Letters: Mar. 25, 1966

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More than Barbed Wire

Sir: TIME'S cover story on Eastern Europe [March 18] is excellent. You have compressed an enormous amount of perception into the judgments you express; what's even more difficult, you are sweeping without being superficial and as accurate on the fact as you are authentic on the feel of this complex region.

GEORGE G. LORINCZI Milwaukee

Sir: Your objectivity is refreshing, and is, indeed, a crosscurrent in the sea of biased, erroneous information about Eastern Europe with which the American people have been flooded.

GEORGE M. TELATNIK Student

Soviet and East European Institute Niagara University Niagara University, N.Y.

Sir: So the captive citizens of Eastern Europe don't want to defect! Can they travel without leaving families and property behind? Where in Eastern Europe may they fill out application blanks for immigrant visas? Doesn't TIME know that last year West European governments v/ere unable to arrange for employment of unemployed Polish workmen because no one would guarantee that the Poles would return to Poland? Doesn't the fact that millions of people may not buy one-way tickets arouse indignation?

NORMAN ROTHFELD New York City

Sir: As a European, I commend you for that exquisite pictorial section on Eastern Europe. It shows Americans that Eastern Europe still has the "Old World" touch and the glittering night life that European tourists cherish, and it demonstrates that Eastern Europe is not all barbed wire just because it is Communist.

EDWARD R. HUBER Philadelphia

Exploring the Universe

Sir: Many thanks for capturing in your Schmidt cover [March 11] the essence and excitement of man's closest approach to creation-his deepest penetration yet into the fundamentals of a universe being revealed by astrophysics.

MICHAEL A. G. MICHAUD Washington, D.C.

Sir: When the French invaded Lombardia, the people went to Leonardo da Vinci crying: "Maestro, there is fire, death and ruin in our cities." // maestro, holding a fly in his hand, answered calmly: "People always were stupid and always will be. More interesting is what I have just discovered-that a fly uses his hind legs to drive his flight." It is still interesting to learn about nature's miracles of nature. RUDOLF HUB Lima, Peru

Sir: An excellent story on Schmidt's quasars and discussion of the possibility that they may have been ejected from our galaxy. Reports on the death of this idea have been greatly exaggerated. The energy problem is considerably simpler on this basis than on the conventional basis of immense distance. The receding hydrogen cloud discovered by Koehler in front of 3C 273 can more plausibly be interpreted as ejected from our galaxy, in the same manner as in other galaxies, than as part of the Virgo cluster of galaxies. The local model of quasars also has the advantage of accounting for the far-out locations of radio sources associated with other galaxies.

JAMES TERRELL

Los Alamos Scientific Laboratory Los Alamos, N. Mex.

Sir: Your story on quasi-stellar sources is well researched. It may not be amiss to note that while Schmidt has concentrated on the spectra of QSS, others have contributed more importantly to their identification and photometry.