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To National Can Co. all credit for able beer-canning.—ED.
Dr. Carrel Flayed
Sirs:
Learned men do really become fools.
Dr. Carrel's work Man, the Unknown, accepts his own brain and its peculiar mechanism as standard for the universe [TIME, Sept. 16].
The human family is guided best by individuals not seeking power and the glow of self-importance. So let us still continue our method of developing geniuses where experience and environment build thoughts and ideas—which hardly can be created in a cold superchamber of the "intelligentsia," so-called. There will always be a varied group of humans—and to suppress the egotistical and so-called dictators is pleasant game for the masses or "rabble." Germany and its Aryan and non-Aryan idea is an excellent example of trying to place human beings on the 10¢ and $1 shelf.
Dr. Carrel should stick to his medicine. . . .
DAVID A. YULSMAN
Philadelphia, Pa.
Sirs:
And so old Doc Carrel wants to set up a dictatorship of doctors over the entire human race and appoint himself chief Mussolini of the group. Well, well, what a grand and appropriate finis that would be to a civilization already doddering on the brink because of having been established almost entirely on false premises since the dawn of history. . . .
STANFORD KINGSLEY CLAUNCH
Monterey, Calif.
Dr. Carrel Scooped?
Sirs:
. . . Another salute to the prescient Sinclair Lewis! Arrowsmith, published in 1925, describes Dr. Holabird's iatrocracy about as follows: ". . . would rule, coordinate, standardize and make useful the whole world of intelligence, from trousers-designing to poetry. . . ."
N. H. WENDELL JR.
Chicago, Ill.
Shrapnel & H. E.
Sirs:
On p. 21 of your Sept. 9 issue under "Italy" there appears: ". . . when Corporal Benito Mussolini was down with 42 shrapnel splinters in his epidermis."
Shrapnel is a form of ammunition named for the English army officer who invented it. It consists of one-half inch in diameter lead balls hardened with antimony which are fired from a forged steel case by a charge of black powder exploded by a time fuse when the shrapnel-filled-case is about ten yards above the target on its way down to earth.
In other words shrapnel does not splinter. High explosive shell (termed simply H. E.) is what splinters on impact and causes splinters to fly in every direction. Present war tendencies favor H. E. shell over shrapnel, which is effective only against animals and personnel in the open. Shrapnel bursting charge blows the soft brass fuse from the head of the case and sprays the balls in an elliptical pattern over cone-shaped paths.
S. D. DISTELHORST Associate Editor
Industrial Power St. Joseph, Mich.
Criminal Breed