Crime & Punishment
Sir:
I was much interested in your March 21 story on Caryl Chessman, but I believe that his considerable lack of charm and/or innocence has little to do with the case. It seems clear that in a civilized world, capital punishment must be abolished because: 1) there is no proof that it is a deterrent to crime, 2) there is increasing proof that insanity, if only the temporary variety, is always present in a major crime, 3) there is always the ghastly possibility of mistaken conviction, and 4) individuals and societies who kill their fellow men, "legally" or otherwise, suffer a very real if subconscious sense of guilt.
ANNE HEYWOOD New York City
SIR:
IN ARTICLE ON CAPITAL PUNISHMENT, PLACEMENT OF QUOTATION FROM MY STATEMENT COULD LEAVE IMPLICATION THAT I AM AMONG THE "DEFENDERS OF CAPITAL PUNISHMENT." I
DID SAY THAT "THE POSSIBILITY OF DETERRENCE PROVIDES THE ONLY VIABLE, MORAL JUSTIFICATION." BUT I WENT ON TO ARGUE THAT THE STATISTICS ( WHICH YOU CITE) WOULD INDICATE THAT THERE ARE NO DISCERNIBLE DETERRENTS AND HENCE THERE IS NO JUSTIFICATION FOR THE DEATH PENALTY. I SAID FURTHER THAT SINCE INTENTIONAL UNJUSTIFIED HOMICIDE IS MURDER AND SINCE DETERRENCE IS LACKING AS A JUSTIFICATION FOR CAPITAL PUNISHMENT, PUBLIC EXECUTION IS MURDER NO LESS THAN PRIVATE UNJUSTIFIED KILLING.
(THE RT. REV.) JAMES A. PIKE
BISHOP OF CALIFORNIA SAN FRANCISCO
Sir:
Judging from the logic expressed by many Californians, the sensible thing to do is to execute Edmund Brown and elect Caryl Chessman the next Governor of the state. LANNY R. MIDDINGS Los Angeles
Sir:
I never write letters to magazines or other papers as I am no crank writer, but I was more than disturbed and disgusted when you permitted a picture of Caryl Chessman on your cover. How could you glorify such a despicable criminal?
LEONORA P. JOSEPH
New York City
Sir:
TIME deserves a great big pat on the back for its Chessman cover story. This was objective reporting at its finest. No one who reads it need now believe that California is gassing Chessman for something he wrote, and not once was he referred to as "convict-author."
JACKSON PARKS Balboa, Calif.
Beautiful English
Sir:
We are distressed at an underlying implication apparent in TIME'S article, "A Good English Teacher" [March 14], an implication derogatory to English teachers in general. It is that English teachers are not attractive or young: "A pretty, blue-eyed young woman, who might be mistaken for a home economics teacher." Here are photos of Gwen Hibbard and Betty De Young on our staff; they do teach English.
ELAINE CLARKE SHIRLEY A. SCHRIBER Central High School Grand Rapids, Mich.
Sir:
Karin De Long's accomplishments in her English classes certainly inspire me. If she can do that much in 14 hours a day with her four classes of 100 students, I should be able to do the same thing with my five classes of 160 students in--let's see, now--22 hours and 24 minutes a day. The Lord help me when that i?2nd one strolls through the door, though.
BROWNLEE W. ELLIOTT Milford, Mich.
Sir:
We don't want teachers who must work 14 hours a day, 6'/2 days a week in order to do the kind of job that Teacher De Long is doing. When does a teacher like this find time to study, to further her own professional background, to lead the kind of "life of the mind" that differentiates the professional educator from the transient?
RICHARD J. MUELLER Iowa City, Iowa
Early Frostbiters
Sir:
Regarding your Feb. 15 article on frostbite sailing: we submit that the following is the first account of frostbite sailing in America, as recorded by William Bradford in the History of Plimoth Plantation, dated 1620. It describes the entrance of the Mayflower into Duxbury Bay.
"After some houres sailing, it begane to snow & raine, & about ye middle of ye afternoone, ye wind increased, & ye sea became very rough, and they broake their rudder, & it was as much as 2. men could doe to steere her with a cupple of oares. But their pillott bad them be of good cheere, for he saw ye harbor; but ye storm increasing, & night drawing on, they bore what saile they could to gett in, while they could see. But herewith they broake their mast in 3. peeces, & their saill fell over bord, in a very grown sea . . ." It appears that frostbiting has not changed much in 340 years.
L. H. BENNETT, M.D. Captain
The Frostbite Society Duxbury, Mass.
"Enjoyable Torments"
Sir:
Congratulations on your March 14 cover story concerning Ingmar Bergman. It is a psychological study in depth that investigates the connections between subtle personal experience and artistic creation.
HANS STERNHEIM Somerville, N.J.
Sir:
Ingmar Bergman is obviously sick in mind. And his attempts at psychological catharsis, far from being art, are as repulsive as the contents of an invalid's bedpan.
LOR A D. REITER Simpson, Kans.
I Sir:
Why was Actress In| grid Thulin, most | interesting Bergman| made star of his most spectacular films (The -Magician, Wild Straw; berries, Brink of Life), left out of your roundup of his "stock company"? This hardly seems fair.
NIELS LARSEN Madrid
Sir:
What thinking Swede has not experienced most of Ingmar Bergman's torments? We just have to get there the hard way. Watching his movies resembles the eating of an excellent 15-course dinner. One enjoys it immensely but is left with a feeling of slight nausea. One would not sit through it again.
CAROLA BOBERG San Jose, Calif.
Adam's Children
Sir:
You presented Brazil's Berlino de Andrade as an outstanding father of 36 children (Jan. n). There is an even much more spectacular case on record. In the old church of Boenningheim in Wuerttemberg (Germany) hangs a remarkable painting, more than six feet high, in the style of the Middle Ages. The upper part shows the Nativity; the lower half depicts a man and a woman and between them 53 smaller figures, the children of this one couple, all born of the same mother.
LEOPOLD R. HIRSCH
New Orleans
Sir:
I appreciate the fact that TIME found the national convention of the Department of Audio-Visual Instruction of the National Education Association of sufficient interest to give it space in your issue of March 14. I am also aware that your combined problems of condensation and emphasis for reader interest are very difficult.
However, I must protest vigorously the result of this condensation in connection with your story on me. You chose to emphasize one sentence out of a 20-page paper, and have implied that I suggested that the possible elimination of the teacher and/or the school system by technology is a good thing. On the contrary, I was suggesting exactly the opposite, merely pointing out that, in the wrong hands, instructional technology poses a threat to certain basic human values.
JAMES D. FINN
President DAVI of N.E.A.
Washington
Union Jack over Hawaii
Sir:
Your March 14 picture of Sargo's crewmen hoisting the state flag of Hawaii at the North Pole has led to argument in my "local." Do we, or do we not, perceive our Union Jack in the top corner? Some crusty types aver that Hawaii is already opting out of the Union and seeking membership in the Commonwealth.
P. J. DOHERTY London fl While Hawaii has never been a British possession, its state flag has the British Union Jack in the upper left corner. According to legend, the flag was designed for King Kamehameha I by an English sea captain.--ED.
Stratum Cymbal
Sir:
How dare you place physicists in the same social stratum as "horse players, opera lovers, bridge careerists and sports-car nuts" in your March 21 book review of New Maps of Hell. Men have lost their lives for lesser provocation than this. Physics is a respected profession and not an eccentric hobby. Sports-car nut indeed!
JOHN EGGERT Huntington, N.Y.
Circulation Peak
Sir:
If God reads TIME, which he must find a business necessity with 3,000,000 earthlings doing so, what laughter the gibberish in the note on Theologian Karl Earth's new book, The Humanity of God [March 7], must have prompted.
STEPHEN THOMAS Cambridge, Mass.
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