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I was interested in your story of the flying saucers [TiME, Jan. 9]. A prospector, whom I met in a bar, told me a flying saucer had ruined him financially in 1947. He said he was prospecting for uranium with a Geiger counter on the Mojave Desert, and found a rich strike on top of a little rocky knoll. It was about dark, he said, so he decided to wait until next day to file on it.
He had camped about 100 yards from the knoll, and next morning about daylight a saucer flew in and settled over his strike. He said he could see a lot of blue flashes and hear a lot of loud clicking, but before he could run up to where the saucer was it took off. He put his counter on the knoll again, and there wasn't a click in it. The saucer had sucked up every ounce of atomic energy for fuel . . . To prove his story, he showed me he didn't have a dime in his pocket. I bought him a beer.
F. M. HENLEY
Wasco, Calif.
Viva La Scala!
Sir:
. . . While I appreciated your article regarding my American debut [TIME, Jan. 9], I would like to correct the last paragraph referring to the La Scala orchestra. I never meant to say that "it would take La Scala's orchestra six rehearsals to accomplish what the Met's can do in two." All I said was that the La Scala orchestra was not used to performing after only two rehearsals. I would be grateful if you would kindly publish this correction, rendered necessary, I presume, by my poor command of the English language . . .
JONEL PERLEA New York City
Comet's Tale
Sir:
CLOSING SENTENCES OF COMET'S TALE ARTICLE IN TIME, JAN. 2 UNFAIRLY COMPARE PAYLOADS WITHOUT REFERENCE TO RANGE. COMET CARRIES 12,OOO POUNDS FOR PRACTICAL COMMERCIAL RANGE 2,645 MILES. THIS COMPARES FAVORABLY. YET COMET CRUISES NEARLY 500 MILES PER HOUR . . .
GEOFFREY DE HAVILLAND
Hatfield, Herts, England ¶ If Planemaker De Havilland thinks the Comet has as great a range with as big a payload as the Connie and the DC-6, he should lower his flaps and come down to earth.—ED.
Slips & Changes
Sir:
Despite Nation Editor Kirchwey's protest, TIME neither slipped nor erred in its Dec. 26 account of the Nation's rejection of my article on the Supreme Court. Most of Miss Kirchwey's letter [TIME, Jan. 16] answers itself, and I daresay the editors of the New Republic must be intrigued to learn that they were "irresponsible" to publish—as they did —my "slanderous" and "unjust" remarks. But Miss Kirchwey needs correcting when she denies that her executive editor, Harold Field, told me that my article was rejected specifically because Miss Kirchwey could not afford to jeopardize her personal relationship with Justice Frankfurter by printing in her magazine my criticisms of him.
Mr. Field may say now to his boss (or Miss Kirchwey may misquote him) that he did not say what I clearly heard him say to me on the phone; I had no recording device handy for future proof. But Mr. Field, after talking to me, wrote me a letter to accompany my rejected manuscript. I have that letter . . .
FRED RODELL Yale University New Haven, Conn.
Garbled Voices
Sir: