Spanish Scene

Sir: Bravo, bravo, bravo for your excellent cover story on Spain [Jan. 21] from an American liberal who is very proud to say: Viva Espana y viva Franco!

JOHN SIMMS Almeria, Spain

Sir: In your fine article on Spain, I was pleased to see you point out that the members of Opus Dei are absolutely free in political matters. However, I felt you failed to convey the fact that Opus Dei is a worldwide Catholic association. Although the society began in Spain, the founder moved its headquarters to Rome, precisely to emphasize the worldwide nature of the association. Finally, although a search for a one-word capsule summary of a typical member is probably impossible, I would not choose "shock trooper." Perhaps "salt tablet" would come closer. The chief thing that members have in common is a dedication to serve God and to serve the world through their professional work--to be "the salt of the earth," as Christ used the term.

WILLIAM S. SLY, M.D. St. Louis

Sir: I hardly share your optimism that "Spain is an awakening land." The brutal fact is that Spain still remains dormant, a tragedy to the Western world since 1939. The alliance of the Spanish church, the military leaders and the monarchists will certainly find the means to continue the vicious circle in which the country finds itself. Ideas and men make a nation, and unfortunately Spain has neither.

FRANCISCO DE LEGARRETA Massapequa Park, N.Y.

Sir: You forgot to mention that Spain under Franco has the lowest rate in juvenile delinquency in Europe, the lowest rate in murder, assault, suicide, divorce, and no pornographic magazines. You also forgot to mention that we are sending billions of dollars and thousands of young Americans to South Viet Nam to hold back Communism in Asia, but it was these hard-headed Spaniards under Franco who crushed Communism in Spain during 1936-39, at no cost to America. You finally forgot to mention that Spain under Franco has never given America a headache, big or small. You ask: After Franco, what? I answer: After Franco, let Spain have another Franco.

FATHER FRANCISCO LAPIEZA, PASTOR Holy Family Church El Paso

Touching the Trait

Sir: TIME'S Essay on homosexuality [Jan. 21] was a perfect demonstration of fanciful subjectivity and pseudo objectivity, doing a disservice not only to your readers but also to a sizable portion of the American citizenry. It abounded in hackneyed cliches that have been seen many times in less respectable magazines. The position of the Mattachine Society of Washington is that homosexuals are citizens and deserve treatment as such. They are, for the most part, ordinary people with only one trait in common: sexual orientation.

JOHN MARSHALL President

The Mattachine Society of Washington Washington

Sir: Your Essay did a thorough job of covering a touchy subject which most people would rather not even think about, let alone discuss. But more important, you did not stop at a mere examination of the topic. What impressed me was your smashingly direct last paragraph. It seems to me that the word compassion is often misunderstood when used in connection with such problems as the subject of your Essay, or the criminal, or the rebellious teenager. You have cleaned the air with words.

MRS. THOMAS A. LUDWIG Larchmont, N.Y.

Sir: That TIME is middlebrow, trivial and superficial is well known to all thoughtful, serious men; but that it is ignorant and banal is a fact pushed to the fore in such pieces as the cliche-ridden double page on homosexuality. It takes TIME to make such spinsterlike judgments as the last sentence in the article.

PHILIP GERARD New York City

Sir: What two adults consent to do in private is no concern of mine and should be none of yours.

BARRY D. GALMAN, M.D. Bala-Cynwyd, Pa.

Nature of Response

Sir: In the strongest possible terms, I wish to record my violent objection to your article on the nature of sexual response [Jan. 7]. Lest I be dubbed a narrow-minded prude, I wish to state that my experience with normal and abnormal sex problems extends from my present practice through an internship at the City Hospital in Washington, D.C., and over a year as a medical examiner in New York City. I think that clinical studies such as this need to be done and should certainly be published and widely read. I further think, however, that lifting sensational descriptions from this work and publishing it in your magazine is disgusting.

WILLIAM J. BRADY, M.D. Multnomah County Coroner Portland, Oregon

Sir: Even the Nazis in their concentration-camp experiments never conceived of invoking the name of science for this ultimate degradation of the human being.

RABBI LEON B. FINK Congregation Beth Shalom Brooklyn

Sir: Hooray for Masters! If Americans don't know much about the art of love, maybe they can learn something about the science of it.

ARLINE PFIESTER Fairbanks, Alaska

Sir: As a medical student it amazes me that some people can criticize your article on the physiology of sex. It was well written and brought to light a subject that all top many of us know so little about, scientifically or otherwise. Those who criticize your article are either guilt-ridden about their sexual feelings or just plain anti-intellectual.

JOSEPH DENATALE Tufts School of Medicine Boston

Sir: If Dr. Masters' coming book is constructed as scientifically as his research has been conducted, the sensationalist will read elsewhere and buy more cheaply.

DAN THOMPSON, '69 DOUGLAS CAMERON, '69 Harvard University Cambridge, Mass.

Sir: To those still living in the Puritan or Victorian ages, sex is considered dirty. However, we find your article to be scientific, not pornographic. In view of the fact that sex is as important to life as is breathing, we commend you for your understanding and insight in printing such information for the public.

ANN GOODHART '67 MARIANNE KEARNEY '67 SUSAN LEPLEY '67 VIRGINIA MUNSON '67 LINDA WYATT '68 LINDA CORBY '69 JEANNE ADAIR '69 Hood College Frederick, Md.

Sir: Mrs. Fisher's comment that Dr. Masters is a blabbermouth who resorts to sensationalism is inaccurate, unfair, and contrary to the true picture. Dr. Masters gave a preliminary report of his research to a special audience of psychologists at the American Psychological Association convention in St. Louis in 1961. The care, caution and propriety displayed by Dr. Masters and his associate could not have been improved.

JAMES C. PARSONS Assistant Professor of Psychology Alaska Methodist University Anchorage

Sir: One minute spent by our youth reading accurate material is obviously worth more than the hours of silence due to parental guilt feelings to which we have subjected them. After reading the letters of Stevens, Lorbiecki, Lerner and Fisher, however, I can see that there are at least several adults who cannot comprehend such an article--no doubt because of their own experiences, hypocrisy and bigotry. CHARLES L. WHITFIELD, M.D. Birmingham

General Appraisal

Sir: Since the year 1965 has been considered the "Year of Demonstrations" by many, my students and I would like to congratulate you for "demonstrating" to your readers an excellent choice and noble American for your Man of the Year [Jan. 7]. In General Westmoreland we find the 20th century American par excellence, the embodiment of the resurgent spirit of principle on which our country is based--moral courage--and the hope of future survival.

ALAN L. GAUDYNSKI Franklin Public Schools Franklin, Wis.

Sir: I heartily applaud your selection. It was my privilege to serve in Viet Nam under General Westmoreland and I know of no man who is more deserving of this esteemed award. Neither do I know of any military leader, past or present, who has so much concern or who has made such a tremendous effort for the welfare of those whom he commands, thus gaining the respect and admiration of all who are privileged to serve under him.

(T/SGT.) A. A.FOSTER U.S.A.F. Washington, D.C.

Gustafson Situation

Sir: If what Joseph Fletcher is reported to be saying [Jan. 21] is "situation" or "contextual" ethics, I hardly find myself within the point of view where your story places me. Indeed, I have recently argued that the notion of contextual ethics is so broad and so vague that we would all do better to discard it as a rubric. There is a much larger place for rational reflection based on traditional moral principles in work I am doing in Christian ethics than is the case for either Joseph Fletcher or Paul Lehmann. It would have been preferable to have written the article exclusively on Mr. Fletcher's book rather than to implicate others in a notion of situation ethics that I find both philosophically, theologically and morally unviable.

JAMES M. GUSTAFSON Professor of Christian Ethics Yale University New Haven, Conn.

Fill of Quill

Sir: Thank you for your account of "Mike's Strike" in the issue of January 14. I and millions of other New Yorkers are glad that at long last we have a mayor with enough backbone to stand up to this insufferable loudmouth. It is time the T.W.U. realized that we have had our fill of Quill.

JUDY LEWIS New York City

Sir: How can my husband apply for a job as a garbage collector in New York City? Just think--shorter hours, no policy decisions, no ulcers, the right to strike at the drop of an orange peel, and almost $8,000 a year. It would mean a salary cut and the loss of a few so-called friends, but golly, we could become full-fledged members of the Great Society!

ELIZABETH K. WALKER Roanoke, Va.

Poet Mandelstam

Sir: In TIME'S story on Russian Poet Osip Mandelstam [Jan. 7], you quote Mandelstam's line about Stalin's "putting a raspberry in his mouth" after each death, and then later, in describing the poet's arrest, you say that Stalin "who was known to like raspberries, put a ripe one in his mouth." Mandelstam's reference to raspberries was in a very special, nonliteral, slang sense. As for Stalin's actual craving for the fruit, who knows? I certainly am unaware of much evidence. Moreover, it is not true that Mandelstam was exiled in 1934 to Siberia. In 1934 he was first exiled to eastern European Russia, and then to Voronezh in Central Russia, where he remained until the spring of 1937, and where he wrote some of his most remarkable poetry. It was only after his second arrest that he was sent to Siberia, where he died in Vladivostok, on Dec. 27, 1938. Nor was Osip his father's only son: the last letter known to have been written by Mandelstam from the camp in Vladivostok was addressed to his brother Alexander.

GLEB STRUVE Professor of Slavic Languages

and Literature University of California Berkeley

University's Circle

Sir: Our appreciation for the excellent interpretative account of the University of Illinois at Chicago Circle in the Art section, Jan. 7. The tribute to Architect Walter Netsch is richly merited. All of us at the university have been pleased with the concept of design and the imaginative approach to problem-solving that Mr. Netsch and the firm of Skidmore, Owings & Merrill gave to the requirements in constructing a major "commuter" campus within a limited site and the need for operational economy and efficiency.

DAVID D. HENRY President

University of Illinois Urbana, Ill.

Neglect in New Jersey

Sir: As one of several thousands of New Jersey students who have been forced to seek education outside my home state, I applaud your thought-provoking article on New Jersey's blighted system of education [Jan. 14].

Perhaps now our more apathetic citizenry will allow this long-neglected aspect of New Jersey's social structure to be corrected.

THOMAS F. CLARK St. Joseph's College Rensselaer, Ind.

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