Letters: Feb. 16, 1962

A Catholic Taste

Sir:

We wish to commend the editors for their effort to present a comprehensive survey of American Catholic education, as exemplified by Notre Dame [Feb. 9]. In addition, we wish to thank you for not including Trinity in the “Best Catholic Colleges.” As students of Trinity College, we consider it recognition by omission.

The details chosen by TIME represent a less than adequate picture of Catholic intellectual standards. Your search for the Catholic intellectual has taken you to many of our finest colleges, but your presentation of the goals and aims of these institutions is superficial. Is there nothing more characteristic of a Holy Cross education than compulsory daily Mass? As products of a Catholic college education, we feel we can take our place among the intellectuals of our generation.

CAROL GOEPFERT ’62

JANE McMANUS ’62

MARGARET LEAHEY ’62

PAULA ROY ’62

Trinity College Washington, B.C.

Sir:

All of us here are feeling the excitement of attending a growing university. Your article has done much to make us realize what has, been done, and what must yet be done, if Notre Dame is to take its place as one of the “great” universities of the country.

WILLIAM MCDONALD ’65

Notre Dame South Bend, Ind.

Sir:

There you go, pointing out that President Carl Reinert of Creighton University is a brother of President Paul Reinert of St. Louis University. We really do not believe that this is Creighton’s only claim to some degree of academic excellence. Just once we would like to see in print that Paul is Carl’s brother.

JAMES HALLER

B.S. ’58, M.S. ’61, M.D. ’63

IRENE SACCO HALLER pure A.B. ’57

Omaha

Sir:

At Gettysburg there is the statue of a priest standing on a rock, arm raised in benediction, forever giving absolution to the men of the Irish Brigade as they file in ghostly parade towards the Wheatfield and Devil’s Den. This priest was Father William Corby.

Perhaps this Father Corby and “Fair Catch” Corby of Notre Dame are one and the same.

DENNIS S. REIDY JR.

Brunswick, Ohio

> It is the same Father Corby. He resigned from the Notre Dame faculty in 1861 to become chaplain of General Thomas F. Meagher’s famed Irish Brigade of New York, served the brigade as it fought heroically at Fair Oaks, Antietam, Fredericksburg, Chancellorsville, Gettysburg, the Wilderness and Spottsylvania. The Gettysburg statue is a duplicate of the one at Notre Dame, where he returned after the war and served two terms (1866-72 and 1877-81) as president.-ED.

Sir:

Your otherwise enlightening article lost its value in charging that there is an “American heritage of Catholic anti-intellectualism.” Perhaps the problem is one of semantics, and your shallow, finite definition of intellectualism. Truth remains such, ad infinitum!

JOAN DAVIS

Manhattanville ’55 Bethesda, Md.

Sir:

I have never seen a more factual and objective, honest yet damning, analysis and indictment of Catholic education in America. May the Hesburghs increase and multiply to cover the earth. Thanks to TIME for a real service to the cause of American education. KENNETH E. HENRIQUES, O.F.M. Editor, Way San Francisco

Sir:

Wall-to-wall carpeting, maybe; but “wall-to-wall Irish”?

ANTHONY GUIDA ’63 WILLIAM WALDERT ’63 GEORGE THEOLOGUS ’63 Holy Cross College Worcester, Mass.

Sir:

Why not tell us more about the excellent cover by Henry Koerner? What does the Madonna and the book mean? What was the artist’s reaction while painting this portrait?

MARION A. NUGENT

Wellesley, Mass.

>Artist Koerner painted Father Hesburgh with a Giotto madonna, an atomic equation and a chemical formula to “represent the changeless and the changing—both in Hesburgh’s domain.” The portrait took a week of intensive sittings, and Koerner felt that “Hesburgh helped me paint it just by being a man of great capacity for compassion and passion.” The artist also came away impressed by the subject’s sense of discipline: “He would hold the pose for two or three hours without moving a finger.”—ED.

Modern Tower of Babel?

Sir:

Of all the ridiculous Government expenses of this year, I can find none as ridiculous as the appropriation for space spending [Jan. 26]. We might remember what happened to the Tower of Babel when man’s first attempt at conquering space was thwarted. [Genesis 11:4-9: “And they said, Go to, let us build us a city and a tower, whose top may reach unto heaven … So the Lord scattered them abroad from thence upon the face of the earth.”I Can’t we take God’s hint, and leave his domain alone?

HENRI J. DELGER

Watertown, Mass.

> And the place even looked a bit like the scene at Cape Canaveral. See cut.—ED.

Mellow Menon

Sir:

You have drawn and quartered India’s Krishna Menon in the traditional American way [Feb. 2]. When I asked him to speak at our church last year, he accepted quite spontaneously.

His Excellency asked for no publicity and delivered a reasonable, realistic address on the shrinking world, the limits of the United Nations and the new interests of India in the world. He arrived sitting beside his chauffeur, greeted his audience without rush, spoke with very humble humour and stayed an hour for questions over coffee (which he drank).

Perhaps this quiet crossing of the Brooklyn Bridge is part of this great actor’s role on the world stage.

(The REV.) WILLIAM GLENESK Spencer Memorial Presbyterian Church Brooklyn

Sir:

You have not used your usual vitriolic comments against Krishna Menon. On the contrary, I felt your excellent story gave a good background of one of the most controversial leaders of our country. Unexpectedly, you have been very fair to him—more so than most of the critics of his own country. SHALIL GHOSH Bombay

Sir:

For all your flinging of journalistic teacups of malice toward Menon, he would get my vote as one who adroitly walks a tightrope of constructive neutralism between East and West.

ROBERT MORRIS SMITH Portland, Ore.

Sir:

Humble citizens like us endorse every word that TIME has said about Krishna Menon. If he wins in the North Bombay election it will be a defeat for the free world.

GANDOOKA BACHCHA

LAVDAKA BAL

SUVARKA LADKA

BADA CHOOTHIA

Bombay

Müller’s Art

Sir:

Thank you very much for the interest you have shown in the paintings of my late husband, Jan Müller [Feb. 2].

There is one correction I would like to point out, however. Although I do own a painting called Double Circular Path, the one reproduced is actually titled Double Path of Decision and is owned by Mr. and Mrs. William Ash of New York.

MRS. JAN MÜLLER New York City

Massless Mass?

Sir:

Dr. Chiu has a problem trying to pin down his elusive neutrinos and I think your science writer has a small semantic problem, too [Feb. 2]. ”Trapping a neutrino will be no mean trick. For the little particle is so small that it has no mass at all; it carries no electric charge and will be detectable only as a swiftly moving speck of energy.”

Isn’t it confusing to refer to something as “the little particle,” and, in the same sentence, to say with equal certainty “that it has no mass at all”? If it is a “little particle,” how in the devil can it have no mass? In the second story you say: “Neutrinos created near the center of a star would quickly escape into empty space, carrying their energy with them.” If the neutrino has no mass, how can “it” carry anything with “it”? MEL TENNIS JR.

Bradenton, Fla.

> The neutrino has no mass of its own (rest mass), but it can carry energy, and energy, by Einstein’s famous equation, E=mc2, is equivalent to mass. So neutrinos do react with gravitational fields, rather like the particles of light (photons), which are also massless.—ED.

“Yes, Sir,” “No, Sir”

Sir:

As a constantly censored engineer in the E.T.O. during World War II, this flap over the muzzled brass delights me [Feb. 2]. Below CIC, only three replies were permissible to any reprimand: “Yes, sir,” “No, sir” and “No excuse, sir.”

WILLIAM C. DAVIE Rosedale, N.Y.

Sir:

Why is it a question whether our military should be heard by our public? Generals earn their position with years of practical experience and intelligent application. The same requirements are not necessary to make one a politician. Throughout history, many of the most intelligent heads of countries and empires have also been great generals. And some of the worst and most ruthless have been strictly civilians. But, saying that generals and politicians are equally well-meaning and smart, why gag the military who live close to the crucial situations today, and let the politicians far away and under political pressures blab uncontrollably ?

E. L. STEPHENS Palma de Mallorca, Spain