Smothered Cannibals, Etc.

Sir:

Re your article "Where You Coin', But?" [TIME, Oct. 3] about a naked steak and a P.C. and the slang used by our teen-agers . . .

Last week I was in a cafe in the university district here. Two students, a boy and a girl, came in and ordered two cannibals, smothered, to go. . .

H. A. BARDSLEY

Seattle, Wash.

Sir:

Your article is strictly frip, to use one of your own expressions . . .

NANCY Jo HICHT (13 1/2) Rochester, N.Y.

Sir:

I must be an awful "squeegie." I wear hats and have never heard any of the insane language that you claim we teen-agers speak . . .

Please don't print anything more like that. People might get the wrong idea about us. DORIS PERLMAN (14) Albany, N.Y.

Sir:

. . . The new name for a wolf in our Shortridge High School here is M(ust) T(ouch) F(lesh) . . .

ELSIE BOYD (12) Indianapolis, Ind.

Sir:

. . . May I ask just where your writer digs up this deluded data? The poor misguided jerk must either not have been around at all, or he went around once too often. We at Wilson High, Long Beach, pride ourselves on our high percentage of wheels, but we most certainly have no such idiosyncrasies as your article describes

CAROL MCELHINEY (16) Long Beach, Calif.

Long Shot (Cont'd)

Sir:

Much as I sympathize with Mr. Craik Morris' letter in TIME [Oct. 10], I would like to call an important fact to his attention.

Pope Pius is infallible when he speaks officially regarding faith or morals in matters binding on the whole church. And only then. In handing out awards and decorations he is as fallible as any other man.

Speaking as a loyal and devout Catholic, I was as much astonished as anyone else at the decoration of William Randolph Hearst . . . and very happy to know that I am under no obligation whatever to agree with our Pope in this matter . . .

WILMAR H. SHIRAS Oakland, Calif.

Same Day Plus Ten

Sir:

"Cervantes died on April 23, 1616, the same day as William Shakespeare" [TIME, Oct. 3], Not quite so. The same date, but not the same day. The English bard died on April 23 Old Style, or May 3 New Style, the system of reckoning already adopted in Spain.

ARMAND E. SINGER West Virginia University Morgantown, W. Va. P: Reader Singer is right. At the time of Cervantes' death, Protestant England was using the Julian (Old Style) calendar, which was ten days behind Spain's--and the rest of Catholic Europe's--Gregorian (New Style) calendar.--ED.

Muted Flutes

Sir:

Aneurin Bevan may whisper like "muted flutes" [TIME, Oct. 10], but, as usual, his words are more noteworthy for sound than sense.

He states: "I am a miner"--but the tapering, lily-white hand that he so proudly displays in your picture seems to belie the fact that he has ever done a day's manual labor in his life.

H. R. TUCKER Montreal, P.Q.

P: British Minister of Health "Nye" Bevan went down into the pits when he was 13, and was a miner for eight years.--ED.

Two for One

Sir:

. . . Rather than simply winning "a Hollywood Oscar" [TIME, Sept. 19], ex-Sergeant Harold Russell, National Commander of the AMVETS, won two at the same time . . And no one ever deserved them more than did Russ, who is a constant inspiration to all who know him.

FREDRIC MARCH New Milford, Conn.

Pittsburgh P. S.

Sir:

To be sure, there are persuasive illustrations ad nauseum of the effect of the Mellon approach on U.S. economic history [TIME Oct. 3]. However, to show its full extent, one fact should be noted. In 1926 the federal gift tax was repealed and the federal estate tax was reduced significantly (except for John Garner, it would have been repealed). This abolition and reduction occurred primarily through the influence of one man, Andrew Mellon.

GEORGE D. WEBSTER

Special Assistant to the Attorney General Department of Justice Washington, B.C.

Papaya & Poppycock

Sir:

TIME deplores atomic "spine-chilling" but manages to give it a fling . . . Despite your statement that "it may be years before the food products of Bikini are safe" [TIME, Oct. 3], dozens of us have partaken daily of Bikini's coconuts and papaya, with full clearance from both radiochemist and radio-medical officer. For six weeks we swam daily in the "poisoned lagoon" and walked hip-deep by the hour in the "radioactive water." Poppycock ! Over two years ago the scientists reported that a man living for months on twice-A-bombed Bikini would be exposed to radioactivity roughly equivalent to one chest X ray ...

W. A. GORTNER Honolulu, T.H. P: Says the University of Washington's Dr. Lauren Donaldson, director of the AEC-sponsored investigation at Bikini and Eniwetok: "What we have found, up to 1949, is that radioactivity still contaminates Bikini after three years. The quantities of radioactivity are minute, it is true. But we know that the activity is being circulated about the lagoon and is being retained and concentrated in the tissues of fish, animals and plants. We also know that these concentrations can produce radiation of sufficient intensity to form a hazard to health and life."-- ED.

Race in the News

Sir:

As a member of the Negro race, and one who has held professorships in the state colleges of Virginia, West Virginia, Tennessee and Florida, I was intrigued by the analytical article "Double Standard" [TIME, Oct. 3].

It is undeniably true, as the pamphlet Race in the News reveals, that numerous Southern editors still cater to anti-Negro prejudice, thus flagrantly ignoring their responsibilities both for better newspapers and better race relations . . . [However], in addition to such "laudable exceptions" as the Chattanooga Times, I certainly wish to include the Nashville Banner . . . And surely the Greensboro daily News, the Charlotte Observer and the Durham Herald, all published in North Carolina, deserve honorable recognition, as does the Columbia (S.C.) Record ...

CHARLES SATCHELL MORRIS II

Los Angeles, Calif.

Bright Boy

Sir:

Your story on Sir Oliver Franks repeats that myth which has become standard background material when writing up bright boys: "He had raced through most of the weighty philosophical tomes in his father's vast library by the time he was twelve" [TIME, Sept. 26] ...

Let's just say he had read as widely as any precocious twelve-year-old . . .

FRANCIS LYNCH

Los Angeles, Calif.

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