Heat from the Hustings

Sir: For years L.B.J. has told us that there's light at the end of the tunnel. After the New Hampshire primary [March 22], I'm beginning to think he's right.

JOHN F. HELLEGERS Manhattan

Sir: It seems that mother has been sitting around the house with her crossword puzzles for the past eight years just waiting for something to happen. What happened? Eugene McCarthy. Now I'm afraid the old man will have to eat cold sandwiches and ravioli until November, while mother runs around Dover whooping it up for "Clean Gene." Besides getting her out and around, the cause is a good one.

EVAN STONE Dover, N.H.

Sir: Instead of Bobby and Gene running as a sort of a team, why don't they invite Fulbright in and run as a troika?

M. JOHNSON Hollywood, Fla.

Sir: Everyone seems to smell a Kennedy-McCarthy deal. How about a Kennedy-Johnson deal? After all, Kennedy's entry assures Johnson's renomination by splitting the peace vote. In return for this favor, could Johnson have promised Kennedy his full support in 1972? This seems to be a more substantial deal for a realistic opportunist.

MRS. WM. ZIMMERMANN

Madison, Wis.

Sir: How Robert Kennedy could first help conservative fire-eater Joseph McCarthy and now offer aid to liberal peacemaker Eugene McCarthy is ethically incomprehensible. Besides his Massachusetts-to-Manhattan carpetbaggery, Bobby allowed Good Grey Gene to stick out his neck in New Hampshire and now says, "Off with his head!" Really, Robert, you do disgust.

MICHAEL BARRETT Hopkins, Minn.

On with the Dance

Sir: I have just been on a trip into a world that was sheer ecstasy. "The Great Leap Forward" [March 15] was, perhaps, the best six pages that I have read in a long time. The photographs were alive. May the ballet of the future be projected from our present-day thoughts.

JILL TURKISHER Beverly, Mass.

Sir: You may have been doing your thing by cleverly hippieizing the dance scene, but I found the slick sloganizing too cute and uninformative. Dance is not the product of a flower child's mentality; rather, it is the grueling, sweaty work of dedicated artists. Admittedly, dance is a neglected art, but trying to sell it as an In-type thing through the use of zippy hippie cliches not only cheapens the art form but misinforms your readers.

ELLEN JACOBS Madison, Wis.

Sir: Bravo for moving Dance out of the Music section into Theater. Will it take another 44 years to put it on its own?

MARCIA B. MARKS Writer-Editor Woman's Day Manhattan

Sir: While we appreciate your cover article on the dance world, you have done a great disservice to the Alvin Ailey American Dance Theater. Although grossing $250,000 a year, the company has been working with a $100,000 annual deficit, and only the sacrifices of those in the company, who work for a minimal salary, and the help of the State Department, individual loans and grants from foundations have helped the company to survive. While critics and audiences have acclaimed our Dance Theater as unique throughout the world, the quarter of a million dollar pot is still at the end of that elusive rainbow.

ALVIN AILEY Manhattan

Sir: Herbert Migdoll's photo montage makes the most striking TIME cover I've yet seen. I put it right up on my wall.

SHARON HAMILTON

Manhattan

Beware the Badger

Sir: A word about the "Standoff" between Dean Rusk and the Senate Foreign Relations Committee [March 22]: I was grievously disappointed and ashamed that the Secretary of State could be subjected to such vindictive and wholesale badgering as was directed toward him, primarily by the Chairman. I fully recognize the right of all Americans to be informed as to the established policies, both foreign and domestic, of our selected heads of Government. However, if we intend to maintain our national integrity, we damned well better investigate the definition of the word discretion as it relates to the solution of our internal grievances.

(SGT.) MICHAEL J. MOYLAN U.S.M.C. F.P.O., N.Y.

Sir: Only one thing was lacking. The chairman did not pound the table with his shoe. The vodka must have flowed in torrents as the Marxists toasted our Senators. All patriotic Americans congratulate Secretary Rusk on his dignity, his poise, his unruffled logic throughout the most disgraceful spectacle ever presented to the nation or the world.

E. C. CORNELL Wartrace, Tenn.

1-A, But Not A-1

Sir: Either the standards of the draft have been lowered considerably since Colonel Robert A. Bier's study in 1962 [March 15], or the study itself was highly selective and padded. For example, from my bay alone in the U.S. Army in Germany, there are four sufferers of flat feet (myself included), one individual with a painful inch difference in leg lengths and very bad eyesight, a trick knee, and two men with boarded beds to help relieve the pain from bad backs. More ^aptly, the general rule seems to be: "If in doubt, accept."

(SP5) D. R. LAKEMAN U.S.A. A.P.O., N.Y.

Weight Watchers

Sir: TIME'S version of the views of Economist Gunnar Myrdal [March 15] is a classic statement of the West's ethnocentric view of Asia. We can hope for little improvement in our relations with the people of Asia until we stop weighing their every success and failure on the scale of Western values, for Asians can live no more comfortably with our values than we could with theirs. A Laotian TIME, for example, might argue no less convincingly that "the failure--so apparent in the West--to achieve a tranquil, contented society can be blamed on an obsession with orderliness and punctuality, a lack of humility and a superabundance of ambition."

C. NOEL CANNING Palo Alto, Calif.

Sir: As an Asian, I agree with Mr. Myrdal's appraisal of the Asian people; yet he neglects to point out that so much of this "soft states" condition plaguing Asia has been brought about by the seemingly overpowering benevolence of the Americans. It seems that all we Asians have to do is yell "Here come the Communists!" and instantly, billions of dollars, thousands of soldiers and weapons and hundreds of "advisers" descend on our lands and take over for us. With such a handy "sugar daddy," who cares about motivation, ambition, manual work, and cooperation?

PERL A M. HEWES Mayville, N. Y.

War Communiques

Sir: The introduction of new weapons by North Viet Nam into the war [March 15] represents an escalation of the war. Our Commander in Chief cannot hope for the U.S. to win unless the enemy is deprived of his weapons. This means North Viet Nam must be sealed off from her sources of supply. We did Japan and Germany a favor by destroying the old systerns. Let's do the Communists a favor and give them a beating.

EUGENE L. MADEIRA Assistant Pastor

State Street Methodist Church Camden, N.J.

Sir: The people have a right to dissent against a war that is being fought not over their ideals of democracy but over an arrogant belief that the U.S. can defeat any army that opposes these ideals. We are fighting for our military image rather than for the welfare of the Vietnamese peasant. The Administration is trying to save face rather than save a country.

HUGH WUNDERLY

Columbus, Ohio

Sir: I haven't noticed the critics suggesting a practical alternative to military action in Viet Nam. Many cry for negotiations, but to negotiate two parties are necessary. We could withdraw from South Viet Nam and let Ho Chi Minh have it-sort of a 1968 version of "peace in our time." We could even throw in Thailand and Laos to keep Ho happy. In a couple of years, we can let him have Korea and Japan; about 1975, Hawaii. Or, we could allow U.S. naval and air forces to place full pressure on North Viet Nam with conventional weapons, forcing Ho to abandon this little endeavor in the South. Oh, I'm sorry! I forgot that we might hurt some civilians, or damage a Russian vessel, or call down world opinion upon ourselves. Oh well, the casualty rates aren't too awfully bad . . . yet.

(SoT.) THOMAS R. SANFORD U.S.A.F. Robins Air Force Base, Ga.

Sir: Viet Nam is afflicted with iatrogenic disease. This is a physician-induced condition, and arises when an inappropriate treatment, given perhaps for a misdiagnosed illness, is continued and even stubbornly escalated. Unless the error is appreciated, the treatment stopped and the therapeutic direction shifted, the patient ultimately dies. A physician can be sued for malpractice. Can Washington?

GEOFFREY W. ESTY, M.D. Princeton, N.J.

Sir: A very great American once stated that America would pay any price, bear any burden and meet any hardship in the defense of liberty. Does this quotation pertain to the war in Viet Nam? Or was the meaning of it buried with John F. Kennedy in 1963?

(SP5) DANIEL A. O'BRIEN U.S.A. A.P.O., N.Y.

Apollo's Revenge

Sir: A letter from a Major Shaw [March 15] criticized an objective and honest commentary on the war as being "shrill with Cassandra's cry." Although misplaced, this classical reference is nevertheless strangely effective. Cassandra, who foretold the doom of Troy, was granted infallible prophetic powers by Apollo. The god later revenged himself upon her by causing every prophecy she made to be totally disregarded. No one ever believed her until it was too late. Perhaps this is true of Americans and the war of today.

JAMES E. COUSAR IV Jacksonville

Advocate of Involvement

Sir: I have read your article on "Hiring the Hard Core" [March 8], in which you listed Chase Chairman George Champion among the "critics" of the current trend toward greater involvement by private business in public problems. Far from criticizing this trend, Mr. Champion has for a long time been one of its most outspoken advocates. The quote you used was lifted out of context from a Harvard Business Review article in which he urged that the business community do much more than it has in the past to help solve problems outside the normal boundaries of day-to-day business.

JOSEPH L. WICHERSKI Public Relations Officer The Chase Manhattan Bank Manhattan

Penn's Power

Sir: The ever-present problem of student power was expressed quite efficiently in "Power to Participate" [March 15]. I could not agree more with the University of Pennsylvania's system of student participation in major decisions within the school. Bravo for its deep concern and action toward better development of our nation's future leaders.

KATHY ROWLAND Long Beach, Calif.

Sir: Before the administration and faculty sit back and drink another highball for a job well done, they should be advised that there are, indeed, some who feel that much of the student participation at this university is nothing but "tokenism." President Harnwell sits on the University Forum to placate students, not to "discuss any issue they consider important." If anyone thinks that the footin-the-door which students have gained is student power, they are deluded. The "quiet revolution" that you find so reassuring is going to heat up.

CHARLES KRAUSE Editor in Chief The Daily Pennsylvanian University of Pennsylvania Philadelphia

Take Heart

Sir: Concerning "Making It the Hard Way" [March 15]: We have come a long way in incorporating handicapped individuals into our colleges and our business world. There is more to be accomplished, however, and Robert Arhelger's story will furnish inspiration to many severely handicapped individuals to continue their efforts. Bob was an excellent pupil in my fourth-grade class at the Elias Michael School, St. Louis, in 1949-50.

MARION STRAUSS Retired Teacher of the Physically Handicapped St. Louis

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