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Re our school-less winter [Oct. 13!: We Virginians have a past to be proud of, the present to be ashamed of, and a future ol rehabilitation.
GLENN N. WILL Broadway, Va.
Inside & Outside China
Sir:
Never have I read a horror story as frightening as ''The People's Communes" [Oct. 20]. One really wonders if this isn't the end of civilization. Red China is heading fast to the day when "privacy" is a dirty word, as "individual" is already. Living in barracks! Women "released" to dig ditches rather than make homes for their families! Even small vegetable plots outlawed!
JEAN BERRY Altadena, Calif.
Sir:
"Ants" or not, the Chinese people are probably happier and more prosperous today than they ever were under Chiang's corrupt regime. You Yanks might do well to clean up your own backyard before casting disparaging remarks at the efforts of others.
GORDON E. WRIGHT Stanbridge East, Quebec
Sir:
Last month my husband and I visited Red China as tourists. Not for a minute would we underestimate the value of their primitive blast furnaces or their national scrap-metal drives. China's population is organized to lift this country into the 20th century, and when you refer to her 500 million peasants as "ants" it is worth remembering that quotation from Proverbs: "Go to the ant, thou sluggard; consider her ways, and be wise; etc."
PRUDENCE MYER Melbourne, Australia
Moon Probe
Sir:
Re the Pioneer moon rocket [Oct. 20]: Can the educators in the U.S. claim any credit for the partial success of the moon rocket, or are they credited only with the failures?
CARL CAMPBELL
Shippensburg, Pa.
Sir:
You say "in three minutes [the Pioneer moon rocket] was gone from sight, truly free, reaching up to where no man-made thing had ever touched." On Oct. 16, 1957 some of my colleagues and I launched artificial meteors from an Aerobee rocket at Holloman Air Force Base at about 300,000-ft. height and with speeds up to 50,000 ft. per second. At least one of these pellets has now made the tour around the sun.
F. ZWICKY Professor of Astrophysics California Institute of Technology Pasadena, Calif.
Sir:
It looks as if the rocket boys have their hand deep in the till and are freely indulging their very human desire to play with fireworks. It is time for someone who still retains a spark of sanity to tell us the truth: that we are spending billions—with little or no chance of realizing any practical return—at a time when we desperately need to balance the budget and check inflation. As for going to the moon, an astronomer, once asked at a lecture whether anything would be gained by sending a man to the moon, said: "Yes, we would be rid of another moron."
FLOYD YOUNG Carlsbad, Calif.
Sir:
Fortunately for him, TIME, Oct. 20 does not identify the "Air Force colonel" whose estimate of the firing of the moon-probe rocket was expressed in such foulmouthed banality. If this represents the mental and moral level of those who are playing with the terrible new weapons of destruction, God have pity on us.
(THE REV.) ALBERT P. STAUDERMAN The Lutheran Philadelphia
Sir: