Sheltering Arms
Sir:
Kudos to Charles Davis from Austin for his stand on arming fallout shelters to keep the neighbors out [Aug. 18]. It is indeed wonderful to see that there are still some Americans around who are able to think tor themselves without aid from the Federal Government. Guns are man's best friend.
CECIL R. COALE JR.
Austin, Texas
Sir:
Shelter Owner Davis for "Neighbor of the Year!"
PETE MARVIN
Los Angeles
Sir:
I have often pondered the advisability of a bomb shelter, wondering whether survival may not be the most horrible choice. If survival depends upon living with such monsters, Mr. Davis need not worry. I, for one, would not knock on his door.
MARJORIE HOFFMAN
Detroit
Sir:
Our apartment has no provision for a fall out shelter, and my wife and I have resigned ourselves to extinction in the event of nuclear war. But we find compensation in the knowledge that Charles Davis and his family will survive. They are a fine-looking tribe.
BILL FRANCIS
Pasadena, Calif.
Sir:
Mr. Davis and his family are by all means the kind of Americans we want to keep alive. It's the Russian lack of Christian charity that can possibly start a third war, and people like the Davis family, with their store of machine guns and invulnerable doors, who will be preserved to throw empty tin cans and begin a fourth.
GEORGE E. TITTLE
Philadelphia
Sir:
I was surprised that in all their speaking about fallout shelters and christian ethics, not one of the ministers drew an analogy from the parable of the ten virgins (Matthew 25: 1-13). Five were wise and five were foolish. The wise virgins had oil for their lamps and went in to the marriage, while the foolish virgins who had no oil were shut out. The wise virgins did not share their oil nor did the bridegroom allow the door to be opened to them.
Now, would these ministers have had the wise virgins give up their oil and their places with the bridegroom to the foolish ones? Personally, I'm going to let in at least enough people for a table of bridge. Can you imagine two weeks underground with nothing to do but listen to Conelrad?
MRS. THOMAS D. AVINGER
Bellaire, Texas
Sir:
I was highly distressed at the lack of moral imagination reflected in the views ot the spiritual leaders quoted. They contain not a single transcendent idea which could inspire any noble possibilities in man
RICHARD L. SHRINER, M.D. South Bend, Ind.
Sir:
Those who think that it is Christian philosophy to give up one's own space in the fallout shelter for a neighbor should read the story of Noah in the Bible. The Lord told Noah to warn the people of the coming flood and they laughed at him. He also gave Noah the exact dimensions of the ark, and only the animals and Noah's family were to occupy it.
NANCY M. LOUX
Claymont, Del.
Uncertain Inheritance
Sir:
I loathe the self-pity of a generation "born in one war" and "destined to die in another" Perhaps Lynn Kearney [LETTERS, Aug. 11] and the rest of us will die sooner than we would like to.
Eventually, we shall all die, and what matters is less when that day will come than what we have done with the time allotted us.
HANS ROSENHAUPT
National Director
Woodrow Wilson National Fellowship
Foundation Princeton, NJ.
Sir:
I am 31 years old, and may I say how much I dislike sniveling children. Born in a bitter Depression, reared in a fearsome war in which friends and relatives died, I am destined apparently to leave my Christian faith and my beloved Western traditions in the trembling hands of an effete generation. It is not a threat that has been handed down to us, but a trust and a debt owed by us to those who did not resent giving up their own glorious futures. If die we must let us choose our manner of dying: with dignity and purpose, in company with brave men who have gone before.
MRS. ROBERT H. BOLLING
Hopkins, Minn.
Upright
Sir:
In response to TIME'S Aug. 18 issue pinning a "newest oddity" or "oddest newity dunce cap on me for my long protest of Oilman Lawrence O'Connor's nomination to the Federal Power Commission and other aberrations from the senatorial norm, two corrections:
1) You report that early in my service in the Senate I "advocated new appropriations that would have added an estimated $23 billion annually to the federal budget.
I have flatly denied this charge ever since it was first made in the most partisan kind of context, a speech by Congressman John Byrnes to the Republican State Convention in Milwaukee, when the 1958 campaign was waxing hot. . . .
I have documented my denial in detail by reference to the Budget Bureau, Library of Congress, and Senate committee estimates of the cost of each bill I introduced in 1958. I have shown that my bills in aggregate in that year would have reduced federal spending by several hundred millions.
2) TIME'S report to the contrary notwithstanding, I never have stood on my head, physically that is.
WILLIAM PROXMIRE
Senator
Washington
P:Keep your feet on the ground.--ED.
Bleats & Batteries
Sir:
A confessed bleatnik [Aug. 11], I was quite amused at Professor Klassen's terming the transistor radio an "appeal to bodily comfort which is related to the desire to go back to the womb, the mother and the breast." Surely he jests!
I prefer to explain the personal portables' popularity in the same way Harry Golden explains the popularity of Muzak: "Americans are afraid of silence."
DONALD J. BOYAJIAN
Fresno, Calif.
Sir: The bleatniks are a strange and varied lot. Seen in San Francisco, in the vicinity ot Union Square: a blind beggar with Seeing-Eye dog, with extended hand holding tin cup, and with his transistor radio "bleating" away. Could he have been begging for new batteries?
E. RHODA GREENBERG
San Francisco
Last to Leave
Sir: Commenting on the "tradition" that a captain goes down with his ship [RELIGION Aug 11], L'Osservatore Romano is quoted as condemning the practice as "morally illicit" and equivalent to suicide. I am afraid L'Osservatore is allowing itself to over-romanticize a so-called tradition that (in so far as it ever existed) really had a much more prosaic foundation.
If the captain is still on the bridge when the ship sinks, it means the ship was still in the owners' possession; the underwriters therefore have little option but to pay up in full. But if the captain has left the ship before she sinks, the ship is technically abandoned; a shrewd underwriter might well refuse to pay full coverage, thus causing loss to the shipowners.
There is nothing that shipowners dislike more than suffering a loss. Captains are expected to remain until all hope of saving the ship is gone, and then to be the last to leave; but actually going down with the ship is not insisted upon.
T. Lacy
San Jose, Costa Rica
Calorie Count
Sir:
The article on the 87th annual convention of the WCTU prompts two comments:
1) Eighty-seven years have not taught these ladies rudimentary English usage; please see Webster for the difference between temperance and abstinence.
2) The revealing photograph hints that the women might busy themselves with another phase of "temperance" work. Remember that the addition of excess poundage due to high caloric intake is usually the result of the commission of at least one of the mortal sins in the Christian list; namely, gluttony.
I'll take Paul's advice to Timothy in his first letter to his young pupil (1 Timothy 5:23).
THE REV. HERBERT BARSALE
Chittenango, N.Y.
P:Says Paul: "Drink no longer water, but use a little wine for thy stomach's sake and hine often infirmities."--ED.
Sir:
Enjoyed your coverage of the 87th WCTU convention [Aug. 18]. How would you pronounce the name of their president, Mrs. Fred J. Tooze? Could it possibly rhyme with booze ?
PAUL C. DAHM Springfield, Ill.
P:Yes-- ED.
Accounting
Sir:
In the MEDICINE section [Aug. 11] you have implied that I hold the absurd belief that complete financial reporting by a health or welfare agency destroys a basic right of the people.
The National Foundation, ever since it was founded in 1938, has annually issued complete and detailed reports covering all its operations--including financial. Moreover, it has given full cooperation and financial assistance to the study of uniform accounting procedures, which was instituted by the National Health Council long before the Rockefeller Committee was formed. My criticism of the Rockefeller report was that it undermined the right of voluntary association by suggesting that the American people need a "Big Brother" in the form of a watchdog commission. I resent, as do our millions of volunteers, implications that we have not served our stewardship well.
BASIL O'CONNOR
President
The National Foundation
New York City
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