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Since first appearing on TIME's cover as a solemn 3-year-old, Elizabeth has tended to be serious, not glamorous. Yet her story inspired in our readers respect for how she has guided Britain with grace and dignity

Queen Elizabeth II [April 17] represents the most important treasure of Britain: class. May she reign for another 20 years. Happy birthday!
Daniel C. Ammann
Zurich

Having grown accustomed to your derogatory, ill-informed and prejudiced articles on the royal family, usually relegated to the People page, I was surprised by the balance, objectivity and depth achieved by your report on the Queen's 80th birthday. Congratulations on an informative and thoroughly professional piece of journalism. I hope you will continue to treat the Queen with the respect she has earned and so richly deserves.
David Hipshon
Twickenham, England

I must take exception to questions raised about the relevance of the British monarchy. Anyone watching U.S. President George W. Bush post 9/11 can appreciate the value of a nonpolitical constitutional monarch. Bush accused his opponents of being unpatriotic, presenting himself as the embodiment of the American nation: a role for a constitutional monarch. It is significant that Margaret Thatcher—no shrinking violet—feared no politician yet freely admitted that she faced her weekly briefing sessions with the Queen with trepidation. I greatly enjoyed your story about the Queen, but please don't dismiss her role as "self-evidently nonsensical." Let the monarchy evolve.
Michael Alan Peate
Ottawa

In your excellent article on her majesty, "A Woman's Work Is Never Done," you quoted a man saying about Elizabeth's position, "Helluva job she's got. I wouldn't want it." That reminds me of the retort an old northern English countryman made about the job: "I never saw it advertised."
John McLeod
Saskatoon, Canada

A General Disagreement
It's a pity that the american public was not privileged to hear the dissenting voices of professional soldiers such as Lieut. General Greg Newbold [April 17] before incompetent civilians like Bush, Donald Rumsfeld and Dick Cheney—and our own Tony Blair—committed the U.S. and its allies to a disastrous war. I wonder whether Bush & Co. ever go to the many war monuments just down the road from the White House and look at the memorials to a terrible waste of good men.
David Landau
Peacehaven, England

The bush administration repeats lessons from our recent past. Both the Bay of Pigs invasion and the Vietnam War were also partly caused by something called groupthink, in which decision-makers consider advice only from those who back one set of ideas. One of the hallmarks of an educated person is willingness to critically evaluate evidence for and against hypotheses: in this case, that Iraq had weapons of mass destruction and was supporting al-Qaeda. For that, I give him an F in critical thinking and in leadership.
Joseph Melcher
St. Cloud, Minnesota, U.S.

I don't care how many generals have joined Newbold in criticizing Defense Secretary Rumsfeld. Iraq's actions were not "peripheral to the real threat," as Newbold claims. Saddam Hussein wanted to be the venture capitalist of Islamic extremism and fuel its fire. Iraq today may be a down-and-dirty training ground for terrorists, but Saddam's Iraq was their five-star hotel and bank. Things in Iraq aren't ideal, but they were worse before.
Kenneth A. Rumbarger
Trooper, Pennsylvania, U.S.

As a former infantry marine who served under Newbold's broad command from 1995 to '99, I would like to express my deepest respect and gratitude for his speaking out publicly. I supported the war in Afghanistan and was considering going back to the corps until the Bush Administration started rattling the saber for Iraq. Now if people ask me how I can be a marine and not support the war, I can say, "Ask General Newbold the same question."
Vincent Babcock
Sergeant, U.S.M.C. Marquette, Michigan, U.S.

Olmert's Ambitions
Prime minister Ehud Olmert states that it is time for Israel to end the struggle with the Palestinians with the goal of "living in peace" [April 17]. The delusions of politicians never cease to amaze me. Can Olmert explain how he would achieve peace by unilaterally setting the border, thereby annexing as much as half of the West Bank and Jerusalem and leaving 4 million Palestinians in a series of disconnected cantons?
Mike Barnes
Watford, England

Up from the Ooze
Michael J. Novacek's viewpoint [April 17] sustains the old-fashioned belief that biological evolution is incompatible with the idea of a Creator. There is incontrovertible evidence for biological evolution. Why could there not be a God who brought life into being and gave it the ability to evolve by what we call natural selection?
Ikechukwu Obialo Azuonye
Purley, England

The coverage of the fishapod was excellent [April 17]. The classification of species gives the impression of significant changes having occurred within a single generation, a misunderstanding often used by antievolutionists. But a species is a snapshot that represents a lineage at a convenient point. Every child has differences from its parents, and over a great number of generations some changes will spread through a population, owing to selective breeding. The fishapod is a valuable find as a missing link—another snapshot in a continuum of change.
Robert Fraser
Kingston, Canada

Here we go again. one transitional fossil is found, and—presto!—Darwinism is undeniable. Paleontologist Novacek says some people will never be convinced and conveniently ignores the growing noncreationist voices of variance. The fishapod could be a link—or it could be a strange animal like a platypus. Without a worldwide fossil record of continuous transformation and demonstrable mechanisms of transition, it is far from a slam dunk for Darwin's theory in action.
Michael Camp
Poulsbo, Washington, U.S.

Still Struggling in Kashmir
Strangely enough, beauty with brains and guts is what comes to my mind when I think of Kashmir [April 17]. My assumptions about the war-broken land were completely proved wrong when I visited two years ago. I had expected to find dismay and destruction in this problematic region; instead I found an optimistic and budding economy trying to put its past behind it. To see Kashmir in ruins again pains me, but I know it will make a comeback.
Urfa Suhaib Khan
Lahore

The Price of Democracy?
You say that Bangladesh has been growing at 5% per year, and that that's wonderful [April 10]. Really? Any undergraduate student of economics can tell you that increased income is no measure of well-being. The acceptance of criminal behavior—murder, rape and arson—that has come with the acceptance of a confrontational two-party system means that well-being is lower today than it was under autocracy. That's not surprising: democratization and violence tend to go together. Indeed, the connection between democracy and violence is an ancient one: Thucydides and Plato were the first to put it forward.
Iftekhar Sayeed
Dhaka

Secrets From the Sand
The unveiling of a 1,700-year-old copy of The Gospel of Judas brings to mind a previous discovery of ancient texts. TIME's April 15, 1957, cover story reported on what the delicate, 2,000-year-old Dead Sea Scrolls revealed about early Christianity: "Since a Bedouin shepherd boy named Muhammad adh-Dhib ('The Wolf') first stumbled on them just 10 years ago in a cave near Qumran (he had hoped to find buried treasure), the scrolls have stirred up perhaps the most vigorous debate in Christianity since Darwin ... The majority verdict: the scrolls do not shake the foundations of Christianity, but they greatly contribute to the understanding of those foundations ... The fragments ... make a strange kind of shadow land. Some carry familiar Biblical names ... others are single words or phrases, hanging like abrupt cries in the air of history. All are tackled by the scholars ... At one end of the room, the fragments are prepared for mounting. Those too brittle to be uncurled are placed in a humidifier ... Then they are cleaned of sand, mold and marl (a clayey sediment) with fine camel's-hair brushes ... Some are so delicate that special brushes of only a few hairs must be used; and these fragments bear warnings—Don't Touch or, occasionally, DON'T BREATHE!" Read more at timearchive.com.

A Double-Edged Sword
Denis Donaldson, a former official of the I.R.A.'s political wing who admitted to having spied on the organization for the British, was found murdered in Ireland on April 4. The I.R.A. denied any involvement, but TIME's Jan. 10, 1972, cover story explained how the group's brutality could be turned on its own people: "On the red brick walls surrounding vacant lots, the children of Belfast—perhaps the most tragic victims of the war—have scrawled afresh the old slogans of idealism and hatred: 'Up the I.R.A.' and 'Informers Beware' ... British command announced that children playing with toy guns run the risk of being shot. The reason for the statement was that children in Ulster these days sometimes carry real guns ... The backroom bombmakers rarely venture out, leaving the dirty work to carriers, most of them inexperienced teenagers. Six have died in bombing accidents this winter ... A strange mixture of secrecy and foolhardy openness marks the I.R.A. ... While I.R.A. men still execute informers, there are telephone numbers to call for accurate information on [which wing of the I.R.A. is] claiming credit for an operation. The war is one of both violence and propaganda." Read more at timearchive.com.