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Are these military VIPs beyond the reach of civil and moral codes of law ? Should not we continue the basis for all American justice, namely, that the accused is innocent until convicted by a jury of his peers? Are the men of the Air Force's court-martial the peers of Bob Toth, private citizen of the U.S.? Such acts can only be condemned ... I hope Bob Toth gives them a sound thrashing in every way possible . . .
F. L. MENDEZ JR. Rochester, Minn.
Sir:
. . . Evidently Toth and Airman Kinder were involved in court-martial because of the provision of Article 118, which reads: "Justification does not exist, however, when . . . the order is such that a man of ordinary sense and understanding would know it to be illegal . . ." That phrase, "a man of ordinary sense and understanding," seems to be the crux of the problem involving both Toth and Kinder . . .
S/SGT. WILLIAM W. BOLEN U.S.A.F. c/o Postmaster Seattle
Sir:
. . . The article stated that "no one questioned the sentence" of Lieut. George Schreiber . . . Schreiber is a graduate of Valparaiso University, Valparaiso, Ind., and was respected there and in his home town of Brookfield, Ill. The officer in charge of the section to which Schreiber was assigned testified in court that he was the best man the Army had sent him in two years, that he reorganized the guard unit and cut pilferage losses . . . Lieut. Schreiber's friends are organizing a fund for his defense. That proves that some people do question the sentence . . .
JOHN B. MORLAND Bremen, Ind.
Science or Religion
Sir:
TIME deserves the highest commendation for its unbiased "let-the-chips-fall-where-they-may" policy of publishing interesting and important material on religious matters. A case in point is your Science Department article [Aug. 31], quoting (from the Roman Catholic Commonweal) Notre Dame Scientist Julian Pleasants, who offers his explanation of the comparative scarcity of scientists turned out by Roman Catholic colleges . . .
A. W. MORRILL Arcadia, Calif.
Sir:
. . . My answer to the question why there are so few Catholic scientists lies in the inadequacy of the education that Catholics receive. Catholic education does not encourage the inquiring mind, the training and the use of the imagination required by science. Being a former Catholic, and having attended the Catholic separate school, my feeling is that the fundamental weakness of Catholic education is their childlike and simple explanation of God. We all feel that there is a higher power, but when we try to explain this power in terms of human experience, it seems to me that we must inevitably arrive at that point where human explanation is impossible. At this point we reach the barrier of infinity. It is only by the use of imagination that we can cross this barrier.