Applause Meter

Sir: I am stunned! The cover story on Johnny Carson [May 19] was not up to TIME's "putdown profiles." It was quite objective. It is nice to know that Carson "packs a tight suitcase." It takes talent to come across so warmly on TV and still remain a private person who doesn't succumb to pleas to "tell all" about his life.

LINDA L. BYRD Houston

Sir: WHOOPEE! Your article on Johnny Carson was delightful, but long overdue. Carson has certainly become as authentic an article of Americana as baseball, the hot dog and the ten-gallon hat. His special contribution is that he has probably made more people laugh than anyone else in the history of mass media.

FRANK G. Roux Newark

Sir: Your story on Carson really touched me. Clear-eyed, unafraid, the typical American boy, he has marched successfully through life to achieve an income of $1,000,000 a year at 41. Along the way, however, he disposed of his wife, his producer, his manager. It really makes one stop and think, doesn't it?

LEONARD MARIN Homewood, Ill.

Left & Right, Right & Wrong Sir: Thanks for another concisely worded Essay--"The Right to Dissent & the Duty to Answer" [May 12]. By placing in historical perspective the issue of dissent on Viet Nam policy, the Essay generates light for both dissenters and defenders. For the left it inspires determination while calling for not quite so much arrogance. For the right it cautions against tendencies to suppress our most time-tempered means of guarding against national delusions of omnipotence, yet with the incisive reminder that even L.B.J.'s Establishment represents a policy come of age compared to former treatments of ideological underdogs.

One could have wished for a further development of the concluding suggestion that oftentimes neither dissenter nor defender speaks any substantial words. It is easy to lose faith in both left and right when all the observer hears are emotion-laden cliches that signify nothing.

JOEL R. HITT Louisville, Ky.

Sir: Dissent is like everything else in life: there's a right way and a wrong way to do things. And having a worthy goal is no excuse to go off half cocked.

Nearly all Americans want to end the war in Viet Nam as quickly as possible, but few of us believe that running off at the mouth and carrying homemade signs will do the trick.

BOB CONWAY Asheville, N.C.

Sir: We soldiers realize that dissent may be lengthening the war, or at least reducing any inclination the North Vietnamese might have to negotiate. But Congressmen Hebert and Rivers, and others who try to stifle dissent, are seeking to destroy one of the very freedoms we're defending. We'd rather the Carmichaels and Kings abuse these freedoms than have our Congressmen limit them and destroy them. Even a few kooks burning draft cards aren't as disheartening as a Congressman crying, "Let's forget the First Amendment!"

(SP4) A. S. RICHARDSON U.S.A. Monterey, Calif.

Sir: This excerpt from a 1951 Harry Truman letter to the American Bar Association should be in bronze somewhere:

"Although the nation has always united against any external peril, blind obedience to authority has never been characteristic of Americans. Rather, they have been questioners, doubters, experimenters, and very often articulate and vociferous dissenters. This attitude is perhaps our unique and most valuable national asset. It has promoted our moral and spiritual welfare. It has forced discussion, examination, and re-examination of policies on every level. The free interchange of opinion and criticism thus made possible is in a very real sense the most important element of national security we possess, for it provides a greater likelihood that we will take the right course than does any system in which policies are determined by a few leaders whom none dares criticize."

ROWLAND ALLEN Indianapolis

Another Johnson Nominated

Sir: Thank you for publicizing the achievements in integrity of Federal Judge Frank Johnson [May 12]. It is unfortunate that there are not more judges who understand what justice really means.

As a Caucasian teacher in a heavily integrated Southern school, I suggest to Justice J. Edwin Livingston that aside from the fact that the Negro children--with whom he would not want to go to school--are often better-groomed, better-behaved, more intelligent, more endearing and more industrious than some of their white classmates, the process of learning is inextricably bound up with the opening of one's heart and mind to all of humanity.

HELEN O. JONES Norfolk, Va.

Sir: Johnson sounds like the kind of man good Presidents are made of.

CARL HABELE Redding, England

Sir: Having spent last summer in Mississippi as a civil rights volunteer, I should like to add the name of another federal judge to that group who by their impartial enforcement of the Constitution are changing the social and political structure of the South more effectively than "black power" advocates will ever do. Claude Clayton in Oxford, Miss., quite possibly saved my life and the lives of my fellow volunteers by putting police in Grenada, Miss., under a federal injunction ordering them to protect us. That same summer Judge Clayton ordered Grenada to desegregate its schools. The answer to the racial problems of the South lies in each individual's obeying and upholding the law. Too often, we fail to realize that some laws will be obeyed only so long as there are judges who possess the vision, courage and conscience to enforce them.

DAY L. PATTERSON Columbia Law School Manhattan

Who's Really on Trial?

Sir: As a sometime professor of political science and political philosophy, I am appalled by Bertrand Russell's latest project. The Stockholm "trial" [May 12] has apparently been a prosecution without proper perscrutation of any defense of the American position in Viet Nam.

In promoting this "happening," Russell proved false to his own principles. He once wrote that the philosopher "must contend that any useful purpose which is to be served by propaganda must be that of promoting judgment, rational doubt, and the power of weighing opposing considerations. He will compare the public to a judge who listens to counsel on either side, and" will hold that a monopoly in propaganda is as absurd as if, in a criminal trial, only the prosecution or only the defense were allowed to be heard."

RICHARD V. MONTAG Poway, Calif.

Southern Gentlemen

Sir: Never has the hypocrisy of Northern "liberals" been more clearly evidenced than in the riot at Dartmouth when George Wallace spoke there [May 12]. Apparently the ideal of freedom of speech these students pretend to cherish so dearly can be applied only to speakers who advocate views in agreement with their own. Dartmouth students would be well advised to follow the example set by students at the University of Mississippi when they cordially received Robert Kennedy last year.

DAVID ELLENSON, '69 WILLIAM HAMILTON, '69 College of William and Mary Williamsburg, Va.

Better Dead Than Coed

Sir: When Mount Holyoke, along with 24 other leading women's colleges, received $10,000 from Time Inc. last December, we did not recognize the gift as a contribution towards funeral expenses.

In "Better Coed Than Dead" [May 5], you propose the burial of some very lively corpses. Let Vassar announce defeat and aspire to espouse Yale. Not so for others of us who find the greatest strength of American higher education in its diversity. We will continue to demonstrate that separate, residential colleges for women offer them unparalleled opportunities to develop their intellects, their values and their qualities of leadership. We are committed to the proposition that women should have lives and purposes of their own. Mount Holyoke College, having been at it for 130 years, prefers to offer something special to the women who seek equal partnership in marriage and in careers.

RICHARD GLENN GETTELL President

Mount Holyoke College South Hadley, Mass.

> That was no funeral dirge; it was the melody of the times. TIME salutes independent Mount Holyoke, which in its diversity allows its students to enroll in courses at Amherst and the University of Massachusetts.

Listening to Lucy

Sir: According to the book A Man Called Lucy [May 5], Holland in 1940 disregarded advance warnings about the Nazi invasion. However, I ran the photograph units for the Dutch Resistance and have a photostat of a May 9, 1940 order indicating that the book is not quite correct.

In the afternoon of May 9, 1940, the officers of our regiment, the First Motorized Hussars, were informed that Dutch Intelligence expected a possible German invasion on May 9 or 10. We were told to pass out live ammunition to the troops and we were given the exact areas in which paratrooper landings could be expected. Large sections of storm-drain pipe were placed on the runways of the airfields, and trucks were parked at intervals on the middle of the freeways to prevent possible aircraft landings.

The Germans appeared May 10 in the exact areas where they had been expected, so that some of our platoons had German paratroopers jumping right over their heads and managed to kill many before they reached the ground.

There were, however, many Dutch unit commanders who suffered from the same unbelievable quiescence and lack of imagination that later plagued the U.S. brass at Pearl Harbor. Disturbed by previous false alarms, they now simply ignored the warning by the Dutch High Command.

T. VAN RENTERGHEM Malibu, Calif.

The Written Word

Sir: In "The Model" [May 12], there is this comment about movies made on Taiwan: "With Mandarin sound tracks and subtitles in other dialects." For a magazine founded by an old China hand, I find this interesting. In all my years in China, I always thought the written language was universal. Has TIME found something new?

FRANC SHOR Associate Editor National Geographic Magazine Washington, D.C.

> No, something old. TIME meant to say "for other dialects," Taiwanese and other Chinese who speak dialects have trouble understanding spoken Mandarin. But the written language is indeed universal.

Light On the Subject

Sir: A footnote to your story on luminal art [April 28]: In November 1963, the Corcoran Gallery presented a show called "Design in Light" that may have been the earliest exhibit of luminal art. The artist was a Washingtonian, William Bechhoefer, who developed his technique in the Visual Art Center at Harvard. His technique was described as follows:

"Using a camera, he has created authentic works of art by an abstract approach to forms, colors and materials,' photographed for their shapes and tones. Crushed cloth and metal and other substances are bathed in different colored lights until a pleasing composition is obtained and photographed. The photos are framed and mounted like paintings, some with lights behind them to give a stained glass glow."

HERMANN W. WILLIAMS JR. Director

The Corcoran Gallery of Art Washington, D.C.

Name Game

Sir: Re Nancy Sinatra--the "Mini Mata Hari" [May 5]: No voice, no talent, not attractive, a college dropout, already divorced, but in her favor an illustrious Hollywood name. And you have the nerve to tell us that "she can claim to have made it on her own." Come off it, TIME. Had she been born Nancy Smith or Nancy Sumatra, she'd be working at Woolworth's.

ROY H. HART, M.D. Pittsfield, Mass.

To the Rescue

Sir: About "Have Nymphet, Will Travel" [May 12]: We rescue dogs from inhumane treatment, we save cats from drowning, and we take children from parents who beat them. What can we do for a child like Romina Power?

PAMELA A. VINCENT Randolph, Mass.

Youse Bums!

Sir: Even way out here in Phoenix, I felt a slight tremor early in the morning of Tuesday, May 9. After reading TIME [May 12], I realized the cause: the entire borough of Brooklyn had been shaken to its very foundations by your statement in PEOPLE that Sandy Amoros made his famous catch in centerfield. Anyone who survived a coronary that afternoon can inform you that the catch was made in the very laps of the spectators seated next to the leftfield foul pole.

CHARLES F. WILKINSON Phoenix, Ariz.

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