Decapitation Depicted Sir: The picture of the beheaded man [May 28] was very gruesome and sickening. We all know of the situation in Viet Nam without seeing such pictures.

BEVERLY BOOKMAN

Billings, Mont.

Sir: The critics of our policy in Viet Nam cried murder and mercilessness when they learned about our use of harmless gas on the Viet Cong. What is their opinion of the atrocities and abominations committed by the Viet Cong--or are they unavailable for any comment?

PAUL MARYNIAK

Buffalo

Sir: The French Army in Indo-China found many such mutilated men, women and children. People were tortured with such unbelievable cruelty that it required pictures taken by a war-crime-investigation team to prove the accuracy of reports, the authenticity of which we refused to believe. The refinement of the atrocities by Ho Chi Minh's men upon our countrymen will never be forgotten by anyone who ever served in Indo-China.

(MRS.) JACQUELINE EMERY Sykesville, Md.

Sir: However excellent your reportage on the Viet Nam crisis has been, the photograph of a "beheaded victim of the Viet Cong" was less than tasteful. In fact, I saw a woman actually get sick on first seeing the picture while at lunch. It is rather improper to present a photograph which could only be appreciated by a sadistic, bloodthirsty group of morons.

DONALD DETWEILER

Doylestown, Pa.

Sir: When I was in Viet Nam, my interpreter's father was tortured by the Viet Cong and then buried alive--upside down with his legs remaining above ground. I visited in Binh Dinh province with a good Vietnamese friend in September 1963. A week after I was there, the Viet Cong came looking for the village chief, and not finding him at home, they killed two of his young children.

PATRICK A. REARDON, M.D.

Holy Cross Hospital Silver Spring, Md.

Unserene Simon

Sir: In your cover story on Norton Simon [June 4], he is compared to Gertrude Stein, William Saroyan and Lord Keynes, among others. The story also quotes him as believing himself to be "in the process of becoming" and that ours is a "paradoxical life." This is purely the philosophy of Georg Hegel. This in itself will suffice to explain why Simon is not serene.

PAT REEVES

Cincinnati

Sir: Perhaps the best way to arrive at a conclusion about Swift & Co. is to look at the record. In 1964, earnings were the highest since 1953--the third successive year of increased profits. Dividends (paid every year except one since the company was incorporated in 1885) were increased twice during 1964. We are in the midst of a stepped-up capital spending program. Swift research, credited with many industry firsts, played a vital role in developing well-rounded meals for the Gemini astronauts in their four-day orbital mission To get 16 meals down to a total weight of less than five pounds, Swift scientists had to freeze, dehydrate, press and seal the food until it was just a wisp of its former self. Just how far out do you have to get to be progressive?

GEORGE H. SWIFT

Swift & Co. Chicago

Sir: If Mr. Norton Simon is such a go-getting businessman, why in heaven's name doesn't he package his catsup in plastic squeeze bottles or in wide-mouthed jars? After 40 years of struggling with catsup bottles, I am about ready to move over to chili sauce, which comes in wide-mouthed jars. One can buy plastic squeeze bottles for catsup, but first one has to extract the catsup from the narrow-mouthed bottle. The new-flavored Hunt's catsups are very good but, alas, still in the old-style bottles.

C. S. HAGERTY

Philadelphia

Sir: That was quite a spread about Norton Simon. But you know who I admire: his wife, Lucille--she can live with a man with such drive and ulcers!

(MRS.) PHYLLIS HARRIS Roanoke, Va.

Surgeon DeBakey

Sir: Having undergone three operations by Dr Michael DeBakey and having sung his praises for 18 years, I commend TIME [May 28] for giving Dr. DeBakey the recognition and praise he so deserves. He manages to include in his backbreaking day the time to correspond with and see his old and appreciative patients. A tremendous feat--a noble man!

CYNTHIA STEWARD RINGE

Devon, Pa.

Sir: Dr. DeBakey is the most humane doctor I have ever met, and his wife is just as kind-hearted as he is. At 7 o'clock one morning, Dr. DeBakey performed a very difficult operation on a Spanish child whose parents did not speak a word of English. While the child underwent his operation, Mrs. DeBakey turned up at this early hour of the day with two Spanish-speaking friends of hers to help shorten this anxious hour for his parents. After the operation, Dr. DeBakey came over personally to inform the parents that the child was well.

(MRS.) ELIZABETH MAY

Mexico City

Opinion on World Opinion Sir-While I have no particular quarrel' with the arguments and conclusions in your Essay on "The U.S. and World Opinion" [May 28], I must more than raise my eyebrows at the section headed "Suez" There was no "highhanded seizure" of the Suez Canal by Nasser; Egypt has always had legal ownership ot the canal. Nasser did, in fact, nationalize the Suez Canal Company, operates the canal better than the company did, and has paid prompt and adequate compensation, no mean feat in this naughty world. If there was a triggering for the unfortunate events that took place, it was not Nasser's but rather, using your words, the "highhanded" and ill-tempered withdrawal by Secretary Dulles of the American promise to help finance the high dam. The U.S. did not side with "anti-Suez forces in the name of world opinion." President Eisenhower made an immediate, typically American and correct denunciation of naked aggression by Israel, Great Britain and France. Far from catering to opinion, he brought down on American heads the wrath of our closest

allies.

HAROLD B. MINORBoca Raton. Fla.

Sir: You stated that "Indians, for example, have an almost superstitious respect for anything they see in print." This is the most asinine and ignorant statement that I have ever seen in print.

JAYARAMA R. PERUMAREDDI

Pittsburgh

Essay Ideas

Sir: Now that a number of your TIME Essays have been published, it is appropriate for a reader to congratulate you as well as ask some questions.

1 The selection of your subjects is excellent They seem to constitute mature editorial comments and add up to a historical recording of sorts. Do you plan to publish them in book form, say at the end of each year?

2 It needed courage to call any writing for the public at large an essay, for essays are considered (so I have observed) intrinsically boring. After some public education by TIME, maybe students will be more likely to regard some of our classics (like Pope's Essay on Man) as more meaningful, in spite of their titles. What made you decide to call these fine comments "Essays"?

3. Could you indicate the subject of each

* Former U.S. ambassador to Lebanon (1951-1953). week's Essay in the index by a properly selected word or phrase?

J. T. ERASER Michigan State University East Lansing, Mich. > 1. An interesting idea.

2. It's a nice old-fashioned word connoting scholarly inquiry with judgment.

3. See Index.

Rationale of Intervention

Sir: I suggest that President Johnson hire the editorial staff of TIME Magazine collectively as his chief adviser, since it was able to do in approximately 40 words in the first paragraph of your May 28th Nation section what McGeorge Bundy has been unable to do without alienating large segments of American society and of the press--state the aim of Washington with regard to the Dominican Republic, in a simple, sensible manner.

ARTHUR L. KAPPLOW Miami

Newsmen in Santo Domingo

Sir: I do not want to contend TIME'S viewpoint in the Press [May 28] story in which I was listed among the side-takers in Santo Domingo except to say that I am on the U.S. side, whichever side that is. I do take issue, however, with the unnamed U.S. officials who said that I "got quite upset" and complained "that marines were allowed to shoot back when shot at from outside the International Zone." I have never complained about any U.S. soldier defending himself.

I personally take great comfort from the protection of both marines and Army paratroopers in Santo Domingo, because without them I and all Americans who were there might be dead.

BARNARD LAW COLLIER New York Herald Tribune San Juan, P.R.

Professors or Tutors?

Sir: Your article on the Teaching Assistants [June 4] reawakened the anger I experienced this past semester that I was trying to forget. As a graduate student at a university in New York, I saw a certain "professor" for approximately ten hours out of the whole semester. The classes were not conducted, even though an assistant was present. The tests were graded and criticized by another student taking the course! When the professor showed up (always late), he kept us overtime and then, in the last two classes, lectured at breakneck speed so that he could give us an exam that presupposed that he had given and discussed a mountain of information. I won't get over the experience for many years.

T. DRUMMOND The Bronx, N.Y.

Sir: As well as being "underpaid and overworked," we TAs are usually much maligned, both by the academic community and by the parents of the little darlings we are sweating and slaving to educate. I hope that your article will result, if not in immediate raises, at least in improvement of our image.

WILLIAM W. CRESSEY University of Illinois Urbana, Ill.

Top Unsecret

Sir: Re your story about topless waitresses in San Francisco [May 28]: breastfed rummies and bottle-fed babies! I got a feeling of nostalgia for the old days of breast-fed babies and bottle-fed rummies.

ZOLTAN KOVACS

Ithaca, N.Y.

Sir: I wholeheartedly concede that the human body is a thing of great beauty and that things of great beauty should be admired and appreciated. However, as a wife, mother and registered nurse, I find the vision of a pair of breasts bouncing over a cocktail tray outrageous to my sense of "public decency." The human body should not appear publicly out of context with the values classified roughly as "the finer things of life," including mature adult love, fine art and music.

DOROTHY A. NIESSEN Bedford, Mass.

Sir: In San Francisco's wonderful Golden Gate Park, the rules for use of the tennis courts specifically say, "Men must wear tops."

EDWARD G. LOWELL Tarzana, Calif.

Feat of Clay

Sir: Even a cursory examination of the Clay-Liston bout [June 4] should convince the severest skeptic that vaudeville is not dead.

RICHARD SWERDLIN Cincinnati

Sir: Hell, my wife and I could put on a better fight than that.

W. R. JONES Great Falls, Mont.

Sir: Is it true that both Clay and Listen were Olympic champions, Cassius in the butterfly stroke and Sonny in the high dive?

J. PAUL HUNTER Riverside, Calif.

Character Inscribed

Sir: As an amateur handwriting analyst, I thought that Jackie Kennedy's letter was more interesting for revealing her personality than as a collector's item [May 28]. The tall rounded capitals show her artistic ability, and the regularity in the size of her letters and the straightness of her lines indicate strong will and ability to stick to any course she chooses. She enjoys solitude, as the slight backward slant of her handwriting shows, although her large script reveals that she doesn't mind being the center of attention. She is quite frugal--notice that there is hardly any margin on either side, and little on the top or bottom of each page.

STEPHEN M. COLEMAN Dayton

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