Show of Teeth

Sir: Defense Secretary McNamara [July 8] is a monstrous man, catalyst for the fusion of U.S. industrial and military might into an instrument designed for world hegemony and destined for moral and material perdition. Can't a voice be raised in support of the ideals on which this nation was founded and nurtured for almost two centuries?

E. C. PLUNKETT Elmira, N.Y.

Sir: McNamara is a modern-day Patrick Henry who uses mathematics, logic and intestinal fortitude to preserve the very heart of this great country.

EUGENE KRZEMINSKI Grand Rapids, Mich.

Sir: The bombing of Hanoi-Haiphong POL areas was long overdue. Had we done this months ago, or even two years ago, many lives would undoubtedly have been spared. The time has come for the U.S. to stop playing a cat-and-mouse game with the North Vietnamese; we must show our teeth, since this seems to be the only language they understand.

PAUL S. SCHUELLER Brooklyn

Sir: One of the serious fallacies of Administration policy is the belief that bombing raids will drive the N.L.F. to negotiation. If the Soviet Union were dropping bombs on our oil reserves around New York City, we would fight to the last man, however hopeless the battle, before making concessions to our enemy. It seems foolhardy not to assume equal determination in the North Vietnamese.

JOHN HOLDEN THORNE New York City

Sir: I was born in Hamburg, Germany, in 1920. In July 1943, I lost members of my family, friends and my home through Anglo-American air raids, which almost destroyed my home town. These raids on Hamburg and other German cities, terrifying and hate-inspiring as they were at the time, played a decisive role in destroying Hitler's totalitarianism. Now I am a Canadian citizen. I am firmly convinced that my present religious and political freedom are owed directly to American participation in World War II. I do not envy President Johnson's position as far as the war in Viet Nam is concerned, but I understand and support his decisions.

HERMANN NOELLE Hamburg, Germany

Still Drafty

Sir: Letter Writer Buckner [July 1] is a naive fellow. Certainly we are not fighting solely "so college kids can go to school," but that reason would rate somewhere on the list if servicemen made lists of such things. We are fighting, yes, because we have to, for the same reasons our fathers had to. We are fighting because our Commander in Chief believes that we are the best instrument for carrying out national policy.

(S/SGT) H. J. PINTO JR. U.S.M.C. Camp Lejeune, N.C.

Sir: Today's college students are the engineers who will build the helicopters that evacuate the wounded from battle in Viet Nam. They are the doctors who will save the lives of the injured. They are the social scientists who will help make a viable country out of war-torn Viet Nam. They are the lawyers and political scientists who will be architects of peace. To sacrifice their lives to a sniper's bullet in the cause of "fairness" or "equality" is to defeat our purpose in being in Viet Nam.

PETER BENJAMIN M.I.T. Cambridge, Mass.

Sir: My country is at war; therefore I must be at war.

(SP4) JUSTIN J. STONE Viet Nam

Does History Repeat?

Sir: TIME'S reference to a Napoleonic parallel involving Charles de Gaulle [July 1] is intriguing. On June 25, 1807, almost 159 years ago to the day that De Gaulle met with the chiefs of the Soviet government, Czar Alexander I of Russia met with Emperor Napoleon of France at Tilsit in Prussia. They embraced; they exchanged decorations and pledges of friendship. Like De Gaulle, Alexander hoped to play the role of peacemaker and to divide the European continent between Russia and France. Yet by 1812 the Emperor was sleeping in the Kremlin in a burning Moscow. I wonder whether De Gaulle is the historical successor of Alexander I rather than of Napoleon Bonaparte.

ROBERT S. O'SHEA Springfield, Ill.

King's Advocate

Sir: Your story about Jordan [July 8] is pathetically misinformed and sensational. The strength of Jordan is well known. In connection with the recent stupid Nasserite propaganda campaign, King Hussein did not bother to alert military units or order top intelligence operatives to cancel trips abroad. Not a single leaflet appeared in Jordanian army barracks, nor did the refugees pay any serious attention to the vicious personal attacks on the royal family. The people and the government take their own works too seriously to have time for this polemical nonsense, and the throne in Jordan has proved a symbol of unity and a source of faith that is far beyond the reach of any "repercussions."

WASFI EL-TELL Prime Minister Amman, Jordan

> TIME is pleased to record Prime Minister El-Tell's viewpoint but finds no reason to revise its story.

The Higher Price

Sir: I want to thank TIME for the one sensible description of the Argentine situation [July 8] I have read in American news media. Everybody seems to stress the rupture of democracy, not realizing that there are things more damaging to a country than that, like the utter demoralization of the people arising from lack of leadership, economic chaos and a policy of "do nothing" that Argentina cannot afford.

ANA MARIA DELBUE DE ORTIZ New York City

Shock & Sock

Sir: The ignorant, blatant and irrational bigotry displayed by white Mississippians during the freedom march [July 1] is a tragic disgrace to everyone who supports the ideals on which the U.S. was founded. The peals of shock ringing out across this country will soon become the death knell of the white reactionary movement in Mississippi.

MICHAEL BOWEN Kansas City, Mo.

Sir: I have reached one conclusion after reading your latest civil rights blurb. All civil rights marchers plod bravely, with heads held high as befits God's noblest creatures, while surrounded by ignorant, sullen, savage, glowering Mississippians who show resentment and hatred by snarling, cursing, flailing and kicking them. The marchers are protected only by porcine cops who with measured malevolence gas, club and kick them. I wish you paid as much homage to truth as to adjectives.

A sullen, savage, Southerner

JAMES D. BROWN Jacksonville, Fla.

Audience Reaction

Sir: "The Modern Theater" Essay [July 8] says: "What these modern playwrights aim for is not to convey actions, messages or answers but states of being and feeling." Does every play have to contain a message? Should the playwright just supply answers? Three cheers for the playwright who can create states of being, arouse feeling, and make one think. As for the fact that "some playgoers cannot comprehend these modern plays," is the failure that of the playwright, or is it that of the playgoer who enters the theater expecting only to be entertained?

RONALD SUBECK Chicago

Sir: In my opinion, TIME missed the point about Bertolt Brecht. The U.S. Congress and American journalism regarded him as both stubborn and Marxist. But he wasn't. In his lifelong search for a politico-economic system that would not suppress but enlighten human goodness, he became disenchanted with Marxism, as he had earlier become disenchanted with the capitalism of his day. Brecht's view of mankind was optimistic. His search sprang from a comparison of the goodness of man with the badness of man's economic and political systems. His drama demands that we think about the "existence problem," as you put it, in these terms.

ROBERT M. GOODMAN Ithaca, N.Y.

Who to Trust

Sir: What you printed about my book How to Avoid Probate [July 8] is utter rubbish.

Thousands of my readers have put their real estate into an inter vivos trust using one of the forms in my book. Other thousands have exempted their bank accounts from probate through use of other forms in the book. Others have exempted their common stocks, their unincorporated business or their personal effects, all with forms in the book. What has all this to do with mutual funds? Nothing. The majority of trusts set up by my readers cost nothing beyond the $4.95 paid for the book. Butter up the bar if you want to, but before you write about a book, read it.

NORMAN F. DACEY Bridgeport, Conn.

> We did.

Sir: TIME'S excellent "The Art of Avoiding Probate" says what needed to be said about probate itself and about Norman Dacey and his motives. The story was fair, carefully researched and highly informative, and demonstrates again the value of the Law section to non-lawyers as well as lawyers.

DON HYNDMAN American Bar Association Chicago

Sir: I note that nonlawyer Dacey, uncertified, self-designated paragon, has put together a home-remedy lawbook. I hope this will not inspire some operating-room orderly to put together a hodgepodge of medical mishmash on how to avoid hospital and surgery fees by home removal of appendix, tonsils and other anatomical appendages.

ABNER M. ISRAEL Counselor at Law Albany, Ga.

Faculty for Improvement

Sir: While justifiably praising Chancellor Roger Heyns for helping restore peace to the Berkeley campus of the University of California [July 1], you attribute too much to his own initiative and too little to the independent and intelligent Berkeley faculty.

It was a faculty committee headed by Prof. Frederic Tubach that proposed allowing the student president to speak at Academic Senate meetings and putting three students on an Academic Senate committee. And it was also the faculty who appointed the Muscatine committee on educational reform--at the suggestion of then Acting Chancellor Martin Meyerson, in March 1965, six months before Heyns took over at Berkeley.

ALLAN A. METCALF Daily Californian Berkeley

Fallow Fields

Sir: Commissioner Goddard's belief that most Americans get all the vitamins and minerals they need from an ordinary, varied diet [July 1] makes me realize he is no nutritionist. He is thinking of the days when the pioneers moved west because their soil was no longer fertile. Today we have made "great strides." We grow our food on depleted soils fertilized with chemicals, sprayed with poisons. We have pasteurized, homogenized, bleached, refined and "enriched": "Enriched" flour is flour from which 25 natural nutrients have been removed during refining; it is "enriched" by replacing one-third the original amount of iron, vitamin B,, and niacin. Today thousands of children have multiple cavities because we heat milk to the point that it no longer contains adequate vitamins A and C and calcium.

JERRY LAGERQUIST San Antonio

Scarfe's Discoverer

Sir: Further to your story on Scarfe [July 15], I should like to point out that Gerald Scarfe's People has just been published by my firm in London, and will appear in the U.S. this fall. It may be of interest to your readers that I commissioned the book from Scarfe three years ago, when he was virtually unknown.

PETER OWEN London

Splash!

Sir: Who is the old salt among you who cites Tinkerbelle's top speed as "seven knots an hour" [July 8]? I presume he would also go "up aloft," "down below deck," or "bear right to starboard." Tell the knothead that seven knots equals seven nautical miles an hour, and keep him away from the end of the dock.

ED THORGERSEN Osterville, Mass.

Never on Sunday

Sir: I trust that none of TIME'S readers will be left with the impression from the story on Billy Casper [July 1] that he was fat and sick because he was a Congregationalist. Congregationalists are fat and sick, I am sure, in about the same proportion as members of any other religious group. However, if your readers infer that Casper became a superior golfer because he was first a Congregationalist, they may be nearer the truth. Congregationalists are often fine golfers, as I can attest on many a sunny Sunday morning.

(THE REV.) EDWIN ROBERTS Oneonta Congregational Church South Pasadena, Calif.

This file is automatically generated by a robot program, so reader's discretion is required.