Who Knows?

Sir: So now housewives know it, Wall Street lawyers know it, college presidents and students know it, politicians and generals know it, Congressmen and businessmen know it, I even think President Nixon knows it: America wants peace [Oct. 17]! ANNE WEISS Los Angeles

Sir: I opened TIME and saw the young battle-weary trooper, and I wept openly. Why must this young man be in such a position? He did not ask for Viet Nam. Why must some be called upon for such a sacrifice? Do we care enough? Some of these fine men are not even old enough to vote, yet they are asked to give their lives for a war that seems endless. God help us to care, and most of all, to end this senseless mess in Viet Nam.

EVELYN B. MARTIN Colorado Springs, Colo.

Sir: I would like to say thank you to all those "brave" Americans who participated in the War Moratorium. Thank you for showing us, the men you have sent over here, that we have your support. The next thing you could do is take our weapons away. That will undoubtedly stop the war. Then you can have another Moratorium, one that will really mourn the dead Americans. I hope you realize how many men you have killed because you took their will to fight away.

EDWARD J. SCARES JR. Lieutenant, U.S.A. A.P.O., San Francisco

Sir: The nationwide Moratorium has come and gone, with its excellent emphasis on peace. But one wonders why so many people only protested the U.S. involvement yet said not a whisper about Hanoi's atrocities past or present. Maybe, in order to balance the books a bit, there ought to be a second Moratorium Day showing support for this nation's attempts to secure an honorable and just peace.

JOSEPH H. PICKERING JR. Nahant, Mass.

Sir: You have charged that President Nixon's statement with regard to the Oct. 15 Moratorium, "Under no circumstances will I be affected whatever by it," was "a serious mistake." This is only true if you warp the intention of a statement obviously made to discourage the Communist leadership in Hanoi. It is indeed ironic that this statement, made to reassure and encourage both our American forces and our South Vietnamese allies dying abroad, should discredit him so with those protesting from the safety of their homes.

FREDERICK C. SMITH, '73 Franklin and Marshall College Lancaster, Pa.

Sir: Which battlefield will historians regard as the true scene of this "first American military defeat"--Viet Nam or the college campus?

LABEL SHARFMAN Jerusalem, Israel

Sir: I worked in Viet Nam for almost two years. I had many good friends, Vietnamese and Americans, die there. I believe I can honestly say that I hate the war and wish it could stop now! But this Moratorium bit makes me sick. It makes me want to stand and yell . . . but what? How can anyone yell for a war that is so terrible? I was going to say terrible and senseless, but it isn't senseless. Let's publicly admit it. We have contained China. Had we not gone into Viet Nam I am certain that China would now have full power of some type over all of Southeast Asia and would right now be looking toward South America as her next sphere of influence.

To walk out now--the mad slaughter of South Vietnamese civilians that would certainly take place, aside--is to simply allow, no, invite China and the U.S.S.R. to start anew the policy we have thwarted for the past five or ten years. I cannot understand youth's refusal to read the facts.

Currently the Paris talks are stalemated, for why would anyone negotiate what he expects to win by default?

JACK DOWN East Lansing, Mich.

Sir: It seems to me that the great tragedy of the Viet Nam Moratorium is that people do not realize that peace is too precious to be bought. A gentleman with a silk hat and umbrella learned this 31 years ago.

I remember quite vividly seeing him in the newsreels step off a plane and proclaim that he had bought "peace in our time." The price he paid was Czechoslovakia. Needless to say, he did not buy peace. He merely rented it for one year, paying a rather exorbitant price.

Trying to buy peace from a totalitarian regime is analogous to dealing with an extortionist. By offering South Viet Nam, we may have peace for a short time, but we will soon find ourselves faced with the same problem again, only this time the price will be even greater.

SEYMOUR GOLD Wantagh, N.Y.

Hail Fellows, Well Mets

Sir: God bless 'em--the Mets did it!!! And not by luck but by loyalty, courage, cooperation, magnificent teamwork, and the guidance, understanding and good old know-how of the most lovable and intelligent manager in baseball. My husband and I didn't miss a game (via overseas radio-direct). If Gil Hodges isn't Manager of the Year I quit!!!

(MRS.) BONNIE BLY Bangkok

Sir: Could you please tell me why everyone is explaining this week's stock market rise as the result of peace hopes, the possible end of inflation, etc., when it is so obvious that the real reason for the rise is those amazing Mets.

PAUL VIDAL Fall River, Mass.

Sir: The New York Mets have accomplished a task that neither mayoralty, gubernatorial nor presidential candidates have been able to achieve. They have been the first in many years to unify not only attitudes but racial gaps. They have made optimists of us all.

MARVIN HOFBERG Upper Montclair, NJ.

Hardly Normal

Sir: Your recent Essay "Charisma" [Oct. 17] was splendid and timely, but I must take issue with your characterization of Clement Atlee's postwar government in Britain as "dull, bureaucratic but quintessentially normal." The Atlee regime inaugurated six years of the most far-reaching social reconstruction in British history. It established the vast welfare state at home and presided over the dissolution of the British Empire abroad. The Atlee regime may have been dull and bureaucratic, but it most assuredly was not "quintessentially normal."

ALBERT J. MENENDEZ Jacksonville

Sir: In your Essay, how could you overlook one of the most inspirational leaders of the past year? To the people of Czechoslovakia Alexander Dubcek represented hope, and during a year's stay in that country we saw the hope fade as his official influence was replaced. But months after Husak took over leadership, one could still buy pins and pictures of Dubcek at souvenir stands in Praha. Hope may be gone but not the memories.

PHYLLIS JONES San Diego

Sir: You state that we are without leadership as we are now bereft of the towering presence of John F. Kennedy and instead have that bland Richard Nixon thrust upon us.

I, for one, am sick and tired of having that little kid who couldn't think his way put of a paper bag held up as a leader. President Nixon is now busy cleaning up the war left by the Democrats, as President Eisenhower, early in his first term, was busy cleaning up a war left by the Democrats.

NATALIE GREER Des Plaines, Ill.

Fueling the Argument

Sir: Re "Air Pollution--Toward a Cleaner Car" [Oct. 17]: natural gas is certainly a clean-burning fuel. However, for automotive use it must be stored as a cryogenic (supercold) liquid in a large, well-insulated tank. Unfortunately, if you do not drive a large number of miles in a relatively short time, the liquefied natural gas boils off. If your car sits in the driveway for a few weeks while you're on vacation, you may return to find your fuel has evaporated. Not only is this bothersome and expensive, but I suspect this evaporated hydrocarbon fuel may pollute the atmosphere with unburned hydrocarbons similar to those from evaporating gasoline.

H. E. SEIFF Arlington, Va.

Equality in All Things

Sir: Why are we lesbians always given second billing? We do not even rate equality with the male homosexual when it comes to discrimination [Oct. 24].

Many of us, lesbians and homosexuals alike, cannot help being vastly amused by the phrase, "the prevalent sense of hopelessness and inevitability." For we know the people who suffer from this syndrome: the frustrated psychiatrists and psychotherapists who so valiantly attempt to "cure" those of us who are young enough and hurt enough by society's prejudice to seek out their well-meant help.

And may I add that I hope that stringent laws against heterosexuals who "commit forcible rape, seduce children or commit sex acts in public" will remain on the books?

RITA LAPORTE National President Daughters of Bilitis, Inc. San Francisco

Ignorance I and II

Sir: Alcoholics and other present-day villains account for a small percentage of any given area. How is it that 18-year-old Stephen D. Pogue [Oct. 17] came in contact only with those who "forced" their repulsive culture down his throat?

Considering that the age of 18 is closely aligned with omnipotence, it's difficult to understand how any such forced feeding could come about. Nor is it possible to understand how any mentally alert person can believe that the substitution of one intoxicant for another is cause for respect.

Can anyone honestly seek respect for a new culture that replaces hypocrisy with copout, infidelity with phallic worship, uninvolvement with license, apathy with conscientious destructive dissent, permissiveness with rebellion, physical violence with emotional violence, money with adulterated beggary, a dead God with astrology, an empty home with a teeming commune, jealousy with conformism, decadent old ideology with decadent new ideology, and Ignorance I with Ignorance II?

Perhaps the only hope is in future children who, by the grace of God if not their elders, will mature enough to reject both evils.

A. J. VENGLARCIK Struthers, Ohio

Haunting Lines

Sir: Your "Black Lamps: White Mirrors" [Oct. 3] is the most eloquently beautiful article to appear in TIME since I first started taking your magazine 30 years ago. I am reminded of two haunting lines from a poem by Countee Cullen:

Yet do I marvel at this curious thing: To make a poet black, and bid him sing.

(MRS.) ELSIE H. BOYLE A.P.O. San Francisco

Bon Appetit

Sir: Re the story "Tale of a Snail" [Oct. 17], I have one question: Are they edible? If so, they should warm the cockles of any and all gourmet hearts.

HENRIETTE ROUGRAFF Sewickley, Pa.

> Edible yes; heartwarming no. After boiling for 1 1/2 hours, they remain tough and rubbery, smell like burnt chicken feathers, and taste like rich, black humus. Another 45 minutes in the pot does little to improve the dish.

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