Nicetown's Boy

Sir:

Somebody goofed! As sure as I'm a Dodger fan, the man on your Aug. 8 cover is not baseball's greatest active catcher . . . Yogi Berra is. How could you do such a thing?

ELAINE MAKOWSKY

Brooklyn, N.Y.

Sir:

. . . Campy is the greatest catcher in baseball today, and that includes Yogi Berra . . .

AUDREY ANDERSON

West Hempstead, N.Y.

The segregationists of White America Inc. (and its allied klans) could find deep wisdom in the humble genius of Roy Campanella, who apparently is as facile at the art of living as he is at catching baseballs ... I congratulate you for recognizing once again that citizenship is a matter of service, not pigmentation.

CHARLES OVERHOLT

Little Rock, Ark.

Sir:

. . . We Nicetowners are proud . . .

EMIL SCHURGOT

President

Nicetown Business Men's Association Philadelphia

Sir:

What a beautifully written piece on Roy Campanella . . . My admiration and congratulations . . .

PAUL GALLICO

Masescha, Liechtenstein

Wintle's Way

Sir:

Re your Aug. 8 article on that beloved character, Lieut. Colonel Alfred Daniel Wintle. I was beginning to fear that this world was rid of such glorious individuals. I met Wintle in the Middle East when I was a merchant seaman. He couldn't stand the sight of us drinking warm Canadian beer, said as much, threw the cafe owner over the bar, disappeared and returned with a case of the best Scotch available, plus bottles of soda and ice cubes.

Aloof, regally proud, he best resembles the man beyond good or evil--a great individual. The British Empire was built strong by Wintles . . . May he live long . . .

THEODORE M. ABRAMS

Montreal

Sir:

Bravo for Cavalry Colonel Wintle . . . Here is a man !

ALAN D. HUTCHINSON

Lieutenant, U.S.A.F.

Columbus, Ohio

Sir:

In your account of that nasty (in the English sense) little mess, Alfred Wintle, are you sure that London's Daily Express spoke "admiringly" when it said: "Here is an Englishman"? . . .

JAMES WHARTON

Weems, Va.

P: Sure.--ED.

Sir:

. . . When I knew Wintle in Cairo during 1941, his plan for pruning GHQ by interrogation ("What have you done today to win the war?") had [the] attraction of the unorthodox; and until I am assured to the contrary, I shall always maintain that he smuggled himself on board the ship repatriating Vichy French from Beirut in the character of a piano tuner.

(SiR) LAURENCE GRAFFTEY-SMITH

Villedomer, France Sir:

... I was particularly fascinated by the name of the gin drink which Colonel Wintle enjoyed in Cairo's Shepheard's Hotel. "Suffering Bathwater" sounds like a dandy drink. Can you help me out with the recipe for this concoction ?

WILLIAM C. SNAZEL

Guelph, Ont.

Sir:

I was advised by the bartender at the back bar of Shepheard's that the concoction was popularly called a "Suffering Bastard" and, originally, a "Suffering Bar Steward," so named by its inventor, a usually hung-over attendant there. While the ingredients were secret, it did contain gin, brandy, fresh mint, ginger ale and certain fluids which not only magically cured a hangover, but usually started the patient on his way to a new one.

B. FRANKLIN ESHLEMAN II

Philadelphia

The Philosophers' Stone

Sir:

In your Aug. 15 article on Dr. W. F. Libby . . . you discuss some safety experiments [on the explosive potential of runaway reactors] conducted by Oak Ridge National Laboratory. I believe these are the experiments which were conducted by Argonne National Laboratory in 1953 and 1954 at the Atomic Energy Commission's National Reactor Testing Station in Idaho . . .

L. C. FURNEY

Staff Assistant

Laboratory Director's Office

Argonne National Laboratory Lemont, Ill.

P: TIME erred.--ED.

The Heretic

Sir:

Your Aug. 8 story of the "heresy" trial of George Crist Jr. brings out a basic problem of Protestantism in general. One of the basic Protestant tenets is that everyone is free to interpret the Scriptures as he pleases--which Mr. Crist does--ergo, according to Protestant principles, he is not a heretic. Was it not the boast of the great heretic, Luther, the father of Protestantism that "No man can command my conscience?" Whence, then, comes the right of the Rev. Paul Wagner Roth to plead to Crist, "We all would be most happy if you could make the supreme sacrifice of your intellectual doubts and differences as a bearer of the cross and a follower of Christ"?

(THE REV.) GROVER E. BELL

Pope St. Gregory the Great Church

Overland, Mo.

Sir:

The clergy are quick to remind us that we have been endowed by our Creator with the power of reason, but alas, they forbid us to use it . . . The case of the Rev. George Crist demonstrates that dogmatic religion belongs to the infancy of human reason.

JOHN O. WITHER

Forty Fort, Pa.

Sir:

. . . Pastor Crist must have felt a bit like Luther himself but with the added disillusionment of learning that one's church is a dead and stagnant thing . . .

JOHN R. YOUNG JR.

Staten Island, N.Y.

Sir:

. . . The impression left by your account of my "trial" must be answered if I am to go on living with myself. There is the general and damning impression that here is a brash young jerk (this part of it may be true) flouting authority, obviously out of step with his own group, teaching doctrine clearly in conflict with the doctrine of the group and insisting on his right to do so--daring the group to do something about it. This part is not true.

I have not set out to teach doctrine in conflict with Lutheran doctrine. In the trial I flatly denied most of the charges, e.g., that I deny the Resurrection, teach a non-Lutheran doctrine of baptismal regeneration. I have attempted what every preacher must attempt, to interpret the doctrine, to translate it into today's language and thought forms. That I have often misfired and goofed there is not the slightest doubt . . .

There is the impression that the "trial" was not really a trial at all, but an attempt on the part of the "committee" to "reconcile its views with Pastor Crist's." This is false. It was a trial! The blase assumption that here was a bunch of nice guys trying desperately to win over a prodigal son makes me sick! . . .

"Life in Christ" is the content of faith--not intellectual assent to a list of propositional truths but the total involvement of my life in creative freedom, in that love which is incarnate in Christ. Regarding the Biblical accounts: I have not attempted a so-called naturalistic explanation. I have merely asserted what seems a normal and natural assumption, that the accounts as such are relative, historical, open to investigation and therefore subject to a variety of interpretations and opinions. Luther recognized this. Those who have raised these issues have insisted on my holding their opinions, not on the level of faith and religious significance, but on the level of the text itself, that is, on the level of the historically relative. To ask for "reconciliation" here is to ask for intellectual and spiritual suicide.

GEORGE P. CRIST JR.

Laona, Wis.

The Woman in the House (Contd.)

Sir:

Re Editor Fischer's vicious diatribe against American wives [Aug. 8]: there are many thousands of working wives, complete with home, husband, children, in-laws, their assorted social and economic problems, etc., against the precious females of Fischer's imagination. The lives of these working amazons do not look like the picture he paints. Sure, she has a place to sleep and clothes to wear and food to eat, even a car of doubtful vintage to battle the rush hour traffic twice a day . . . But brother, she's earned them by the efforts of her own unpolished finger tips. Yeh, we're becoming a matriarchy, but little does this blind infant, Fischer, know what kind it is ...

MRS. A. K. Fietz

Downey, Calif.

Sir:

... If men are docile and "eunuchoid," it is their own fault. If a wife makes any sort of request that involves money when the husband retires to his lair to rest from the day's hunting, it is because it is the only time she sees him long enough to get any discussion on the matter. Responsibility in marriage goes further than merely providing a paycheck and material comforts. It is in that notion that the true "cultural poverty" of the husband lies. Men had better stop treating their wives like the housemaids their mothers once had and treat them like the companions they would like to be ...

MRS. S. J. PHILLIPS

Swarthmore, Pa.

Sir:

. . . My husband is a Southern gentleman and he believes in slave labor--mine . . . but I simply can't imagine the sort of household Mr. Fischer is describing, since I do the painting, the wallpapering, the sewing, cooking, dishwashing and other such activities around here. I am genuinely glad to see Pappy come home at 5:30. Not to nag at him, either, because I think he is wonderful .

DOROTHY M. ALEXANDER

Denver

Brides in Nigeria

Sir:

Re your Aug. 8 article, "Nigeria: Wives for Sale Cheap," when you referred to Eastern Nigeria's marriage institution as "where men buy their wives and thereafter own them": I come from this part of Africa, and my beloved mother is not my father's property, or anybody's property, for that matter. Men in Nigeria do not own their wives, neither do they buy them as your reporter would buy his typewriter. It is true that marriage in Eastern Nigeria requires more obligatory spending than, say, in your country. This amount is used for purposes other than hoarding or for personal spending by the bride's father--such as buying cooking utensils, clothes, sewing machines, jewelry, and such things needed for the home and the bride . . .

UDUAROH OKEKE

Brooklyn

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