Argument Over Abortion

Sir: "The Rights and Wrongs of Abortion" [Feb. 10] prompts these comments: The Catholic Church is entitled to set rules for those in the church, but to interfere in the legislative process is carrying missionary work too far.

The mores on abortion undoubtedly date from the days when man's life span was but 20 to 35 years, and it may have been a wise rule for the preservation of the race. Such a reason is no longer valid.

It is not strange that the firmest opposition comes from celibates who perhaps do not know with what casualness life is often conceived. The ease of begetting and avoiding the consequences should be proportionate.

When wartime killing is condoned, when there are rules on how soldiers may be killed, when we have legalized killing periods (between holiday truces), the argument about abortion becomes ludicrous. We probably have men sharing the same jail, one for "murdering" an unborn fetus, the other for refusing to go out and kill men in war. What hypocrisy!

GUNTHER STEINBERG Menlo Park, Calif.

Sir: Abortion "flatly condemned" by the Catholic Church "since its earliest years?" No. Up until the 19th century, the Church considered the male fetus "non-animate" for 40 days after conception (80 days for the female); abortion during this period was treated lightly. In 1869, a theory of "immediate animation" was advanced; abortion was thenceforth regarded as immoral from the instant of conception.

BETH MURPHY New Haven, Conn.

Sir: It is not only Catholics who believe a fetus is human life; it is a medical fact. The tiniest embryos swim in their watery environment. At 18 days their hearts beat. By 6 1/2 weeks their major bodily systems are in various stages of development, and they can be perceived as human. Unborn babies twist, kick, drink -- even cry and suck their thumbs occasionally. Since they are alive from the moment of conception and recognizably human soon afterwards, is it not doubletalk to deny that they are human lives?

MARY K. STINE Pepperell, Mass.

Man from Mass.

Sir: Your excellent cover story conveys Massachusetts' sentiments on Senator Edward Brooke [Feb. 17]. The key factors in his success are his ability, integrity and dynamic personality. He has taught Massachusetts citizens to be color blind. I hope he will teach the nation to be so.

MORTON H. ARONSON Needham, Mass.

Sir: Brooke's election doesn't seem to signify anything for the dark Negro. Brooke is more white than colored and is alienated from the average Negro by his financial environmental and marital status. To me a Northern-raised Negro, it is saddening that to prosper in white America, one mus be close to what is accepted as the all American white citizen.

JEAN BURTON The Bronx, N.Y.

Sir: In furthering the Negro cause, Senator Edward Brooke is worth a thousand militant civil rights workers. We in Massachusetts are very proud of him.

ALYCE M. O'SULLIVAN Boston

What Goes Up Must Come Down

Sir: Both scientists and the public derive a benefit from the space program that your Essay "Why Should Man Go to the Moon" [Feb. 10] does not mention. For more than 50 years, scientists have been crying for support of basic research, not for what it produces immediately but for what it ultimately provides for society's betterment. The space program should be our great teacher in this. It is the first case of widespread support of science by the public, and already the public is being made aware of the benefit it will derive Ironically, some of the same scientists who in earlier, leaner days were crying for support of science by the Government are opposed to the space program, perhaps because they do not happen to be space scientists. They must come to realize that what benefits a segment of science benefits all science.

PAUL L. GARWIG Non-Space Chemist Princeton, N.J.

Sir: Nothing you say dispels my conviction that the space program is only a sophisticated WPA. The prime objective seems to be to answer the question of a curious few, "What's out there?" Well, I don't care what's out there, and I don't care if the moon is made of green cheese, and no doubt there are tens of millions who don't care either. If A.T.&T. or G.M. or any of the other giants wish to exploit space, that is their prerogative; I don't care to see my tax dollars going up in smoke from a launching pad.

WALTER GOLDSWORTHY Chicago

Sir: There are those who feel we have a moral obligation to eliminate poverty before going to the moon. But if the human race had waited for the elimination of poverty before expending energy on exploration and innovation, we would all still be living in caves.

STEPHEN R. SCHULZE Rahway, N.J.

Orient Express

Sir: As we would say in Japan, omede-to-gozaimasu! After seven years of residence there as the daughter of a former American diplomat, I would like to thank you for a job well done in your cover story on Japan's Sato [Feb. 10].

MARIA ELENA DUR Manhattan

Sir: As a man knowledgeable in the visual arts, I have found most of your covers lacking in originality and style. In fact, I felt they did not reflect the quality of the printed matter within the covers. But the cover from the brilliant woodcut of the Japanese Premier by Kujoshi Saito is tops in every way. It is eye-appealing, it makes a statement.

JO MIELZINER Manhattan

Sir: Saito's Sato is a masterpiece deserving better than the slick superficiality of the cover story. One example: to label the Japanese Self-Defense Force as "something of a joke in an Asia that teems with massive armies" is pure claptrap. Japan's military potential, compared with that of other Asian countries, as well as that of all but a very few of the countries of the world, makes its small but excellent land, sea and air forces about as funny as a pocket battleship.

WALTER K. HIGGINS Lieutenant Colonel, U.S.A. Silver Spring, Md.

A Federal Case

Sir: Those of us who believe that adaptation of the federal concept at the world level is the way to secure peace do not appreciate your statement in "Regional Groupings: Islands of Hope" [Feb. 3] that "the dream of global union among all nations is as remote and Utopian as ever." We think it is ultimately practical and not Utopian to think of giving a restructured U.N. some appropriate muscle to do its assigned task. We recognize that it would be foolhardy to transfer power to the General Assembly as now constituted, but this should not keep us from researching the question of what the U.N. should be like in order to have a fair chance of fulfilling the hopes of people everywhere for a secure peace with freedom and justice.

ARNOLD S. ZANDER President United World Federalists Washington, D.C.

Worth Investing

Sir: About "Researching Racial Inferiority?" [Feb. 3]: One can hardly scan a list of the leading baseball hitters, the rosters of professional basketball teams, or look at our representatives in the Olympic dash events without wondering if, in fact, there are differences in the genetic makeup of races. If there are such differences with respect to athletic ability, there may well be differences in other characteristics, characteristics that may be contributing to the ghetto problem. If there is any prejudice with respect to Shockley's theories, it is on the part of those who refuse to admit that they may be worth investigating. Those who becloud the issue by crying "prejudice" are not unlike their counterparts of a few centuries ago who accused Galileo of being a heretic for questioning the approved "facts" of his day.

W. H. RYAN Huntingdon Valley, Pa.

Total Involvement

Sir: Reviewing Rush to Judgment [Feb. 10], the documentary made by Emile de Antonio and me, you say that the film consists of interviews with persons "peripherally involved" in the events at Dallas.

"Peripherally involved"? The film shows interviews with the closest spectator to the limousine when the fatal shot was fired, vith three railroad employees who viewed the assassination from the railroad bridge just in front of and above the limousine, with the former Dallas police officer who saw Ruby enter the basement just before he killed Oswald, with a witness to the scene of the Tippit killing who indicates that two men may have been involved in that murder, with the photographer who took motion pictures of the assassination as the shots were fired, with Ruby's former bartender and his former bandleader, both of whom testified to his intimate relationship with the Dallas police, with the one person authorized to be behind the wooden fence from which some shots were fired. The Warren Commission also felt that those who saw what was inconvenient for its preconceived conclusion were "peripheral." You may not be in good company, but you are not entirely alone.

MARK LANE Nykobing, Denmark

Canadian Catechism

Sir: Our offices have received many protests about "Roman Catholics from Rote to Reality" [Feb. 17] because it neglects the source of "Come to the Father." The first three years of the series originated in Quebec with a team of French Canadian authors. It was adapted into an English version by a team of English Canadian catechists who have now joined their French brothers in the writing of grades 4, 5 and 6. This is the version used in the U.S. In Canada it is referred to as the Canadian Catechism.

(THE REV.) CLAUDE MICHAUD Director Office Nationale de Catechisme (THE REV.) GERRY FITZPATRICK Director National Office of Religious Education Ottawa

Advice for Counsel

Sir: Legal morality--if it ever existed in the U.S.--is dead, as your story on Edward Bennett Williams [Feb. 10] proves. Lawyers are not concerned with the guilt or innocence of their clients but with what "mistakes" the police or prosecution have made and what angles can be played to spring the guy--all in the name of constitutional rights. The result: not a trial to determine justice, but a game. No onus descends on Williams when he frees a guilty client for technical reasons; he gets praise, money and prestige for defeating justice. Isn't it time that lawyers, before admission to the bar, take a sort of Hippocratic oath that when clients admit their guilt to them, they will advise the clients to plead guilty?

JOHN W. HERPEL Morristown, N.J.

Right to Work

Sir: Your review of the book on Chambers and Hiss [Feb. 10] is, TIME-wise, strangely unruffled. You appear to rest your case on the tushery that dead men shouldn't be slandered, ho hum, as if TIME had grown big and strong on Confucianist milk. Why not work over a dead man--if that is what he deserves from a history he malevolently affected? Surely the point is that the author of this filthy act of vampirism deserves the contempt not only of those who would speak no evil of the dead, but of those who applaud such lonely acts of disinterested heroism as were performed by the social philanthropist whose name once graced your masthead.

WILLIAM F. BUCKLEY JR. Saanen, Switzerland

Knowing One's Onions

Sir: TIME'S Julia Child cover story [Nov. 25] reported that the Shallots of the Month Club charges $9 a month for 3/4 Ib. of shallots. Actually, the price is $9 a year for twelve shipments of 3/4 Ib. each. The high price you erroneously quoted has discouraged potential customers. And because the error was copied by a French paper, it has become impossible for us to get shallots from France: their price demands became atrocious, so we finally had to buy shallots from Holland and Belgium.

RAYMOND SAUFROY Les Eschalottes Ramsey, N.J.

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