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Sirs:
It's not the tail that gets the sunburn even if you don't wear trunks. The warning in your item on Nudism (Aug. 22, p. 44) should have been aimed at the beaches. That's where you find the rawhides and leatherbacks.
"Serious" may be the word for colonies derived directly from Germany, but hardly for the thriving American clubs. We even take the founders' arguments' with a grain of salt. The presence or absence of trunks has not much to do with the health or virtue or beauty of the race. Trunks are merely absurd and uncomfortable.
Yet if you could watch the flock of children growing up with us from year to year even TIME might experience a moment of enthusiasm.
ROBERT JOHNSON Fort Wayne, Ind.
Sirs:
Re Nudism (TIME, Aug. 22), scientists or others who would seriously investigate would,
I believe, be as agreed concerning its social merit as they are concerning the physically harmful effects of "prolonged exposure to sunlight." The nudist camp I visited—just one weekend it was I spent there—was the last place one would expect to hear a risque story, witness flirtatious goings-on among the young marrieds or unmarrieds, or even experience an illicit sexual emotion. It was the epitome of wholesomeness! When I drove away from that camp I kept thinking: for 30 years I have thought of nudity in the other sex as in itself sexual and exciting; now I know it isn't. How I wish I had realized this when I was a youngster.
The general practice of social nudism (on suitable occasions) would, I am convinced, through harmlessly satisfying natural sex curiosity, not only eliminate most juvenile sex delinquency but serve as a normalizing, emotionally relaxing influence of inestimable value to our turbulent growing-up generation.
HOWARD C. LAPE
New Orleans, La.
North Atlantic Flight
Sirs:
I am a consistent reader of your excellent magazine, TIME, and enjoy its articles very much. However, I should like to have a bit of information, if you will be so kind as to give it to me.
In the August 8 issue of TIME, on the bottom of p. 46, you say, "But until it [Pan American's new Boeing plane] or some other U. S. plane is ready to start a regular schedule, no mail, no passengers will be flown across the North Atlantic by anyone else."
Does this statement mean that Pan American is the only company that has Government permission to fly the Atlantic, to the exclusion of all other U. S. companies? If so, in what form is this Government permission and why cannot other companies compete? . . .
ANTHONY P. MENTIS
Baltimore, Md.
Gist of the situation is this: No U. S.
airline has yet received Governmental permission to operate a transatlantic service. But Pan-American, the only U. S. company prepared to make trans-atlantic test flights, is expected to get that permission whenever it is ready.
The U. S. and England have a 15-year agreement, signed in 1936, that neither will start transatlantic service before the other.—ED.
Tenant Farmer
Sirs: