Letters

Herewith are excerpts from letters come to the desks of the editors during the past week. They are selected primarily for the information they contain either supplementary to or corrective of news previously published in TIME.

Chippers

Sirs:

The summaries of archaeological and paleontological activity that occasionally appear in your Science department entitled "Diggers" are fine--as far as they go. You report only an iota, however, of the vast amount of work that goes on in these extremely important fields constantly. How much better "Diggers" [TIME, April 25] would be, for instance, if you had told about Halvor H. Skavlem, a 78-year-old Wisconsinian who has devoted many years of his life to studying Indian relics and is the only white man who has ever discovered and imitated the lost Indian method of chipping flint arrowheads with bits of bone and a crude hammer! Recently he gave an exhibition here, chipping out perfect heads in 15 minutes each, with motions that looked so simple until one tried them. . . .

ARNOLD PEFFERS

Milwaukee, Wis.

While Chipper Skaylem's abilities are surely not insignificant, Subscriber Peffers errs in believing Chipper Skavlem to be "the only white man" to have discovered and imitated the Indian manufacturing process. At least one other such white man exists--Chipper Joseph A. Barbieri of Pasadena, Cal., who can reduce stone nodules to thin blades, strike a spall from a brittle nucleus, by freehand percussion. (See Art and Archaeology, Vol. XXI, No. 2, p. 68).

Miraculous

Sirs: There are those who, having attained "Oneness with Brahma," would discover soup-stains on that one's waistcoat ; who, sitting on a lotus flower in the selfless Nirvana of Buddha, would find withered petals ; who, wandering deified through the Greek Elysian Fields, would discover a fly in Hebe's nectar; or who, reading that perfect periodical TIME, would stumble over idiosyncrasies.

Blessed by the Pope, bidden adieu by Premier Mussolini as she sailed majestically forth on her polar flight, with one (or more) strokes of his pen, your Editor converts her [the Norge] from a "good airship" into a "BLUNT SILVERY CIGAR." [TIME, Apr. 19, SCIENCE.]

Miraculous as this may seem to us and dismaying to the Anti-Nicotine League, your Editor is not yet done. Nay, far from it. For as she sails high above the sparkling Mediterranean, he must needs bring despair to peace advocates and consternation to those whose business is armaments, by a transformation no less astonishing. This innocent airship, which left the Ciampino Airdrome with all its young ideals unbesmirched, and is dragged over the Appian Way where Emperors marched in triumph, as a vicious "BLUNT CIGAR," he fiendishly converts into nothing less than a "LONG SILVER BULLET"!

SIDNEY F. MASHBIR

Remington Cash Register Co., Inc. Ilion, N. Y.

Tygers

Sirs:

Under the heading of "Play Ball [TIME, Apr. 19, SPORT] you list the different National and American League baseball teams with their nicknames. You stated that the "Tygers" were the Detroit, American League team. The word "Tygers" should be spelled with an "i" instead of a "y." The Augusta, South Atlantic League team is known as the "Tygers," the main reason for this being in compliment to Mr. Ty Cobb of the Detroit team. Mr. Cobb got his early start in Augusta, and still maintains his residence here.

I read your magazine every week and like it very much, especially the Quiz.

SCOTT NIXON

Augusta, Ga.

Well-Bred

Sirs:

In TIME, April 12, under PROHIBITION, you speak disparagingly of breweries like Pabst and Anheuser-Busch, which leads the reader to believe that they were unscrupulous in their dealings through the saloons and other agencies. Knowing the Pabst family very well, I take exception to this as they are far from anything such as you lead your readers to believe. They are very well-bred, of good culture, fine breeding, and the influence that they exerted through saloons was absolutely negligible. It might have been the saloon keeper himself but not the brewers who supplied the beverages.

RAIMUND B. WURLITZER

San Francisco, Calif.

TIME was far from disparaging "Pabst," which it called "classic." --ED.

"Dead Like Caesar"

Sirs:

Your publication has the unmitigated effrontery to insinuate that liberty of the press does not exist in Italy, that the people are not freely represented in parliament (witness your sneering reference to the "docile senators"), and that the Fascist government is not representative and interferes with personal freedom. All this in face of the perfectly rotten political, social and racial situation prevailing in the U. S. where an arbitrary sumptuary law has been foisted upon the nation, with which it is not in sympathy; where a single race, the Jews, has attained a degree of political control making possible a practically complete domination of the press, so that the situation cannot even be publicly exposed; where labor shares in this exploitation of the masses through the most vicious kind of class legislation; and where personal liberty is as dead as Julius Caesar.

Whatever you may have against the Fascist regime and the Mussolini dictatorship (if you like) at its very worst, it has never interfered with the personal habits of anyone, and in Italy we don't have to pay for the support of a lot of Izzy Einsteins, nor are we tied to a paternal government's apron-strings in respect of the beverages we want to drink. That may not be much, but it is something.

EDGAR C. RIEBE

Florence, Italy

In recent weeks, Signor Mussolini has appeared in TIME chiefly as an orator--in his own words.--ED.

Playhouses

Sirs:

I believe that mention of the theatres currently showing the plays as you review them would be appreciated.

It could be done just as publishers' names are given in your book reviews.

C. W. MARTIN

Greencastle, Ind.

Is Subscriber Martin's request seconded?--ED.

Great Profession

Sirs:

I was shocked and not a little indignant to read in TIME, April 19 issue, under MEDICINE, that nursing is considered by your magazine to be a trade.

Such a statement is an insult and the severest slam you could inflict upon a class of women a large part of whom are university graduates, all of whom are high school graduates, and of whom is required three to four years of practical and theoretical training to fit them for their profession.

You are no longer living in the dark ages before the time of Florence Nightingale, and nursing standards and ideals have kept apace with, if not excelled, those of the medical profession. A perusal of a history of nursing or a visit to any of our modern hospitals would enlighten you regarding one of the greatest professions in the world, and prevent another such faux pas.

I am always disappointed when you omit the medical section from TIME.

HELEN L. DOBBIE, R. N.

Long Beach, Calif.

Like Pascal

Sirs:

Dabbling in Pascal* the other day, I ran across a few lines that recalled strikingly a paragraph you published under SCIENCE some nine months ago: "But to exhibit to him another wonder quite as amazing, let him examine the most minute things he knows. . . . Dividing these again, let him exhaust his power of forming such conceptions, and then let us consider the last, the least object at which he can arrive. Perhaps he will think that it is the limit of littleness in nature. But I will show him a new abyss. I will paint for him not only the visible universe, but all the immensity of nature that one can conceive, within the bounds of this epitome of an atom. He may see an infinity of universes each with its firmament, its planets, its earth, in the same proportion as in the visible world . . . ."

L. M. B.

Mayo Clinic, Rochester, Minn.

*Blaise Pascal (1623-62), French religious philosopher and mathematician.