What Went On at Gibeon?

Sir: I was quite surprised at the singularly biased stand you, as the guiding hand of a publication that is representative of a theoretically enlightened age, took on the question of the validity of Dr. Immanuel Velikovsky's as yet unpublished volume entitled Worlds in Collision [TIME, March 13].

Without taking sides on a highly debatable matter, it seems to me that the statements [made by scientists]--"Velikovsky appears to be bypassing all of the sound, scientific observations of a multitude of geologists," and "There is nothing we as historians can do about Dr. Velikovsky's work other than smile and go about our business"--are a direct retrogression to the days when Copernicus was challenged by fellow scientists when he advocated the fact that the earth revolves around the sun, rather than vice versa . . .

GEORGE R. LUDWIG University of Colorado Boulder, Colo.

Sir: . . . Your [Velikovsky] article will be more effective in counteracting the effect of the Harper's, Collier's and Reader's Digest articles than any other single thing that could have been done. TIME may congratulate itself on having performed a real public service.

ARTHUR KOHLENBERG Cambridge, Mass.

Sir: The preposterous Dr. Velikovsky . . . says he needs "more learning." What he really needs is a pinch of Attic salt. The famous passage about the sun standing still for Joshua needs no interplanetary cataclysm to explain it. It carries its explanation right in the text . . . The chronicler, writing ancient history, comes upon the Book of Jashar and quotes from it the couplet:

0 sun, stop at Gibeon,

And thou, moon, at the valley of Ajalon

--a fine poetic hyperbole expressing Joshua's eagerness in the pursuit of the Amorites. The prosaic writer then adds: "So the sun came to stop, and the moon stood still, until the nation took vengeance on their foes." [It] is as if a British chronicler, writing about King Henry V, came upon Shakespeare's Henry VI and Bedford's outcry: Hung be the heavens with black! and added, in his prose, "The heavens were hung with black when Henry died." Or, as if a dull reader quoted: Hail to thee, blithe Spirit! Bird thou never wert, and commented: "Shelley says the skylark never was a bird."

JOHN S. NOLLEN Grinnell, Iowa

Sir: . . . Three hundred years ago Dr. Velikovsky would have made a pretty effective set piece at some ecclesiastical auto-da-fe. Now, poor devil, he's going to be a popular success, just another of that long line of scientific bestsellers cashing in on the current obsession: Who am I? How did I get here? Whodunit? Where do we go from here?

PETER HILTON Partridge Green, Sussex, England

Between the Bean-Rows

Sir: Well, bully for Drs. [Duncan] Reid and [Mandel] Cohen for injecting a little common sense into all this "natural childbirth" farrago [TIME, March 13]. Britain's Dr. Grantly Dick Read and his cohorts have got women feeling that they're hopeless neurotics if they don't have their baby between the bean-rows and get back to the harvest in 15 minutes.

Whoever started the notion that because a thing is natural, it's necessarily painless . . . When D-day arrives this May for my next baby, I'll be glad of a little anesthesia after I've come to the end of my rope with Read's "breathing and relaxing" . . .

(MRS.) BARBARA BALFOUR New York City

Saints & Sewers

Sir: I was not a little shocked and grieved to read in your usually so sophisticated pages the reference to the "neurotic verses" of Arthur Rimbaud, "who went looking for the secrets of life in its sewers, via drugs and debauchery" [TIME, March 13].

Rimbaud . . . did not only start fastidious saints like Paul Claudel upon their spiritual career, but is himself something of a patron saint of the significant modern poetry in all countries. If such a world-shaking record deserves nothing better than a sewer simile, one cannot help preferring the sewer to the sterilized Olympus which inspired your unneurotic and un-debauched literary standard in the present case.

RICHARD HERTZ Claremont, Calif.

P: TIME was much too highhanded. On second sniff, Poet Rimbaud gives off a perverse, poetic and powerfully significant odor.--ED.

Broad-Gauge Brass

Sir: "Your article on Admiral Sherman [TIME, March 13] was a typically fine TIME journalistic achievement and an excellent coverage of a most deserving subject. However . . . I take exception to your remark that West Point [seems to] produce more "broad-gauge" minds than does the Naval Academy.

Though I have the deepest respect for "Pointers," I feel that a more thorough study of the situation will reveal that the nature of Army missions, as compared to Navy missions, and circumstances in which an army officer frequently finds himself, as compared to naval officers ... are the real explanation of why there are more Eisenhowers, Clays and MacArthurs than there are Shermans . . .

Army officers are in a position where they and their work are much in the public eye, while the Navy is out of sight over the horizon.

R. J. LAUER Lieutenant (jg), U.S.N. Norfolk, Va.

Indecent?

Sir: Your article on [Hollywood Censor] Joseph Breen's proposed cuts of The Bicycle Thief [TIME, March 13] disgusted me ... Such foolish and careless censorship of movies, one of our most important mediums of information, is dangerous . . .

FRANK G. STERN Kew Gardens, N.Y.

Sir: . . . Mr. Breen is overlooking the place where his censorship could be most effective, the ordinary Hollywood film . . .

There is far more indecency in the false idea of life being created in the movies than there is in the fact that a little boy couldn't wait to get to the bathroom--or that he happened to be from a people who do not know about the niceties of plumbing . . .

FREDA HALWE Port Arthur, Texas

Sir: . . . Would [Censor Breen] advocate that portions be cut out from the canvases of Leonardo da Vinci, Michelangelo, Titian or El Greco because they depict certain parts of human anatomy? . . .

DICK GROGAN Los Angeles, Calif.

Rough Stuff

Sir: Great public interest has been aroused by the recent announcement of the "sandpaper treatment" for facial defects such as acne scars [TIME, March 13]. Although this technique would appear on the surface to be a harmless procedure, it is our opinion that the public should be warned against some very untoward effects which can result if this treatment is not done by the most highly qualified surgeons aware of the hazards.

If the destruction of the skin surface by sandpaper abrasion is carried too deeply, the regenerative tissue will be destroyed and primary healing will be prevented. This will result in unsightly scars which may be more deforming than the original defect . . .

The effectiveness of [the] treatment has, unfortunately, been highly exaggerated. It is not successful in all cases, even when the prognosis appears to be favorable . . .

ROBERT H. IVY, M.D. Professor of Plastic Surgery University of Pennsylvania

PRESTON C. IVERSON, M.D. Plastic Surgeon Pennsylvania Hospital, and Memorial Hospital, N.Y. Philadelphia, Pa.

P: Reader Iverson should know; he suggested the technique.--ED.

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