Small Doses of Torture
Sir:
… I consider the current crusade against the Air Force’s survival school [Sept. 19] as illadvised, misinformed and dangerous.
Last January I went through the course at Stead with the RB-36 crew that I was on at the time. It was no picnic, but I saw no brutality or needless suffering on anyone’s part. The instruction, demonstration and problems were pertinent and well presented, and had the invaluable effect of giving the trainees … a good inkling of and preparation for what to expect.
. . . The Stead school was the best training that I had while in the Air Force, and I’m sure all the other men who have been through it regard it with as much respect as I do.
MALCOLM G. STEVENSON, A.F.R.
Upper Montclair, N.J.
Sir:
Your summing up of the torture program at Stead Air Force Base . . . expressed the thoughts of thousands of Air Force mothers like myself who would be accused of sentimentality for saying it …
MRS. EDMUND MAHON
Grosvenor Dale, Conn.
Sir:
. . . You can’t explain to anyone, or show him either, how he will react emotionally to Communist prisoner-handling methods . . . so how can you expect a man to harden himself to unusual conditions by watching instructors whip off a routine demonstration in which the student can take no part?
In analyzing the training at Stead Air Force Base, many of the “tortures” listed are not tortures in the popular sense of the word; they are physical discomforts. Millions, that’s right, millions of men have undergone the same sensations in the ordinary course of duty. The comparisons may not be exact, but I can personally guarantee a decided similarity. For example, many an infantryman has slept in a water-filled foxhole for “hours of darkness”; frozen, greasy hamburger or spaghetti in the same condition has been eaten (albeit, without much relish) by the same infantrymen; and if anyone thinks a hot, dusty, cramped medium tank on the Sahara Desert is any picnic, let him try it; while we are about it, let’s not forget the unpleasantness of a 12-in. gun turret firing support missions for the Marines. As to that which can truly be classed as torture, the effect of such methods can be materially negated by actual training somewhat resembling the original combined with good physical conditioning. As to the mental strain, any mature individual (or one conditioned to it) could let slanderous talk about his wife or the physical makeup of his naked body exposed to captors fall unheeded on a closed and disciplined mind.
The Air Force should be commended, not condemned, for realizing that their duties by their very nature do not normally subject airmen to extreme physical discomfort. This is their answer to the problem. If it is not the best, let the detractors devise and recommend a better one. We are face to face with the reality that normal training methods have proved inadequate.
P. D. REISSNER JR.
Captain, U.S.M.C.
Santa Ana, Calif.
Sir:
Your article simply appalls me. The staggering question it brings to my mind: Is the Western World Christian or not?
While you most aptly grasp the shortcomings of administering torture to create immunity, there is also the frightening thought: What is it doing to the men instructed to administer it? It will surely shape characters more dangerous by far than lack of character could be. One begins to wonder how many cruel Nazis were blameless, but were trained into their jobs in this manner . . .
ALICE WIERSMA-CLAYTON
Bloemendaal, Holland
Sir:
. . . Have any colonels or majors given thought to a school where servicemen would be shot so they would know how to act when wounded or dead?
C. R. TREYENS
Norwood, Ohio
Sir:
On every count is the procedure at Stead indefensible: 1) these men may never be in the situation for which they are (presumably) being conditioned; 2) what they can or cannot endure now is no index to their reaction one, three, ten years from now, should they at some time become P.O.W.s. Physical and psychological factors influencing them between now and that time may change the whole course of their behavior, especially under stress; 3) who knows what new and more diabolical treatment may have been devised at some future time, for which these victims have had no “rehearsal”?
HERMINE H. VAN GELDER
Berkeley, Calif.
Planetary Missionaries
Sir:
Re “Space Theology” [Sept. 19]. I suggest future space explorers, after planting the flag, check for apple trees and snakes. On Mars, baptismal water can be obtained from canals. But will Flash Gordon make a good Christian emissary ?
CHARLES J. PORT
Los Angeles
Sir:
Granting that there is life on other planets, why should anyone assume that the inhabitants know nothing of God and that it would be up to us to teach them salvation? After all, the infinite God created the infinite universe, and we have no monopoly on truth. It doesn’t seem likely that we, on this pinpoint in space, should be chosen as the favored few. I’m sure there must be others who are much more deserving!
MRS. PAULA BANNISTER
Collinsville, Ill.
La Vie en Rose
Sir:
Your amusing account [Sept. 19] of the statements of Messrs. Malone and Ellender is revealing of the navieté of some of our rulers. No one will suspect that these gentlemen saw the U.S.S.R. through pink glasses, but is it possible they saw through vodka glasses? . . .
LEO. L. ROCKWELL
Hamilton, N.Y.
Sir:
. . . Stupidity is one of the most fundamental of human rights, and a United States Senator certainly has his rights.
ARVO TAAGEPERA
Acton, Ont.
Sir:
I am not quarreling with your reporting of the facts concerning the Congressmen on whom you choose to report; I am merely condemning the general impression which the article tends to convey: that Congressmen generally are frivolous, and that congressional junkets are undertaken for the sole purpose of publicity; this I do not believe.
I believe you are rendering a distinct disservice to your public by publishing this sort of article.
HARRIS E. THURBER
Middlebury, Vt.
Sir:
… If loose-lipped legislators can’t be muzzled, they should be hobbled, so that at least we may be spared the indignity of having vacationing Senators and Representatives hopping around and through the Iron Curtain with a foot in their mouths.
THOMAS M. WILSON
Detroit
The Tension of Change (Contd.)
Sir:
. . . After reading your magnificent write-up on Thurgood Marshall [Sept. 19], I positively feel like shouting to the whole world —hallelujah!
A recent trip South had so thoroughly demoralized my race pride and spirit that I felt I just couldn’t go back to teaching Sunday school . . .
DOROTHY M. ORR
Chicago
Sir:
. . . We here in the South realize, as you in the North with your under 10% of wealthier type of Negro fail to do, that our Negroes are much better off competing among themselves and with teachers of their own race who understand their problems. Studies of recently desegregated schools, notably in Washington, D.C., have proved that while there is no racial difference in intelligence, there is a definite cultural lag and wide variance in home environment that place the Negro children several grades lower than the white child of the same age. Putting these two groups together would not be of psychological benefit to either group . . .
E. MOORE
Auburn, Ala.
Sir:
. . . Perhaps with men like Marshall and constitutional guidance, we are finally on the threshold of the true sophistication and adult reasoning that our founding fathers perceived, so that tomorrow our emotions may be more fully controlled by the intellect.
HARRY MASS
Burbank, Calif.
Sir:
. . . Your eulogy to desegregation-with-a-club [reveals] that where the Negro population is less than 10%, segregation is no problem, but as the percentage increases so does the problem. Soooo, the Negro is most liked where he least is …
MILES HAMMOND
Williston, Fla.
Sir:
I believe that the following is sufficient to show that we Southerners agree 100% with our Northern friends:
If anyone, North or South, says that the Negro is his equal—the Southerner agrees!
If anyone, North or South, says that the Negro is not his equal—the Southerner agrees also!
This should be a fine start toward general peace and quiet.
FREDERICK A. STEINER
New Orleans
Sir:
. . . Your report card was not only most timely, but truly took courage to print . . .
HARRY FARKAS
Cleveland Heights, Ohio
Sir:
. . . TIME’S political viewpoint is pretty stupid, but your coverage of humanity and those who fight for its basic principles more than compensates for that.
JUDITH E. GROSSE
Toledo
Church Credit
Sir:
The estimate of “that old village atheist”, Sinclair Lewis, erred only in regard to height. Whereas some of these new “churches” [Sept. 19] reflect a Middle Dow-Jones influence, or what’s new in well-designed factories, others resemble surrealistic storm cellars . . .
DAVID E. WILLIAMS
Long Beach, Calif.
Sir:
. . . Editors delight in pictures of paintings with the painter named; in sculptures with the sculptor named; in articles on trials with the lawyer named; in music with the composer named; in books with the author named, etc., etc. But the poor architect . . . must, alas, take a back seat to the photographer who snaps his masterpiece . . .
Who designed those eleven churches?
ALFRED D. REID
Pittsburgh
¶ No snub intended. The architects and churches: San Francisco’s Corpus Christi Roman Catholic Church, Mario J. Ciampi; Clifton, N.J.’s St. Philip the Apostle, Arthur Rigolo; Columbus, Ohio’s St. Stephen’s Episcopal Church, Brooks and Coddington; Edmond, Okla.’s Hopewell Baptist Church, Bruce Goff; St. Louis’ Church of the Resurrection of Our Lord, Murphy and Mackey; Springfield, Mass.’s Congregation Beth El, Percival Goodman; Tucson’s Faith Lutheran Church, Arthur T. Brown; Pacific Palisades, Calif.’s St. Matthew’s Episcopal Church, A. Quincy Jones and Frederick E. Emmons; Midland, Mich.’s St. John’s Lutheran Church, Alden B. Dow; Houston’s St. John the Divine, Fred J. MacKie and Karl F. Kamrath with Hiram A. Salisbury; Los Angeles’ St. Brigid’s, Alfred V. Chaix and Ralph W. Johnson.—ED.
The Complex Man
Sir:
I have never been able to decide whose theories are more incredible—those of Sigmund Freud, or his disciple, Ernest Jones [Sept. 19]. Freud invented the Oedipus complex, but Jones went him one better with a grandmother complex . . .
ANDREW SALTER
New York City
Sir:
… In 1925 Sir James Purves-Stewart, at that time probably the most widely known neurologist in England, freely granted Freud’s great contribution to psychiatry. “But,” he said, “Freud’s theories are like the bathroom in a house—highly valuable on occasion but no place to stay all day in.”
D’ARCY PRENDERGAST
Toronto
Sir:
. . . The review of Ernest Jones’s book on his master, Sigmund Freud, comes close to being either idiocy or malicious nonsense.
Freud was a man who, more than 50 years ago, shook the manners, the morals and the art of the world and remodeled them into a pattern that exists today. How we fight with Freud is only a measure of his continuing strength . . .
GABRIEL SEGALL, M.D.
Los Angeles
Sir:
Does some Freudian neurosis lie behind your determination to publish news of psychology (a science) under the heading of Medicine ?
JACK BURNEY
Dallas
Space Man (Contd.)
Sir:
… I wonder if other readers noticed the psychological tie-in between Colonel Stapp’s stern parents and his obviously masochistic choice of career [Sept. 12]. The religiously strict father, and the mother who “tried to strap the unruly youngster in bed,” surely drove him to rebel (in pursuit of scientific studies), but later to conform, strapping himself into the rocket sled in death-bent compensation. The many protective straps that he has invented, as well as other devices, show a fortunate outcome of an emotionally unhealthy childhood.
JEANETTE JUSTICE, R.N.
San Luis Obispo, Calif.
Joining the Group
Sir:
The group nouns suggested by the Oxford dons for ladies of the evening [Sept. 19] were felicitous indeed. Here is another with a cockney flavor: “A smelting of ores.”
J. MURRAY BARBOUR
East Lansing, Mich.
Sir:
… A can of tomatoes?
KELLY CHODA
Stanford, Calif.
Sir:
“An expanse of broads.”
ARTHUR LESLIE
Montreal
¶ Or “a peal of Jezebels”?—ED.
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