Letters given biographies and statements of all the candidates. Personal contacts are neither needed nor desired. 2. When multiple candidates are to be selected (as in our elections), a ballot marked for just one candidate is called a "bullet." A candidate representing onecause can gain advantage by asking her/ his voters to bullet. This is permitted, but is it fair? 1 suggest that all ballots to be counted should be complete. 3. Authorities should publish complete election returns. This would abet voter interest. 4. Authorities should never try to influence the voting. The statement in regard to single-interest candidates probably backfired. CHARLES S.L. ROBINSON '34, S.M. '35
Parker, Pa.
Thomas Mann: A Footnote I read with great interest the article on Thomas Mann ("Thomas Mann, LL.D., Harvard, and the Third Reich," by Reginald Phelps, July-August, page 65). I want to comment on two statements. 1. The author refers to the "Jewish Professor Sommerfcld." In fact, Sommerfeld was bom in Fast Prussia and his family was Protestant. I le made himself unpopular with the Nazis because of his antagonism to the tegime and his distaste of antiSemitism. He was harassed and vilified but continued as professor of theoretical physics until his official retirement at age 67, in 1935, and continued teaching until 1940. He had urged that lleisenberg should succeed him, but the authorities "punished" him by appointing a man who was a bad physicist but a good Nazi. Sommerfcld continued living in Munich until his death in 1951. 2. The author points out that Mann and lleisenberg had similar problems but that lleisenberg stayed in Germany whereas Mann emigrated. The problems were definitely not similar: Mann had a Jewish wife (daughter of the mathematics professor Alfred Pringsheim), lleisenberg did not. Thus emigration was a necessity for Mann unless he was willing to abandon his wife, but Heisenbcrg had the choice. Like other famous non-Nazi Germans (such as composer Richard Strauss), he considered it a patriotic duty to stay in Germany and work for the German government The justification for this attitude is complex and controversial, but we will never know whether Mann would have acted like Heisenbcrg if he had had the same choice. A L F R E D H. SOMMER
Wellcslcy, Massachusetts During and after the exodus of physicists 250
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from Germany in those fateful days, as Dr. H.G.B. Casimir informs us in his valuable book, Haphazard Reality, ".Sommerfcld continued at Munich as an outstanding teacher, but he did not find any more pupils of the calibre of a Pauli or a Bethe." Dr. Casimir recalls that later, when Sommerfcld went to Holland to receive the Lorentz Medal of the Dutch Academy in Amsterdam in 1939, the professor said: "When I learned about the measures against my Jewish colleagues my first reaction was 'when this life is possible in Germany, then I would rather die.' But somehow life goes on." Author Reginald Phelps erred in describing Werner lleisenberg as "a protege of Finstcin." While it is certainly true that Heisenbcrg became an assistant to two professors with Jewish backgrounds (Max Born in Gottingcn and Niels Bohr in Copenhagen), his relation to Einstein was more that of a scientific and philosophical adversary (on the issue of determinism, as were Born and Bohr) who recognized and respected the brilliance and depth of his adversary. On the other hand, he courageously supported the teaching of Finstein's theory of relativity despite vicious attacks against himself by Stark and others. Incidentally, although Heisenbcrg did not come to Harvard's Tercentenary cele-
bration in 1936, he did visit the United States just before the outbreak of the Second World War, at which time Enrico Fermi tried unsuccessfully to persuade him to make his home in the States. Some interesting reading about this period is to be found in Elisabeth Heisenberg's book. Inner Exile, as well as in Werner Heisenberg's Physics and Beyond. The latter book was recommended to me years ago by a Harvard classmate at our 25th reunion. FRANK R. TANCJHKKI.INI '48
Associate Professor of Pl/ysirs College of die Holy Cross Worcester, Mass.
The Beatles When in his article on the Beatles ("Just a Band That Made It Very Big," July-August, page 39) Steven Stark says that "a song like 'All You Need Is Love' seems a relic of a bygone age," I have to demur. Listen to the lyrics ("Nothing you can do that can't be done," a kind of self-consuming statement); to the tonality of the music (a kind of Bronx cheer with the horns); to the quotations of love songs at the end, all the way from "Grcensleeves" to "She Loves You" (a kind of history of the search for love)—then tell me that Lcnnou and McCartney meant to say that love will solve everything! There is a
Chapter and Xerse ,4 correspondence corner for not-so-famous lost words. Alee Dawson wonders who first described England and the United States as "two countries divided by a common language." Marjoric Hamilton would like to know who wrote the poem "Somebody's Mother," which begins: "The woman was old and ragged and grey. . . ." William Kobinson wants IDfindout who wrote: "I drink from a wcll/1 did not dig./l enjoy shade from a trec/I did not plant." John Mahoney hopes to learn the source of "knowledge makcth a bloody entrance." Joseph Finder is looking for the source of two quotations, nne to the effect that memorable incidents happen only to those who tell about them, the other—ascribed to Henry Kissinger—that academic politics are so rkrec because the stakes are so small. Kenneth Share would like the text of a poem beginning, "Trees have something else to do beside their treeing,"
Kate Wheeler wants identifications for two poems. The first contains the couplet, "Down in a deep and dark ravine/The black cat sat at a sewing machine"; the second, a parody of a temperance song, ends, "And have you ever seen a sight that is a worse disgrace/Than a man in the gutter with crumbs upon his face?" Thomas Kcman seeks the author and source of: "A face worn down almost to the spirit." Ralph Kaden remembers hearing a late Fifties or eariy Sixties recording of "There's a Hole in the Bucket (Mariah, Marian)" by two male folk singers who sang in close harmony. He would like their names and the name of their group. Marj' Elbert wishes to learn the title and author of a poem beginning: "I'm an autocratic figure in these Democratic states,/A dandy demonstration of hereditary traits. . . ." "Pull for the Shore" (July-August). Marjoric Swindell and Helen Nickerson were the first to identify the hymn of this title, which begins: "Light in the darkness. . . ." Words and music arc by P.P. Bliss.
Inquiries and answers should be directed to Chapter and Verse, Harvard Magazine, 7 Ware Street, Cambridge, Massachusetts 02138.