"Against the Darkening Sky"

Sir:

I have read scores of great historians whose descriptive passages will live forever as truth and literature, but never have I read anything more vividly beautiful than Frank Gibney's description of the taking of Wolmi Island [TIME, Sept. 25], beginning with "Inchon blazed against the darkening sky . . ."

WILLIAM E. SAWYER Winchester, Ky.

Sir:

Bouquets to you and your reporters, Frank Gibney and James Bell, for their stories of the assault waves on Wolmi and Inchon. Man, that's reporting!

EVERETT E. JENNINGS JR. Silver Creek, N.Y.

Sir:

I could hardly read the stories by Carl Mydans, Frank Gibney and James Bell . . . because a film kept forming over my eyes.

It takes real guts to do a job like that. There ought to be some kind of a special Congressional Medal for these Korean correspondents.

R. FULLERTON PLACE St. Louis

Scully's Saucers

Sir:

I read with great interest your Sept. 25 review of Frank Scully's new book on Flying Saucers ... I have seen neither a saucer nor an hallucination, but would gladly view either one that came into range.

In talking to the principals involved in Scully's book I am immediately impressed by their sincerity. There is not the slightest hint of "kidding." . . .

Although I admit to amateurhood in the realm of physics ... I feel you should not state quite so emphatically that "magnetic waves do not exist." Why, the pages of history are strewn with statements by great scientists out of the past who proclaimed in their day that the various forces that operate our present marvels simply "do not exist." . ..

ROBERT G. PIKE La Canada, Calif.

Sir:

I subscribe to TIME because the reporting is accurate, and the criticism both logical and discriminating. [Now] TIME has done the impossible; it has surpassed itself.

I had read a condensation of Author Scully's hogwash on the so-called "flying saucers" in [another] magazine . . . I was thoroughly convinced at that time of the scientific unsoundness of his writing . . . Every person of intelligence should be indignant at the thought of anyone deliberately promoting national hysteria, based on the hallucinations of people who will swallow any fantasy thinly veiled in pseudo-scientific jargon.

TIME'S review should serve as a dash of cold water . . . Let us hope that . . . Scully will return to the realm of the bedroom, with whose intricacies he is undoubtedly more familiar.

My hat is off to you.

CHARLES M. CLEMENSEN San Pedro, Calif.

Sirs:

TIME . . . deals rather facetiously with the subject of flying saucers, pooh-poohing all factual data which has made headlines previously. If the saucer operation is a military secret, why say anything about it? . . .

Scientifically, there is a related economy of energy to aerodynamics involved in the saucer; I refer you to the item on pages 413-414 of Astronomy and Cosmogony (the Cambridge University Press 1929) by Sir James Jeans. It might just be that the "disc" became so shaped only after rotating at a highly excessive speed, which you will find will occur to any oblate spheroid when a critical speed of rotation is reached.

Be that as it may, you should not print anything on the subject unless and until you are positive. (In my book we may have some public announcement on this by the end of the year from the authorities.)

ANNA M. STAUB Ridley Park, Pa.

New Parlour Game

Sir:

You always present the news from Great Britain in a fair and impartial manner. However, occasionally an important item is overlooked . . .

A new parlour game is sweeping England ... It is called "Monotony" and is appropriate to our times. It appears to be based on Monopoly, a game [in] which . . . each player's object was to acquire the private ownership of . . . house property, and so forth. In Monotony the aim is to nationalise everything.

The game can be played by candlelight in an empty coal cellar, a padded cell, or other convenient room, and the apparatus can easily be improvised. At the outset, whoever can place the largest number of square pegs in round holes becomes the "Government." Then cards are dealt around. Each player in turn presents his card, which is marked "Coal," "Gas," "Transport," "Steel," or the name of some other industry. Then the "Government" player presents his trump card, "Nationalisation," and takes his opponents' cards, handing them scraps of paper of dubious value in return.

Oddly enough, the "Government" almost always wins. Indeed, it is impossible for him to lose unless his stock of paper becomes exhausted. When this happens, he declares a state of emergency, blows out the candle, and goes to bed.

HUGH MORRISON

London

"Anyone Who Drinks Beer . . ."

Sir:

Was amused at your footnote on Mrs. Agnes Denmanson of Seattle who in 1933 was quoted as saying "Anyone who drinks beer would commit murder."

I happen to be Mrs. Denmanson. Was city editor of the now extinct Seattle Star at the time. Few controversial letters were arriving for the "From Our Readers" column, and one of our many successive editors asked me to whip out a few phony letters to bring in replies from readers.

The Denmanson correspondence to the Star followed, and brought in hundreds of letters from irate beer drinkers . . . The general pattern had the mythical subscriber writing she had seen a man enter a bar and stagger out after one beer. Each letter ended "Anyone who drinks beer would commit murder. Mr. Denmanson agrees with me . . ."

Subscribers who took the hook usually gave our phantom prohibitionist hell, then said they were sorry for her poor henpecked husband. Occasionally someone would write in to agree with Mrs. D.

The series ended in about a year after some brewer saw one of the letters and complained to the advertising department.

STUART WHITEHOUSE Seattle

Commitment on Truth

Sir:

The very mode of expression of the unnamed spokesman for the American Psychological Association who views as "dismal" the acceptance of a teaching position which is open only to those who are able to deny that they are traitors to the U.S. [TIME, Sept. 18] bespeaks the smug sort of pseudo-intellectual among whom radicalism is considered fashionable.

An admitted principle of Communism is that the only valid basis of choice between a lie and a truth is their comparative utility to the speaker . . . The productive, taxpaying owners of such institutions as the University of California might have a definite commitment as to the extent to which they may expect truth to prevail among the teachers of their children.

JAMES W. GUERIN

Menlo Park, Calif.

Profits & Prophets

Sir:

Mr. R. F. West's concern with the religious illiteracy of college students who spell "prophet" as "profit" (TIME, Sept. 25) brings to mind a private collection of schoolboy howlers shown me by a friend who was tutoring a freshman economics class at the University of Toronto two years ago. On an examination, one of his students wrote to the effect that "depressions are caused when the prophets are not so good."

Whether or not this piece of evidence ought to be advanced in opposition to Mr. West's thesis, I would hesitate to say. It may be simply that the student had a deeper insight into the mysteries of our economic system than many experts on the subject . . .

D. L. BENNETT

Toronto

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