Using the Brain
"Help!"
Sir:
So we'll cut taxes by $13 billion and make up for it by increasing our spending to $99 billion or more [TIME, Jan. 25] !
Alice in Wonderland and Jack in Washington have a lot in common.
W. M. TOWLE
Shell Beach, Calif.
Sir:
Re your article on the budget and "That Four-Letter Word": the philosophy of the American taxpayer today could well be capsuled: "Help!"
JOHN A. RICHMOND
L. D. MILLIGAN JR.
Cleveland Heights, Ohio
Sir:
Why get so upset over the budget deficit? People have been upset about this since World War II, and we are still the greatest nation in the world. All we have to keep in mind is a basic economic fact: the principal need never be paid back, just the interest. We pass on the national debt to our children, who pay their share of the interest when due, and they in turn pass the debt to their children, etc. Actually, every generation can "borrow" from the future, each in its turn, until the end of the world, and then it will not matter.
JOHN McCORMICK
Newburgh, N.Y.
Sir:
1 1/2 Jack cuts my taxes in spring '63,
And Congress will pay my expensive M.D.,
Why should I ask, "What can I do for patrie?"'
Just look what my country is doing for me!
(MRS.) BETTY T. SHUPE
Rabat, Morocco
From Judoism to Japanesque
Sir:
We are delighted with the well-deserved recognition you have conferred on Minoru Yamasaki [Jan. 18], one of the greatest architects of our age. We are particularly pleased that we were "ahead of time" when we asked Yama in 1959 to design the "gracefully vaulted synagogue" you refer to.
I am sorry that you did not take the occasion to reproduce the artist's concept; a building that Yama has pointed out to us is not only his most beautiful in design, but most deeply philosophic in feeling. To illustrate the latter point, I can only say that we have a great respect for the humanism in architecture, which is Yama's keynote. When he was awarded the commission to do our temple, he spent considerable time not only in researching the precepts of Reform Judaism, but in attending our services. So deeply did he become involved that (recognizing his ancestry) I accused him (facetiously) of starting a new cult, "Judoism."
JEROME H. STONE
President
North Shore Congregation Israel
Glencoe, Ill.
P: For Architect Yamasaki's concept of the temple, see cut.--ED.
Sir:
Minoru Yamasaki is making an important contribution, but before we mention him in the same breath as Le Corbusier we should take a look at the Harvard campus.
The new building by Corbusier is a work of clear genius. He has disobeyed all the "rules," convoluting and twirling the plastic concrete with an insolent skill, and even using that antediluvian material glass block with flair.
Yama's new building projected for Harvard is somewhat less successful--it seems contrived, even "Japanesque."
One cannot help feeling sorry that the brilliant designer, who in the St. Louis airport has produced one of the major buildings in the U.S., has deteriorated to the pseudo-oriental trappings of the glass boxes he affects to despise. Perhaps he should never have made that trip to Japan.
DESMOND MUIRHEAD
Phoenix, Ariz.
The Burdick-Wheeler Fiction
Sir:
TIME'S Jan. 18 attack on our novel Fail-Safe was not only chillingly inaccurate, but its suggestion that our discussion of modern weaponry is "cruel" and "plays on the deepest fears of humanity" is a shocking insult to the considerable intelligence and sturdy nerves of the American public.
We start and end Fail-Safe with the thesis that war by accident is possible--terrifyingly possible--an assumption already granted by SAC, President Kennedy, Secretary of Defense McNamara, Premier Khrushchev, and half a dozen Nobel prizewinning scientists. TIME, on the other hand, seems to be asserting that accidental war is fanciful, unlikely, and that even to discuss it comes close to being unpatriotic.
We say in our preface to Fail-Safe that we "have not had access to classified information and have taken some liberties with what has been declassified . . . attributing improved and more powerful performances to control and weapon systems. Modified or fictional names have been given to the improved equipment . . . the accident may not occur in the way we describe . . ."
Yet TIME seeks to discredit our basic thesis by contradicting certain mechanical details.
This kind of childish nitpicking and microscopic fixation on details have no bearing on the book's basic thesis and contribute nothing to one of the most important dialogues of our day.
EUGENE BURDICK AND HARVEY WHEELER
Berkeley, Calif.
P: TIME'S judgment on and correction of Fail-Safe are confirmed by Pentagon authorities in a position to know the facts rather than the fiction.--ED.
Sir:
I am a B-47 crew commander in SAC. Thank you for exposing the book Fail-Safe for what it is--complete fiction. It is interesting to note that neither author took the time to visit SAC headquarters to learn how Positive Control actually operates.
THOMAS D. LAMBERT
Captain, U.S.A.F.
New Castle, N.H.
Sir:
Burdick and Wheeler, like Packard, Robbins and others, are merely clever peddlers of cheap, sensational trash seen at a lower intellectual level in the glossy pulps, and they estimate their market with similar acumen.
JOHN TOSS
Los Altos, Calif.
The Few & the Many
Sir:
TIME'S Jan. 18 review of my book, March to Calumny, correctly emphasized its major theme--the vindication of the record of Americans captured during the Korean war. Damaging misjudgments of the P.W.s' record were based on invalid applications of historical and statistical norms. On a statistical basis, the Korean war P.W.s displayed no less courage, commitment and resourcefulness than we would be led to expect by whatever comparable events history has to offer.
I hope that no one will misinterpret my message, however, as suggesting that historical and statistical standards should be accepted as either the measure of the ideal or the attainable. There are glorious records of a few to show what should be attainable by the many. In terms of ideals regarding the obligations of a person to his country, his fellows and his own self-respect, the record contains many sources of regret and a few of shame.
ALBERT D. BIDERMAN
Washington, D.C.
Sir:
Readers will find Albert Biderman's book an attack on In Every War But One, one of mine on the same subject published four years ago. While the conduct of American prisoners in Korea may remain a controversial subject for years, the following background, I believe, is not.
Biderman, a sociologist, was retained by the Air Force some ten years back to assess experiences of its 235 returned Korean war prisoners, including those who had confessed to bacteriological warfare. Biderman's findings greatly influenced the Air Force prisoner stand, then in direct opposition to the Army's. A king-sized deadlock resulted, centering essentially on what a service should demand of its men--in other words, the ideology of duty. Air Force wished less, Army more, demands. There was name calling and heat. Obviously, one service could not have one standard, a second another. After months of inconclusive rough-and-tumble along these lines, an impatient Defense Department stepped in, appointing a high-ranking, ten-man, all-service committee to end the hassle.
The credentials of In Every War But One are these. Its material was furnished by the Army. It was passed for publication by Army and Defense. It formed Army's argument to the above committee for imposition of its standards. Army's facts (as I report) came from a unique, five-year study of its several thousand prisoners by scores of medical, legal, military and psychiatric investigators. In 1955, after more than two months of hearings before the committee, Army won. The Code of Conduct, embodying its standards, was recommended--unanimously--by the arbitrating committee. President Eisenhower promulgated the Code in August of that year. Since then it has been the behavioral standard of all in uniform.
It is plain that the Code forced a decision on which side was right in the prisoner wrangle. It was a clear decision. Your readers should know, I think, that before the most expert, informed, and supposedly impartial body that the government could muster, the views of Biderman and those who supported them did not win.
EUGENE KINKEAD
New York City
Sir:
Your fine article on neurology in the Medicine section of TIME, Jan. 11, in which you mentioned the Institutes for the Achievement of Human Potential, deserves thunderous applause. I, who suffered a severe midbrain injury in 1948, finally found the Institutes in March of 1962. I used the techniques fathered and developed by their staff and was discharged after six months as a completely recovered individual.
EDWARD F. O'DONNELL
Greenwich, Conn.
Sir:
TIME supplied a dramatic account that man can learn to use the other half of his brain 18 years ago, at least to the extent that motor loss can be replaced by conscious application of other parts of the brain.
Your report was about a friend of mine whom I have not seen since high school: Larry Doyle. Larry was in the R.C.A.F. during World War II. A propeller had sliced off part of his head. He spent months concentrating on first his toes and then other parts of his body in a tub of water to make them move, until he had apparently accomplished complete motion.
Have you any idea where Larry Doyle is now and how he is doing ?
HOWARD M. KEEFE JR.
Winnetka, Ill.
P: Larry Doyle, 42, married and the father of three, now lives in Dallas. "The only difficulty I have at all," he says, "is a limited amount of movement, up and down, of my right foot. Everything else is fine--my sight, and the use of my hand and arm for any purpose--writing, carrying, anything." One night last week Larry was honored at a dinner sponsored by the Dallas Sales Executive Club as one of the city's top salesmen in 1962.--ED.
Train to Nowhere
Sir:
I have seen The Milk Train Doesn't Stop Here Anymore two times in Spoleto, once in New Haven, once in Philadelphia and twice at the Morosco Theater, and although I am fascinated by your drama critic's exegesis of the play's meaning [Jan. 25] I find myself in 100% disagreement.
I have known Tennessee Williams and Milk Train's Director Herbert Machiz for years. From neither of them did I get any impression that Milk Train had a religious content of any marked importance, certainly none in a Christian vein. A psychoanalyst has given me a complete explanation, in Freudian terms, of the play's dramatizing the oral v. the anal; a philosophic friend told me Williams has examined "existence" and "nothingness" in terms of "knowing" as opposed to "understanding"; one poet I know sees "the Angel of Death" as a purely Rilkean angel ("a peaceful presence"), and the witch of Capri as a true witch, and the whole play as a modern fairy tale.
All these interpretations interest me--but the Christian allegory explanation seems the least convincing.
JOHN BERNARD MYERS
New York City
A Photographer's View of the Lady
Sir:
Well, the Mona Lisa is here after an enormous amount of hullabaloo [TIME, Jan. 18].
Why this portrait was picked out of all the masterpieces in European museums is beyond me. The Mona Lisa is a fine portrait by a great master, but there are a thousand other great works of art in the Louvre and other European museums, in addition to those we have in the U.S. Whether Leonardo thought all the things that have been written about the Mona Lisa as he painted the portrait is open to question. As a matter of fact, he was equally great as an engineer and inventor, and to my mind by no means the greatest master in the world; nor is this picture worthy of the time and expense involved in getting it here.
However, I suppose many people will visit the museums just to see it out of curiosity who otherwise would not do so, and perhaps will benefit by improving their knowledge of the fine arts as well; and in the long run it may be worth the trouble and expense.
LOUIS FABIAN BACHRACH SR.
Bachrach Portrait Photographers
Newton, Mass.
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