships...
"The doctrine of adaptation," complains Dr. Hutchins, "has won the day." Which breed or variety of adaptation?...Suffering one's problems is a form of human adaptation...Solving one's problems is an adaptative process also...We are living in a brighter, better age--an age when most, if not all, of our problems have fairly obvious solutions. We have entered the era of adaptation by problem-solving; and have largely abandoned the ancient age of adaptation through problem-suffering.
EARL C. FRENCH
Nogales, Ariz.
Sir:
Dr. Hutchins is not only living in an ivory tower, he has sealed himself in with ivory bricks, using ivory mortar, until he is completely isolated from the world...
R. THOMAS MYERS
Golden, Colo.
The Prisoner's Lot
Sir:
My heart goes out to anyone who has suffered the bedevilment of Communist imprisonment. But to Major General William F. Dean [Sept. 14], and the hundreds of officers and G.I.s who had the faith and hope in God and their country and the personal courage to defy the Communists, many even unto death, all glory and honor! Compared to them, William Oatis, "convinced that my only hope lay in playing their game" [Sept. 21], makes a poor showing.
VIRGINIA R. STUART
Providence
Trigued or Tressed?
Sir: Garding Lost Positives [Sept. 21], Cord's lightful proach to pressing English vides a tremely citing and dividually new cept. Am trigued with his nitiative. Trust my terpretation of cerpts in your story is cise.
JOHN W. BENNETT
Shelton, Wash.
Sir:
Re David McCord's Lost Positive Restoration--I'm afraid most of us are too rudite to get that stuff!
G. M. KINGMAN
Oxnard, Calif.
Sir:
David McCord's hobby is esting and triguing. However, I'm clined to think such words as fulgent, prentice, jangled and pression are Bare Roots rather than Lost Positives.
D. A. HUBER
Drexel Hill, Pa.
Sir:
Dear me, how clever of Mr. McCord to turn out such "Lost" Positives as licit, iterate, fulgent and fangled ... All of them are in my Webster, and most of them not uncommon in literate circles. [Let] Harvard-man McCord...heed this monition.
JACK L. HOFFMAN
New York City
Sir: ...I am turbed, tressed, and gruntled.
RICHARD T. WEIDNER
Bound Brook, N.J.
Sir: ...I know a young lady who's strung--
A little more un than high.
She often seems daunted
In the face of the wonted,
But her manners are ruly and her hats are set wry.
MRS. R. D. HARRITY
Indianapolis
Visions & Revisions
Sir:
Will you allow me to correct some serious misunderstandings that, mostly through my own fault, found their way into your review of my book, The Renaissance [Sept. 28]? When in 1927 I wrote Transition, I thought of it as a novel, called it so, and named the central character John Lemaire. While I was in Greece the book was mistaken as an autobiography, and I returned too late to correct the error. Later I consented to have it called "a mental autobiography," which it is; but there were some incidents in the story that never happened to me physically, like the explosion of the Anarchist bomb...The Anarchists looked down upon me for being only a Socialist. The Socialists in their turn excommunicated me...
I hailed the Russian Revolution in 1917 with an enthusiasm for which I offer no apology. After visiting Russia in 1932, I wrote a series of articles (published in book form as The Tragedy of Russia) which described the Soviet system as a tragic betrayal of the ideals of our youth. I have been a pet peeve of the Communists ever since.
As to the transient atheism of "John Lemaire," you will find that the term hardly applies to [my] views...
The nonsense ascribed to me--that "most men ought to die at 35"--was concocted by a young reporter...who...took a line from one page of the Mansions, which quoted Havelock Ellis as saying that men reach their (physical) zenith at 32, combined it with a whimsical quotation, several hundred pages later in the same book, to the effect that "men should die at their zenith," and then foisted upon me his brilliant synthesis...
It is a pity that you reviewed rather my immature Transition of 1927--damagingly misconceived--than my Renaissance of 1953; against which disappointment I can only appeal from TIME to time.
WILL DURANT
Los Angeles
Calling All Art Lovers
Sir:
Princes from toads may appear, cows may jump over the moon, and Texans may decide that the Lone Star State is not the biggest and bestest after all--report any of these things in your excellent publication and I'll not hesitate to believe. But when you guys term the comic strip Dick Tracy a form of "art" [Sept. 21], then you've gone too far. Your statement is not only the most; it's too much.
BILL B. FRYDAY
Norman, Okla.
Wrong Vintage
Sir:
The Education article entitled "Oceans of Piffle" [Sept. 7] has a quotation [from Alert Lynd's Quackery in the Public Schools] credited to the principal of a Champaign, Ill. junior high school. Since I have been the only principal of a junior high school in Champaign for 19 years, the reference must be to me. The quotation is as follows: "We shall some day accept the thought that it is just as illogical to assume that every boy must be able to read as it is that each one must be able to perform on a violin, that it is no more reasonable to require that each girl shall spell well than it is that each one shall bake a good cherry pie." I have never made this statement or any statement similar to it. Such a reference may be damaging to a teacher or school administrator...
A. L. THOMASSON
Principal
Champaign, Ill.
P: The heady statement came from a different vintage Champaign, was made by A. H. Lauchner, junior high principal in Urbana, Champaign County, Ill. --ED.
Science & Religion Sir:
Reader M. Valeriote [Sept. 21] sounds like a parochial school graduate who lost his faith in college when he was introduced to calipers and test tubes. If he had ever taken the trouble to consult even a third-rate manual in theology above the catechism level, he would have found that the doctrine that God transcends all human experience and imagination is a commonplace in Roman Catholic thought.
FRANK PATRICK
Durham, N.C.
Sir:
...May we call M. Valeriote's attention to the fact that such inquiring minds as Augustine, Aquinas, Pasteur, Newman and Maritain, although perhaps inferior to M. Valeriote, never found anything intellectually or scientifically cramping in the Catholic "formulae" whose "restrictions" it took M. Valeriote five years "to dislodge..."
PAUL HUNTER
Reserve, N.S., Canada
This file is automatically generated by a robot program, so reader's discretion is required.