Agnew's Image

Sir: I wish to thank you for the splendid cover picture of the Sept. 20 issue of TIME. Governor Spiro Agnew has a wonderful face; it shows force, honesty, intelligence and kindness.

MARGUERITE G. WILSON

Los Angeles

Sir: Spiro Agnew in green on the cover is very appropriate. That's exactly the color I turn when I think how close he might get to the presidency.

TANYA PHILIPPS

W. Covina, Calif.

Sir: While his tactics will win him office, historians will record that Spiro T. Agnew was not a household word but simply a dirty word.

WILLIAM D. BERG

Evanston, Ill.

Nixon and Humphrey

Sir: I am satisfied that Nixon will win with his approach, and this pleases me. Nixon is not a superhuman, but he does think in a logical manner. Then too, a complete turnover usually exposes some of the maggots in the body politic.

ROALD A. OLSON

San Francisco

Sir: Ole' Nixon should jus' sit back on his haunches and let Hubert put his foot in his mouth. Every time he opens it, he loses 100,000 votes.

FLO HUGHES

Philippines

The Third Choice

Sir: The attack on George Wallace's physical characteristics is disgusting [Sept. 13]. The reference to his "pouty lips, upswept pompadour and downswept jowls" only reveals the deep poverty of the quality of press reporting in our country.

ALBERTA BRAY

Kansas City, Mo.

Sir: How dare he? Impropriety indeed! The effrontery of that little banty rooster of a demagogue from Alabama, placing a wreath on Lincoln's Tomb [Sept. 20]. "Reverently"? With that habitual sneer? That is making a mockery of everything the great Lincoln stood for. Wallace shouldn't be allowed to even stand on such hallowed ground.

EVE PENROSE

Yerington, Nev.

Sir: Your article on the conservative trend in American politics has revealed a basic--and unpleasant--side of human nature. When the average citizen achieves a socio-economic plateau that he has long been striving for, the first thing he often does is try to deny that level to those immediately below him on the scale. This tendency is evident today as many blue-collar union workers support George Wallace in a desperate attempt to deprive the Negro and Puerto Rican of the same benefits they now enjoy. These newly self-appointed guardians of the status quo would do well to remember from whence they came.

E. SANFORD KING

Greenbelt, Md.

Sir: George Wallace asserts that the two major parties represent Tweedledee and

Tweedledum. I agree that the choice this year is abysmal but, because of him, we have three candidates: Tweedledee, Tweedledum and Tweedledum-dum.

ROSEMARIE BOCKMAN

Warminster, Pa.

Sir: Be grateful. Only one candidate can be elected.

IRVING K. SMALL

Louisville

Advice for Voters

Sir: Re: the campaign for the presidency. I might offer a suggestion to the confused American majority who wonders how to vote: Vote for the man who you think could marry a rich, talented and willful widow, teach her the humility of good manners, put her much abused estate in order, placate the outraged neighbors and make something useful out of her spoiled-rotten children.

WILFRED C. DUNN

Newburyport, Mass.

Call for Trudeau

Sir: Re Prime Minister Trudeau [Sept. 20]: Americans should all join together, face north, and shout "come on down!"

WAYNE M. MASTERMAN

University of Pittsburgh Pittsburgh

Goldwater as Prophet

Sir: TIME asks: "Was Barry Goldwater four years ahead of his time?" [Sept. 20]. No. The American electorate was four years late in seeing the picture that was so clear in 1964.

Will a sufficient number see it like it is this time?

W. V. FERGUSON

Kirkland, Wash.

Test for Politicians

Sir: In addition to the psychiatric tests for police [Sept. 13], may I also suggest psychiatric and personality tests for some of our elected officials. First on the list would be Chicago's colorful Mayor Daley.

CRAIG L. DAVIS

Jefferson City, Mo.

Russell and the Reds

Sir: I was disturbed by the article on the ideological schism in the Communist world [Sept. 20] and the partially hidden suggestion that Bertrand Russell would "gullibly accept Soviet outrages." After reading several works by and about Lord Russell, I have yet to find even the slightest hint that he condoned the Stalinist purges. In fact in his essay "Why I Am Not a Communist," he states that he believes that Communism's theoretical tenets are false and that Communism would "produce an immeasurable increase of human misery."

JACK E. BROWN

Grand Forks, N. Dak.

Viet Nam and Czechoslovakia

Sir: You label the comparison between the U.S. intervention in Viet Nam and the Soviet Union's intervention in Czechoslovakia [Sept. 20] "hardly exact, since the U.S. intervened in Viet Nam in order to rescue an established government from subversion while the Soviets invaded a friendly neighbor in order to undermine a government that was struggling to gain a measure of independence and freedom." Yet I'm sure the Soviets feel that they are the ones who are rescuing an established regime from subversion, and that it is the U.S. who is undermining a struggle for independence. It is not surprising that uninvolved observers see a similarity between the two interventions. In both cases, armed force has been deployed in a sovereign state to perpetuate a style of government acceptable to the intervening superpower, and in both cases the welfare of the populace was definitely a secondary consideration.

BRENDAN TAYLOR

New Haven, Conn.

The Power of One Vote

Sir: Your excellent Essay [Sept. 20] concerning the failings of our Electoral College was most pointed, as far as it went. You cited three presidential elections, those of Jefferson-Burr, Clay-Adams-Jackson-Crawford and Hayes-Tilden, to illustrate your indictment of the college's utility. It is of interest that two of these elections and perhaps the course of American history were decided in each instance by the margin of a single vote. Adams won by the vote of General Stephen Van Rensselaer and Hayes by the 8-to-7 vote of an electoral commission that awarded him the four states and endowed him with the electoral majority of the one vote.

JULIUS P. CROWNE

Elmhurst, L.I.

How to End the War

Sir: I have a marvelous suggestion for the advocates of the cessation of the bombing in Viet Nam. There could be a massive airlift of all peace groups and those who wish to stop the bombing, to South Viet Nam. Our military would be instantly ready to board the planes for a return to the U.S. The bombing halt and troop withdrawal would then have taken place and the North Vietnamese could be greeted with love and peace. Not a country in the world could complain that the U.S. was not seeking peace.

(MRS.) BARBARA FINGLES

Storrs, Conn.

Priests Who Marry

Sir: Congratulations on your article "Priests in the Secular World" [Sept. 20]. My husband (an ex-priest) and I (an ex-lay missionary) thoroughly enjoyed it. We get a little tired of reading about this priest or that who has married and apparently feels the need for publicity. That isn't the kind of publicity we as a group need. Let's hear about the ones who have been "out" for a few years: their problems, successes, failures. There's a tremendous wealth of material, as yet virtually untapped, in the lives of these men. If the secular world is to accept us, it will be because of this type of journalism. Your article was one of the first of what we hope will be many steps in this direction.

MRS. NEIL J. GOODMAN

Buffalo

Sir: Should you be daring enough to close some of the credibility gaps you continued to perpetuate in "Priests in the Secular World," you might devote one or two sentences in some future issue to those men happy in their vocation and to those priests who have returned to the ministry.

TIMOTHY E. KAUFMAN, S.J.

Seattle University Seattle

Sir: It's high time "Christian charity" became something more than a pious platitude, its meaning ranging from giving the good sister a seat on the bus to contributing to the school building fund. How can one dub himself a follower of Christ and reject a man because he stands on his convictions? These defrocked priests are practicing the vow of poverty in its harshest form. They are deprived of security and direction. They are ostracized from family and community. The lack of human sympathy and companionship compels them to choose between two evils--forget one's convictions and regain favor, or forsake one's cherished privilege and marry. If those perpetuating such obviously inhuman values can be called "Christian," color me heathen.

(MRS.) KATHLEEN BOWMAN

Wyncote, Pa.

Black Panthers

Sir: Wasn't it Ogden Nash who cautioned: "If called by a panther, don't anther"? Sound advice.

JANET C. JACEWICZ

McLean, Va.

The Value of Tenure

Sir: We are grateful to TIME and Albert Shanker [Sept. 20] for telling us what is wrong with our public schools: "You walk into a classroom and you see the same teacher and the same blackboard you saw 20 years ago." Does this also apply to the same Professor Kittredge at the same old lectern at Harvard or to the same Professor Baker at the same old drama workshop at Yale in years past? When should a teacher be thrown on the scrap heap? Speaking as a teacher who is standing at the same old blackboard for the ninth year, and who has spent the last nine summers attending graduate school, when must I begin to apologize for wanting to continue to practice my profession with pride?

ETHELING M. STEINHEIMER

Cupertino, Calif.

Jailhouse Cruelty

Sir: Although the outrages you report of the Philadelphia penal system [Sept. 20] are by no means unusual, there is clearly enough cruelty involved to "spring" many prisoners under the Eighth Amendment which guarantees no cruel or unusual punishment. What I cannot understand is that the legal profession with its intellect and the A.C.L.U. with its moral superiority do not seem to have found any test case.

EMERSON FROST

Manasquan, N.J.

That Fortas Fee

Sir: Doubts about Justice Fortas were raised [Sept. 20] by a disclosure that he had received $15,000 for 18 hours' work. Can one get Frank Sinatra for that price?

MELVIN OAKES

Austin, Texas

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