Escobedo & The Law

Sir: Much needed light is cast by your penetrating cover story on Escobedo [April 29]. It reinforces my contention that we have more to fear from uninformed critics of Escobedo and similar decisions, who are tearing down respect for the law, than from the decisions themselves.

JAMES P. NUNNELLEY

L.A. County Deputy Public Defender

Los Angeles

Sir: This story is the most incisive, thoughtful and balanced treatment of an enormously difficult and highly emotive cluster of problems I have ever seen in a magazine of general circulation.

YALE KAMISAR

Professor of Law

University of Michigan

Ann Arbor, Mich.

The True Essence?

Sir: If the situation in Viet Nam seems uncomfortably annoying, it is because of our lack of understanding of the hopes, aspirations and desperation of the grassroots Vietnamese behind whom the Buddhists rally. If Thich Tri Quang [April 22] seems wily, militant and unpredictable, it is because of the enigmatic situation he is in, to which we in no small measure have contributed. If Vien Hoa Dao stands as the monument of hope for the Saigon Buddhist masses, Thich Tri Quang most certainly symbolizes the 20th century Vietnamese intellectual desperately attempting to cope with the complexity of modern civilization forced upon him by the currents of history.

MINORU KIYOTA

Assistant Professor,

Indian Studies University of Wisconsin

Madison, Wis.

Sir: My acquaintance with the scalp-hunting export of "Americanism" via some missionaries, both religious and political, makes it clear what is so "enigmatic," "devious" and "dangerous" about Thich Tri Quang: he cannot be bought. America will do well to descend from "on top" and get behind him. You say he is "the true native species." How true! Decades of suffering distill the true essence.

J. J. MANGALAM

Lexington, Ky.

Sir: I have a solution to the Viet Nam war. Since it is difficult to define friend and foe in that unhappy country, we could have our nuclear scientists computerize the size of a nuclear warhead necessary to destroy Viet Nam. Then we could send in bulldozers and florists to make a garden where Viet Nam once stood. We could do this in other trouble spots to teach the population that when we say "peace," we mean "peace." Soon we would have a world of beautiful gardens--but no people to tend them. But we can't have everything, can we?

SIDNEY L. SINCOFF

Queens Village, N.Y.

What's Left of Tradition

Sir: What is left of tradition [April 22]? Belief in a government of the people, by the people and for the people. Belief in our hertiage. Belief in the right to dissent. Belief that anyone can be President--even a Roman Catholic. But essentially what is left of our tradition is the belief in something better; in our ability to undergo change.

EDWARD W. MCINTYRE

St. Bonaventure, N.Y.

Sir: It is true that "tradition tends to embalm the moment in time when the culture feels it is at its peak." Call our generation neopagan, secular or whatever, it is at odds with phoniness and insincerity. Our irreverent generation is not bent on overturning the past, but on crying out against the arbitrary embalming and sanctification of one historical moment. Our American lack of "tradition" is not our national stigma; our innate respect for and optimistic sense of an evolving human experience has been the unsung American contribution to modern civilization.

JAMES CURRAN, C.M.F.

Rome, Italy

Sir: After reading your Essay, I can see why my teen-agers seem to be from another world--it's because they are!

(MRS.) ROSEMARY AVERY

Roswell, N. Mex.

Clashing of Gears

Sir: As a dolly from the scene, I say cheers for your gear article on the swinging, switched-on city of London [April 15] and boo to all the American geese who call it humbug.

J. M. MELIO

London

Sir: Your fulsome article provided Londoners with a good laugh but hardly gave a realistic impression of the place. Visitors find the same old dingy streets and grimy restaurants, and while there are youths going about with girlish hair styles and outlandish clothes, you can hardly expect us to be proud of such weirdies. Girls, except for women street-cleaners, do not wear plastic suits. Carnaby Street is not a new phenomenon; it has catered to the chorus-boy type for years. New York is the real swinging city.

DAVID SMITH

Leicester, England

Sir: Oh, tell me, where will the grownups go/ While London's swinging to and fro?/ Who'll sail the sea, who'll mind the shop,/ If the whole bloody country opts for "Pop"?/ Should it happen, this I ween,/ Not even God can save the Queen!!

VIRGINIA HACKLEMAN

Connersville, Ind.

Word on God

Sir: I have given much thought to your cover story, "Is God Dead?" [April 8]. In sending you my views I realize I have two strikes against me: I am a teenager, and I am in show business. In neither category does much religious thought go on, according to the public. We are not supposed to question, to seek, or even to believe. In my opinion, today's teen-agers are different from those of the past only in the amount of churchgoing they do. Their belief in a supreme being is so strong as to make the concept of the "death of God" not only blasphemous but laughable. I have found, too, that the citizens of Hollywood are as strong in their devotion as are their priests and ministers and rabbis. This God-is-dead premise seems to me merely a fad; religion will live through it.

JAY [DENNIS THE MENACE] NORTH

Culver City, Calif.

Sir: God is not dead. Rather, men simply and humbly intelligent enough to appreciate him are dying off.

RON BRUTOCO

Rome

Sir: Are those proclaiming the death of God referring to the word, to their ideas about God, or to the reality experienced by those who coined the word? The word God is dead, a dead idol before which many continue to bow. The word water has never quenched anyone's thirst, nor has the word God ever given anyone the experience of God. Would one of the God-is-dead enthusiasts tell me if I am living or dead? I am curious to see if his reply will have any effect on the reality.

RICHARD J. STECK

Buffalo

Salute

Sir: Academic achievement at the Naval Academy [April 22] has never been better. Thirteen men in the class of 1966 have won Fulbright grants. As many have won National Science Foundation, AEC and Guggenheim scholarships. Officers need not be profound scholars; the academy's mission is to develop the Halseys and Nimitzes of tomorrow. The academy is providing the officers who are getting shot at in Viet Nam. As long as we're dying to protect American lives, how about getting your bayonet out of our backs?

LAURENCE M. BERGEN JR.

U.S. Naval Academy

Annapolis, Md.

Sir: As a graduate of an academically respected institution that does not have a flunk quota, I deeply resent the prospect of being required to salute Annapolis graduates if I am drafted.

J. A. KIRK

Troy, N.Y.

Bright Pennies

Sir: "Kansas Centennial" [April 22] was a most welcome and admirable recognition of an institution that has come to stand for excellence in the Great Plains and in the nation. But the Kansas legislature has done too well by its institutions of higher education to merit the term, "penny pinching." In 1964-65, Kansas ranked fourth in the nation in per capita appropriations for operating expenses of higher education. Also, although we admit any Kansas high school graduate, self-selection provides a student body that compares favorably with those at most "selective" public institutions. We have no need to weed out incompetents; the failure rate is low--less than 7% of the entering freshmen were ineligible to return after the fall semester of 1961.

W. CLARKE WESCOE

Chancellor University of Kansas

Lawrence, Kans.

Sharks in the Surf

Sir: It is a gross misconception that the German Iron Cross is the surfer's newest emblem [April 22]. Real surfers don't need emblems, just waves. Those who wear a "surfer's cross" don't know a surfboard from a hot rock; they are victims of exploitation by sadistic morons like Ed Roth.

WILLIAM D. BUSHNELL

San Diego

Sir: It's typical of adult society to latch onto a teen-age fad--three months after it has passed. As a surfer, I bought a Maltese cross last summer. That was when the cross belonged to surfers. But then everyone started wearing them. When my friends and I saw all the clods that were wearing the cross, we immediately got rid of ours.

JOHN DOWNHAM

Fork Union, Va.

Sir: To Big Daddy, and all the salauds who follow in his goosesteps: Good surfing in shark-infested waters.

BRUCE MICHAEL BELL

Coconut Grove, Fla.

Teeing Off

Sir: Your report on Franco's golf game [April 22] was incorrect. For a busy man of 73 who took up the game just four years ago, he has a fine swing. His tee shots, though not long, are straight. As far as three-putting, this happens to almost all Europeans who play the Sotogrande course for the first time because the fast bent-grass greens that Trent Jones built are new and unknown in Spain. I can vouch for the accuracy of these statements because it was I who played with General Franco that day.

J. R. McMICKING

La Linea, Spain

A Rat Is a Rat

Sir: After reading your piece, my youngsters made gerbils [April 15] No. 1 on their birthday gift lists. So Mommy tried only to hear that those "little balls of fur' are illegal in California. And what abou those poor pet-shop owners? Five hundred to 1,000 calls are some response to a TIME item, I should say!

ANNIE DELEEUW

Paramount, Calif.

Sir: Gerbils, or sand rats, may make desirable pets, but they are voracious seed and plant eaters. Once they become abundant, they are hard to eradicate, and the damage they do to agriculture is enormous: in countries where they have established colonies, they do heavy damage to wheat, oat and other grain crops. The introduction of gerbils is banned by both the California Department of Agriculture and the Department of Fish and Game, which enforce a joint regulation.

E. A. BREECH

Bureau of Plant Quarantine

California Department of Agriculture

Sacramento, Calif.

Clementi in the Groove

Sir: To long-suffering parents who must endure yet another "likely winner," some consolation can be found when A Groovy Kind of Love [April 22] blares forth from the hifi. It's really part of a practice rondo by Muzio Clementi (1752-1832).

LANCE SLAUGHTER

Northbrook, Ill.

All's Right

Sir: About car safety [April 22]: the most salutary single change the manufacturers could introduce would be to make their vehicles so that they could not be turned left. This would eliminate all accidents caused by automobiles drifting across the center line or turning in front of oncoming traffic. Anyone who wanted to turn left could do so simply by making a turn 270DEG to the right. This might entail the development of new driving techniques, but no real loss would be suffered. With everyone in the country turning to the right, the nation's security and continued prosperity would be assured.

D. G. MACGREGOR JR.

Mount Clemens, Mich.

Black Eye

Sir: Reading about Lee Marvin's well-deserved Academy Award [April 29] reminds me of the story he told [June 4] about putting the "white eye" on me and scaring me so badly on a live TV show that I dropped my pistol. Lee is a very funny mythomaniac. Enclosed is the moldy kinescope of that show done nine years ago: it shows I hold on to the pistol even when dead. As my father remarked, "That boy's dropped a lot of things in his life, but I doubt he would drop a pistol."

RIP TORN

New York City

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