Deep Freeze

Sir:

I have just finished reading "The Deep Freeze Set" [TIME, Aug. 22].

I wonder how our forefathers would have reacted to such philandering of the trust placed in their public servants . . .?

LEONARD A. MAGNUSON

Jamestown, N.Y.

Sir:

There is no doubt that Major General Vaughan has "used the White House as a means of playing low-grade county-courthouse politics," but the responsibility for this . . . rests not with Vaughan but with his boss, who, incidentally, is no innocent babe in the political woods . . .

RICHARD E. CROCKFORD Portland, Me.

Sir:

The "five-percenters" deserve all the condemnation that is being heaped upon them. But so far I have seen no criticism of the men who paid the bribes. Are they not also to blame? Is it not indicative of the greed and grab which pervades much of our American business?

DANIEL H. FLEET Mauston, Wis.

End of the Line

Sir:

Your Aug. 22 article on Jose Ortega y Gasset's description of the evolution of art was read with interest. [But] I am afraid you adopt too much of a defeatist attitude in your last sentence: "It looked as if modern art must be the end of the line."

Many others will agree, I'm sure, with the idea that as long as the evolution progresses from the solid body to the space between the eye and the object, and from there to the back of the mind, the next step after modern art will be taken by a man with a hole in his head.

W. T. BOOTH Drexel Hill, Pa.

No Bull

Sir:

. . . TIME [Aug. 22] calls St. James Philosophers Barbee a "prize bull." Last I heard, she was still a cow. Quoting your article, "she's a lady and should be treated as such" . . .

DON E. VOELKER

Nevada, Iowa

P: TIME made a prize bull.--ED.

Criminal Negligence

Sir:

The conviction of the cabbie who ran down and killed Margaret Mitchell [TIME, Aug. 22] will not bring her back, or save the lives of others.

The indictment and conviction, on charges of criminal negligence, of the departmental morons who permitted this character to drive after 24 violations is more in order.

TEMPLE MURPHY

San Francisco, Calif.

Fabre's World

Sir:

With reference to your article on Jean Henri Fabre and his world of insects [TIME, Aug. 22], one of the most interesting facts about the work of the great entomologist is that he constantly affirmed and reaffirmed that the insect world contained the living, moving proof that the whole idea of evolution was false, and the whole Darwinian concept founded on a series of misreadings of nature.

His argument was that ... no insect which passes through the larva, nymph and imago cycle of life has ever . . . been able to pass on any experience to its progeny. All that such insects know is known absolutely perfectly by an instinct which must be the result of creation.

The scarab of Egypt (Atauchus sacer), for example, Fabre discovered, possesses the instinctive gift of making a perfect sphere of dung for its food and a perfect pear for its larva, even as the bee is born with the gift of making a hexagonal prism.

One of the most amazing stories of innate instinct that could never have come by any process of evolution concerns Fabre's experiments with the mason bee, experiments suggested to Fabre by Darwin and made after the latter's death. The mason bee (Chalicodoma pyrenaica) builds a house of cement about as big as a thimble, fills it with honey, lays its larva, covers it over and then dies. Fabre took such houses that were built an inch apart and interchanged them, coloring with different colors each house and its bee for identification purposes. He then took the bees ... to a point three kilometers from home . . . When they were released at a predetermined hour, a watcher clocked them back in ten minutes. Though in one case the house was begun and in the other finished and stored with honey, the bees returned, not to their own work, but to the exact spot on which their house had been . . .

Victor Hugo may have called Fabre the "Homer of the Insects," but Fabre was not so much a Homer as a St. Paul. The latter dug into the Old Testament to base his conclusions on revelation. Fabre . . . drew from the insect world conclusions which have not only never been explained but which have been ignored. To him there was revelation in nature . .

DONALD GREY BARNHOUSE

Philadelphia, Pa.

Suicide

Sir:

TIME has occasionally compared radio & TV, and perhaps intimated that TV is replacing or killing radio.

Nothing is killing radio. It is simply committing suicide. Seventy-five percent of the stuff broadcast is junk . . . Those who want music are buying phonograph records . . .

W. P. ABBOTT Grand Marais, Minn.

Jig Time

Sir:

I was very interested to read that General Bradley's men "delivered the final knockout to the Nazi's Afrika Korps in three weeks, knifed through Sicily in jig time and had the Germans reeling out of France in less than a month" [TIME, Aug. 22],

Well, well, well, it just shows you what misapprehensions people can labor under. I (and several million others) imagined that General Montgomery, the British Army and Air Force (not to mention the Polish and French) had quite a bit to do with knocking out the Afrika Korps, and clearing the Germans out of France and Sicily . . .

M. J. HUTTON London, England

P: Of course the earlier Allied effort set the stage for the knockout.--ED.

Add Screen Credits

Sir:

In its Aug. 15 review of Madame Bovary, TIME has a good word for the stars, producer and director. But the guy who, along with Gustave Flaubert, gave all these people, including TIME'S astute reviewer, something to shine at--Screenwriter Robert Ardrey, was referred to only as "the Hollywood version."

Surely, it is at least as much to the credit of Writer Ardrey as Producer Berman and Director Minelli that the picture "stoutly refused to spice up the sin or gloss over the grimness of Emma's life . . ." If writers were not such forgotten men in Hollywood [you might have] a few more good pictures . . . to list as Current & Choice . . .

SPAIN SIRE

Fortuna, Calif.

P: With all due credit to Screenwriter Ardrey, TIME considers Reader Sire's premise more interesting than realistic.--ED.

Pools of Friendship

Sir:

As an American living abroad, I read with great interest . . . the suggestions of Senator H. Alexander Smith that Finland utilize future war debt payments for exchange scholarships for students and technicians [TIME, Aug. 1].

I think it would be a splendid gesture to suggest to the member nations signing the North Atlantic Treaty that they be allowed to liquidate their war debts in similar fashion. These funds could thus become great pools of mutual friendship and good will, helping the generation about to cope with world problems to work harmoniously and understandingly together . . .

(MRS.) C. WARREN-BOULTON

Aargau, Switzerland

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