Letters, may 10, 1954

Life & Times of a Scientist

Sir:

I congratulate TIME [April 26] for the article: J. Robert Oppenheimer-His Life & Times … I don’t know of any public voice written or spoken to match the gallantry and courage expressed in this article.

HENRY GLASER

New York City

On May 30, 1431, Pierre Cauchon, Bishop of Beauvais, sentenced Joan of Arc, who in wartime had given her best to her nation, to be burnt as a witch; 500 years later we find a new group of witch hunters turning upon J. Robert Oppenheimer, who had given his best to his nation in wartime.

Today Pierre Cauchon is forgotten and Joan is a Saint. Who will remember AEC General Manager K. D. Nichols and his friends 500 years from now?

G. W. A. GRAY

London

Sir:

Re: Oppenheimer: Be he what he may-communist, Socialist, Democrat, Republican, Catholic, Protestant, Jew. Let us all thank God that he stayed in the U.S. to make the A-and H-bombs.

JESSE S. HUDSON

Philadelphia

Chennault’s Tigers

Sir:

Commenting on the letter from A. Moore, Baton Rouge, La. in TIME, Feb. 22, I would like to add a little more to the story of the naming of China’s first “Flying Tigers”the American Volunteer Group. Although we had earlier adopted the tiger shark as the nose insignia for our null [see cut], the Chinese awarded the name of Flying Tigers to the A.V.G. . . . The Chinese have a tradition that the tiger is kind to his friends but ruthless with his enemies; I had trained my men, before their entry into China, to be courteous and cooperative . . . The reason … is quite obvious when it is remembered that we had only 250 U.S. personnel working among 400 million Chinese, and were opposed by more than 1,000 airplanes of the Imperial Japanese Air Force, the socalled Iron Birds of Japan. Of course, the Chinese name, Flying Tigers, was very pleasing to me, since I had been an undergraduate at the old “War Skule” whose students were usually referred to as the “Bayou Tigers.” . . . The insignia of the A.V.G., designed by Walt Disney, was a winged tiger springing from an open V (for victory). After the demobilization of the A.V.G., the Fourteenth Air Force adopted a flying tiger as its insignia. Although the Fourteenth Air Force tiger insignia was different from that of the A.V.G., both organizations are still referred to as Flying Tigers … it is my firm impression that both . . . justified the Chinese tradition: “Kind to their friends and ruthless to their enemies.”

C. L. CHENNAULT Major General, U.S.A.F. (ret.) Taipei, Taiwan

Off to the Races

Sir:

I can count on the concurrence of all American sports-car enthusiasts in commending your April 26 cover and story on Briggs Cunningham … It is fortunate that there exists in this country a man with the competitive spirit and . . . the physical resources to establish America as an important figure in the racing world. It could have been done in no other way. Detroit, having spent 20 years meeting the public’s demand for soggy sponge springing, mush-o-matic drive and steering, and cumbersome chrome bathtub exteriors, is disinclined to risk the reputations of its unwieldy boulevard barges in competition (cheers to Lincoln and similar exceptions !) . . .

DICK HENDRICKSON

Santa Barbara, Calif.

Sir:

… I think the article is well done, and hope it increases the readers interest in sports cars in general, and road racing in particular . . . One mistake is the statement about my flying for the Coast Guard during World War II; it should have been the Civil Air Patrol . . .

BRIGGS S. CUNNINGHAM West Palm Beach, Fla.

Sir:

Re your cover of Briggs Cunningham: I wonder if Artist Baker intended the driver of car No. i to look like Johnny Fitch, internationally famed racing driver. It looks like him to me . . .

MARY CHILDS

Hendersonville, N.C. 1% Reader Childs is correct. Driver Fitch, a good friend of TIME Artist Ernest Hamlin Baker, dropped by Baker’s studio while the Cunningham cover portrait was in progress, stayed on to offer technical advice, wound up at the wheel of the lead Cunningham on TIME’S cover.ED.

Protestant Architect (Contd.)

Sir:

Whether or not you planned it that way, TIME, in successive stories in its Religion section . . . seemed to me to dramatize the unreconciled, if not irreconcilable, differences which, despite much outward ecumenical fraternizing, separate U.S. from European Protestantism.

To a nontheological layman, somewhat acquainted with the state of Protestantism here and abroad, Swiss Theologian Karl Earth [April 12] appears to be both a sign of and one of the reasons for the other-worldly-and consequent so widely prevalent in Europe’s churches; just as such theology and leadership as that of Dr. Van Dusen [April 19] appear to express and help to account for the worldly and consequent growing vitality-among Protestant churches in the U.S. There is nothing notably new, save, perhaps, the pious expression of it, in the feeling of frustration, not to say inferiority, in the face of current American ascendency which leads Earth, like many Europeans, to equate Communist with U.S. materialism and to advocate a Christian entente with Communism.

To Van Dusen-and to American Protestantism generally-Christianity is still the “good news” … To Barth-and much of European Protestantism-Christianity appears to be a means for coming to terms with a world which man makes worse but cannot make better . . . The result is that U.S. churches are largely “activist”; Europe’s largely “escapist” … In view of the awe in which, among some American churchmen, Europe’s theologians are held, Dr. Van Dusen and those of his mind have a large but a prophetic job cut out for them.

STANLEY HIGH

New York City

What to Serve with What

Sir:

In addition to the “chukar, a species of south Asian partridge” [TIME, April 5], did the President’s dinner table also offer the potato, a species of nightshade from the Peruvian Andes, and perhaps a dish of lettuce, a horticultural species of the Asia Minor genus Lactitca?

C. P. HOLWAY Chicago

I Instead of nightshade, the menu included a side dish of Zizania aquatica, a species of aquatic grass known originally to Indian tribes settled around the Great Lakes.ED.

Work of Art

Sir:

Your picture captioned “Senator McCarthy & Counsel Cohn” in the March 22 issue reminds me of a famous painting of Daumier’s [see cut].

A. VANDERKIN Chicago

By the Billions

Sir:

In the obituary item on Pierre S. du Pont, the assets of E. I. du Pont de Nemours & Co. are given to $668,587,711; this seems rather a strange figure to me, recalling that Du Pont owns some 20 million shares of General Motors common, with a market value of $1,400,000,000.

WALTER H. ANNENBERG Philadelphia

TIME erred; its figure referred to current assets. Du Font’s total assets: $2,567,444,305

Children’s Art

Sir:

We were very happy to see … some of the children’s paintings (from 45 countries) so beautifully reproduced in your April 5 issue … We have the rights to the collection, and the Smithsonian Institution is responsible to us for the exhibitions which are now going on throughout the country.

GERDA SCHAIRER Friendship Among Children and Youth Around the World, Inc. New York City

Travel Notes

Sir:

Thanks for your article about the luxury cruise of the Caronia and the antics of our merry millionaires [April 19]. Recently I saw this group … in Singapore. The ostentatious display of wealth was in extremely bad taste, and highly publicized by the local press . . . The “Helen Hokinson types” were interviewed . . . This little gem came from one: “Where can I get the New York Stock Exchange reports, because they’re just my Bible?”

Ouch!

ED DREWS Tokyo