The Time Is Now

Sir: I spent three days covering the Aug. 28 March on Washington, read everything I could lay my hands on, read all the follow-ups I could find, watched television, listened to the radio, etc., etc.

I am convinced that the American press did itself proud in the coverage of this march. It was a coming of age in covering stories of this type.

And I would add that the finest, most succinct, best summary of the march appears in your Sept. 6 issue. It catches the feel of the day in a very few words.

EARL L. CONN

Editor

Quaker Life

Richmond, Ind.

Sir: I am a Negro, born and reared in the South, although I have been in the North since I finished college ten years ago. I have known rage, humiliation, disgust and despair as well as happier, more positive emotions resulting from interracial experiences. However, when I looked around the crowds at the Lincoln and Washington memorials that Wednesday and saw how many people of ethnic backgrounds other than mine were there to stand with us, I felt an overwhelming sense of gratitude and belonging. I felt proud to be an American, and proud as a Negro to share this common heritage of citizenship.

ALFRIEDA DALY

New York City

Negro Revolution

Sir: My first reaction to your superb story on America's Revolution of 1963 [Aug. 30]: the American Negro is obviously the front runner for TIME'S Man of the Year.

PAUL SCHATT

Phoenix, Ariz.

Sir: A vote of thanks to TIME for honest coverage of the race issue, and to Roy Wilkins and other great Americans, white and colored, for teaching us methods and attitudes that must be adopted generally to save a prejudiced and rapidly shrinking world from self-destruction.

RICHARD STERNER

Stockholm

Sir: You made the statement that some 5,000 Negro troops fought the British in George Washington's army. I have read detailed accounts of the Revolution by historians, and for more than two years of research, I dug into the source materials at one of the finest libraries in the country and did not discover a single Negro soldier in that war. Negro slaves were sometimes used for fortification work, as at Richmond and Charleston.

SAM TILDEN LARKIN

St. Louis

>Negro soldiers fought at Lexington, Concord, Ticonderoga, Bunker Hill, Long Island, White Plains, Trenton, Princeton, Bennington, Brandywine, Stillwater, Bemis Heights, Saratoga, Red Bank, Monmouth, Rhode Island, Savannah, Stony Point, Fort Griswold, Eutaw Springs and Yorktown. A former slave, Peter Salem, shot the British major leading the assault against Bunker Hill in 1775, and later in the war most Northern colonies had both all-Negro and integrated regiments--ED.

At Your Leisure

Sir: Your article on William Devereux Zantzinger [Sept. 6] was quite shocking. When one human being can take the life of another for the price of $500 and six months in jail, at the offender's convenience no less, the time has come for us to take a long and serious look at the practicability of our laws.

This is a most disgusting display of "mock" justice, to say the very least.

JAMES J. NARDOZZI

Seal Beach, Calif.

Background Music

Sir: It was disheartening to see TIME [Aug. 30] devoting two columns to that insipid "tranquilizer," Muzak. It might have its therapeutic value, like television, for those who enjoy being entertained without having to think; but TV has a definite advantage--you can turn it off. It is Muzak's complete blandness and lack of character, which its makers try so hard to achieve, that I find so annoying. God save the day when its "innocent murmurs" pour forth from every lamppost in its attempt to create a euphoria for millions of unsuspecting Americans.

JONATHAN LAITIN

New York City

Mass Participation

Sir: I have attended Mass in Manhattan, Mantua and Manila; while I am hard of hearing, I nevertheless can follow the celebrant throughout the Mass, because I made it my business to learn cathedral Latin. I would rather attend a High Mass, chanted in Latin, than be a spectator at the finest opera. And a pontifical Mass simply sends me into ecstasy. The secret of the appeal to people of the celebration of the Mass is just all this pomp and ceremony in Latin, a universal language If the "litniks" [Aug. 30] succeed in reforming the liturgy to the vernacular then the Roman Catholic Church will have ceased to be a universal church, and the entire liturgy will have lost its meaning to me.

TONY RIEBER

St. Louis

A Fish Wish

Sir: While I was on Christmas Island with the Royal Air Force, I caught three trigger fish (two with a line and one with my bare hands and a piece of broken piping). On each occasion I threw them back in the ocean because their colors design and texture were so fabulous.

Now I read in your article on the hobby of saltwater fish collecting [Aug 30] that I tossed $1,200 back into the drink!

Can anybody spare a tranquilizer?

GERRY JACKSON

Glasgow

The Devil His Due

Sir: I have just read your review of that rather startling book The Nun of Monza [Aug. 23] and was puzzled by the reviewer's comment: "Like everyone else in those days, Sister Virginia believed that Satan and all his devils roamed the world to snare men's souls." To my knowledge, "those days" have not completely vanished' and some are still heeding the admonition of St. Peter, "Be sober, be watchful! For your adversary the devil, as a roaring lion, goes about seeking someone to devour' Resist him, steadfast in the faith."

Our society has reduced the devil to a cute little gremlin with a mischievous grin with the result that we have shockingly reduced our own standards of morality and have very little left to grin about.

Sister Virginia had many problems, to be sure, but she stands correct in her concept of Satan.

SISTER M. ELLEN PATRICE, C.S.A.

Mount Augustine

West Richfield, Ohio

Peace Corpse?

Sir: I read with great interest your article on the senseless slaughter in Colombia [Aug. 23], since the particular attack that you mention took place about an hour and a half from my former Peace Corps site. The bandit chieftain's very words, "It will happen again," have made it impossible to continue my work of community development in that area.

It is a real tragedy when a few bandits can end a year and a half of work; but no one wants to end up a "peace corpse."

RICHARD A. SIMON

Titiribi, Colombia

Out of the Darkness

Sir: Mrs. Gilliland is truly correct with her statement, "Isn't it a wonderful living memorial?" When she speaks of the donation of her husband's and children's eyes to medical science [Aug. 30]. I am seeing through someone's "living memorial."

Owing to keratoconus (conical cornea) I lost the majority of my vision at the age of 21. I now have 20/20 vision with glasses, following bilateral full-thickness corneal transplants. I will never forget those "unknown donators" who have given me this privilege.

Many people who suffer in semidarkness are waiting for their turn. Your article, I'm sure, will enlighten many individuals who did not know they could help. Thank you.

(MRS.) PATRICIA ROBERTI, R.N.

Los Angeles

Noblesse Oblige

TIME has received two communications from Madame Ngo Dinh Nhu since the cover story about her (Aug. 9). In the first, she wrote: "Used to being somehow mistreated by the American press, I can say that by comparison I find your behavior fair, though it may lead people to fear me more after reading your story."

In the second, excerpts of which follow, she raised several points of interpretation, and then went on to discourse about herself, her family and her country:

I myself never called my father a "coward." He often sighs: "To live in peace, cowardice is sometimes necessary." But right or wrong, he is my father, and I never came to calling him names.

Concerning "provocateurs in monks' robes," my term "beat them three times harder" comes from my deep feeling of noblesse oblige. In Viet Nam, the religious, because of the respect due to their state of presumed holiness, cannot indulge as easily as others in wrongs of humanity and must be treated harder if they do.

Concerning the term "monk barbecue show," Viet Nam is a strange country where people often commit spectacular suicides before the gates of people whom they wish to curse. I find that custom barbaric. My aim was to try to stop the spreading of bad examples by ridiculing what I considered grotesque customs. I am stunned to see my well-intended purpose maliciously distorted by ill-intended elements who use my words to fit a false, ugly, obsolete and well-organized anti-Catholic propaganda which tries to present the Vietnamese people as an innocent Buddhist majority under a cruel dictatorship of Catholic minority overwhelmed by a fanatic Inquisition mood symbolized by me.

I have never been against conciliation of the Buddhists. I am only against oneway conciliation.

If sometimes I have to step in the fray, becoming a target of most cruel blows, it is not at all by natural taste, but because someone must finally make up his mind to take a position, dangerous, maybe, but necessary to break the paralyzing fear of others. What else can I do when I feel responsible for half of the population which I have done so much to liberate? Because of my utmost sincerity, I think that if I show some awkwardness, I need understanding rather than insults, which too many sectors of the American press are pouring on me with glee.

MADAME NGO DINH NHU

Saigon

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