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. . . I was fortunate enough to participate in the U.S. Army's "experiment" in sending Army personnel to universities in France and England where they were absorbed into the civilian student body and had an excellent opportunity, outside the bounds of the artificial environment that is generally created by the Army, to "discover" Europe
In places, Army students were billeted with civilians and ate civilian rations. And there they learned more about the people in three months than soldiers who had spent a year or more in the same region under Army camp conditions.
. . . Many erroneous conceptions of both groups were corrected for the benefit of mutual understanding. . . .
ROYER B. HELD Lieutenant, A.U.S.
Bremen, Germany
Continuing Storm over Iran
Sirs:
I have just read with peculiar interest a letter from Dr. Arthur Upham Pope [TIME, Feb. 4] concerning Iran. . . . I have just returned from Iran after serving for two years there as Administrator General of the Finances, and as head of an American financial mission, Once before, from 1922 to 1927, I had the privilege of serving in a similar capacity in that unhappy country. It appears that Dr. Pope's preoccupation with Iranian art has left him, to quote his words, "shockingly innocent of the background," and in much the same state of bafflement which he attributes, I think wrongly, to our reporters in the Near East.
Dr. Pope says: "Iran and her problems are crucial for the peace of the rest of the world." But no inkling of the fundamentally relevant facts is given in Dr. Pope's letter. On the contrary, he speaks of the country as "gravely weakened" by the "heroic services" that it rendered the Allied cause. Such a statement is complete nonsense. In 1941 Iran's Dictator-King Pahlavi had delivered the country to the Nazis. It was brought to the Allied side by a Russian and British military occupation. Iran made no active contribution to the war. She probably gained more than she lost by the bridge-to-victory role that the Allies forced upon her. . . . It is quite true that Iran is gravely weakened; but the weakness comes from her own governmental incompetency, from a general psychopathic state of mind, from moral degeneration, and from Soviet interferences and fifth columnism. . . .
A. C. MILLSPAUGH
Washington
Mormons on the March
Sirs:
. . . I do not know Fawn M. Brodie [TIME, Jan. 28], but I do know that since Mormonism began, writers of her kind, who could not or would not live by the high standards of morals and self-discipline required by Mormonism have written scurrilous and slanderous books. . . .
TIMBERLINE RIGGS
Overton, Nev.
Sirs:
We sense the handicap of anyone attempting to refute misrepresentations concerning Joseph Smith, founder of the Latter Day Saints, in Fawn Brodie's book, which you have reviewed in your issue of Jan. 28. We who are descendants of this man, and who represent the only faction of Latter Day Saints which retains the original doctrines and beliefs, are convinced that he was not responsible for "Mormon" polygamy and was not a polygamist, all the claims of his enemies and the Utah Mormons to the contrary notwithstanding. . . .