Echoes of Testing Sir: TIME'S May 4 cover story giving in depth background on the need for the U.S. to resume nuclear testing in the atmosphere was brilliant.
It sums up and gives world-wide circulation to the mostly unspoken convictions of many of us, that those who want freedom, and are willing and able to fight for it, will keep it—without a fight.
T. V. O'GRADY Buffalo
Sir: Your article was a sickly effort to justify the nuclear tests, an effort that exuded your own sense of guilt and tragic error.
(THE REV.) JOHN W. PARRISH Ferndale, Mich.
Sir:
After reading Ogle's statement that the world is a scary place, I feel that perhaps it would be better to end it with a bang rather than with a whimper.
ROBERT F. HALLIGAN Wellesley, Mass.
Sir:
I wholeheartedly agree with U.S. resumption of atmospheric nuclear testing. The only sad thing is that this testing did not come about much sooner.
MARIS CIRULIS Glendale, Mo.
Sir:
TIME'S report was an apologia for an act of immorality. To forswear responsibility for resumption of testing by saying we had no choice is a calculated and shrewdly executed move in gross self-deception. Do we take our lead from Soviet treachery ?
ROBERT L. HOLMES Austin, Texas
Sir:
In your story on nuclear testing, you tell how when the first atomic bomb was tested in 1945, Physicist J. Robert Oppenheimer was reminded of a passage from the Hindus' sacred Bhagavad Gita: "If the radiance of a thousand suns were burst into the sky, that would be like the splendor of the Mighty One."
Oppenheimer, a Sanskrit scholar, was struck a moment later by another passage from the same sacred writing: "I am become Death, the shatterer of worlds."
CHRISTOPHER Z. HOBSON Cambridge, Mass.
Shooting at Sparrows
Sir:
Like many who have had the opportunity of knowing him well over a period of time, I was very grateful for your cover story on Karl Earth [April 20]. I felt that your coverage, the appreciation, the attacks, the comparisons with Paul Tillich and Reinhold Niebuhr—the two theologians of Earth's stature in America—were good and fair and just. But there was one thing. When I was doing my doctoral dissertation on Calvin under Earth, I once decided to use the power of Calvin's mind to destroy a petty modern critic. Earth put his hand on my sleeve and said, "Do not use a cannon to kill a sparrow!" And so I left the sparrow, the minor critic, out of my study. It is somewhat regrettable that TIME gave so much space to the many American sparrows who enjoy camping on Earth's front lawn.
CHARLES A. M. HALL Dean of the Chapel Wellesley College Wellesley, Mass.
Sir:
It is obvious that Dr. Karl Earth has advanced and progressive thoughts regarding God's relation to man and man's relation to God.
Thinking men and women want religion redefined, and this demand is compelling religion to re-evaluate itself, slowly but surely.
ALFRED LEVERENZ Chicago
Who's on Third
Sir:
If, as you say, Charles W. Eliot and William Greenleaf Eliot were first cousins [April 27], their grandsons, Thomas Hopkinson Eliot and T. S. Eliot, would be third cousins, not fifth cousins, wouldn't they ?