Everyman's Issue

Sir: The environment is not just "Nixon's New Issue" [Feb. 2]; surely it is the issue for us all.

WILLIAM J. PARR Columbus

Sir: As a member of an age group that can reasonably expect to be alive in the year 2000 (if anyone is still around), I was excited by the President's emphasis on cleaning up the environment in the State of the Union address. It contains, however, one glaring flaw: his acceptance as inevitable of a growth in the U.S. population of more than 100 million people in the next 30 years.

To quote Population Biologist Dr. Paul R. Ehrlich: "Too many cars, too many factories, too much detergent, too much pesticide, multiplying contrails, inadequate sewage-treatment plants, too little water, too much carbon dioxide--all can be traced easily to too many people." The Government must initiate stringent birth control measures through education about contraception methods, through liberal abortion laws and through high luxury taxes on any more than two children.

JOHN C. HOOPER Lieutenant, U.S.A. A.P.O. N.Y.

Sir: Projecting your world-population curve to the year 2600 gives a density of one person for every 2 sq. ft. of usable land. The inescapable result for mankind will be standing room only. Well, if all else fails, this should solve the problem.

EDWARD C. LOWELL Tarzana, Calif.

Sir: If the goal of the '60s was to put man on the moon, then the goal of the '70s must be to keep man on the earth.

DAVID MCCAULEY College Park, Md.

Sir: You suggest that the 150 whales that nosed onto the beach at Fort Pierce, Fla., seemed to be trying to tell us something [Jan. 26]. Of course. Our environment has run so amuck that it is at least possible that the crazed herds of whales might have found the seas too foul to endure any longer and beached themselves as a dramatic way of showing mankind what the ocean's creatures think of his detergent and pesticide-filled rivers, his raw or half-processed sewage, and his oil slicks.

BOB WOODSIDE Assistant Professor Department of Mathematics East Carolina University Greenville, N.C.

Sir: The German chemical plant may be a cause for concern to Hilton Head Island [Jan. 26], but it's a nightmare to Bluffton, only two miles from the plant site. As I see this village about to be engulfed by a huge industrial complex, I must register my protest against this giant leap backward.

(MRS.) FLORENCE HARRY Bluff ton, S.C.

Sir: How the naivete--both real and pretended--of our public officials must make the Germans laugh! Has there ever been a petrochemical plant anywhere that didn't introduce pollution to the air and water? However, the incredible part is not that we are going to get the same pollution that every petrochemical complex generates, but that we are spending so many tax dollars to bring it here.

But we cannot blame B.A.S.F. for this entirely. They have the blessings of our state's leaders, and the pollution they create will be within the limits permissible under our archaic and inadequate laws dealing with the subject. No, the onus belongs chiefly to the local politicians--in this case, Democrats all--who are so anxious to jump in bed with the Germans.

JON L. MALLARD Hilton Head Island, S.C.

Such Short Memories

Sir: Once again the world has failed. More genocide has been committed. Only this time it wasn't in the death camps of Hitler, it was in Biafra [Jan. 26]. Again we have forgotten everything, our morals, promises and the holocaust. I wonder how many more millions must perish unnecessarily because of our fallibility. It seems we have short memories.

MATTHEW PAUL SOLOW Great Neck, N.Y.

Sir: I worked in Eastern Nigeria and Biafra for nine years, and I was struck by your quote from a diplomat in Lagos: "An Ibo would be out of his mind to show up in Hausa towns like Kano, Kaduna or Sokoto. They don't want him there." In this statement the real reason for the secession in 1967 is touched: the fact that the Easterners were not wanted and not safe in their own country.

If Nigeria wants unity, for which she claims to have fought this war, she must make every one of her citizens, including the former Easterners, welcome in the whole of the country. If the quotation is a true description of the situation in January 1970, the Nigerian tragedy has not yet finished.

K. REIJNIERSE Oegstgeest, The Netherlands

Leonard & the Panthers

Sir: That such a respected person as Leonard Bernstein would donate to the Black Panthers [Jan. 26] is unbelievable. He and other such people should be ashamed to give money to a group that is intent on destroying our Government. I don't believe the Black Panthers' civil liberties were violated. Since they are against our President and everything he stands for, why should they be protected by our Constitution?

DEBORAH NOLIN Old Lyme, Conn.

Sir: These people listened to an appeal from one who openly admits to furthering their demise, and then they turned around and gave him money with which to carry on. TIME should start a "Ridiculous Remark of the Year" file with Mr. Bernstein's quote: "I believe in this country, and I would fight if the Panthers tried to destroy it." I think he ought to take the batons out of his ears and listen carefully to the tune.

J. C. SAVAN Atlanta

Sir: If Mr. Bernstein and his cronies are sincere in their quixotic defense of civil liberties, I suggest they research the Panthers' credo and re-evaluate their inane justifications. The translation of "civil" liberties by the Black Panthers comes out "kill the pigs"--pure and simple.

ROY LEE WARD Imperial Beach, Calif.

Sir: Are Leonard Bernstein et al. going to deduct their contributions to Panther 21 on their tax returns? If so, that means all of us taxpayers are supporting "a new myth that Black Panther is beautiful." Just think what $3,000 would mean to a struggling Negro college student.

JEANNETTE K. KAUFMAN Redondo Beach, Calif.

Mirror, Mirror on the Wall

Sir: After swallowing and, at times, choking on an unending diet of the Pepsi Generation, the Now Generation, the gappy generation, with-it, hung-up, love-in, way-out, freak-out, out of sight, uptight, trips, hips, yips, drugs, thugs, dig, groove, swing and all the power that LOVE can bring, I wish to protest your article on Rudi Gernreich [Jan. 26]. Where's the fun gone? The mystery? The wondering and then the knowing? What satisfaction can one get out of the "advancing years" when one has shaved, plucked, lacquered, sprayed and, in general, erased the things that make people young? Mr. Gernreich has hit upon something better than the Pill. Who's going to want to make love to one's own reflection?

MRS. ANTHONY J. KEELEY JR. Red Bank, N.J.

Sir: It was awful enough to hear that California's "culture" was predicted as the wave of the future--but Rudi Gernreich's unisex (more properly, nonsex) predictions really tear it! I'm a mere tad of 48 who had planned on living another 100 years --but if that's what I'll have to look forward to, swing now, sweet chariot.

ALLEN FOBES St. Paul

Hole in the Fabric

Sir: The reaction against a ten-(dead)-tiger coat [Jan. 19] may not be just from conservationists but from much of the general public as well. However, no amount of laws or game preserves are going to save wild creatures as long as there is the combination of greed (the hunter) and vanity (the purchaser). Only when public attitudes remove the desirability of owning a fur will the killing become unrewarding. Maybe I'll never have personal knowledge of whether that wild tiger continues to live or not. Yet when anything becomes extinct, there is an uncanny feeling that somewhere a hole has been made in the fabric of creation.

MRS. A. D'AMATO Bronxville, N.Y.

Sir: The conservationists' furor over fur coats calls to mind Vernon Bartlett's poem that appeared some time back in the New Statesman, "The Leopard Coats":

Once in a moment of great generosity

God has shown to me

A leopard running free.

How, from that moment, could he

expect of me, Born without his tolerance, calmly to

see All those women, those bloody awful

women, Dressed up in leopard skins and sitting

down to tea?

DIANE AHRENS New Orleans

Victorian Ways

Sir: The two-seater bath [Jan. 19] is not new. It is said to have been used by the gilded youth of the ancien regime. The man faced the girl and between them was an allegedly well-secured wire-mesh screen surmounted by a tabletop for playing cards, snacks, and perhaps a carafe of wine.

More surprisingly, at a Scottish hydro a few years ago, I found myself occupying one of two double rooms that shared a huge bathroom in which stood a fine 19th century two-seater bath (a face-to-facer again). Just the place for Bob and Carol and Ted and Alice. We underestimate the Victorians in so many ways.

N. T. GRIDGEMAN Ottawa

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