Thoughts on the Flag

Sir: Surprised as I am to find myself in agreement with The Rev. Billy Graham, I must concur with his contention that the flag [July 6] is much like the Queen of England. It is an anachronism. In an age where our greatest need is the development of a humanitarian, internationalistic spirit of unity, many Americans identify with a chauvinistic symbol that not only separates them from compatriots but also from our brothers and sisters in other lands.

What makes the flag fad even worse is that the flag is becoming exclusively the property of a group that has abandoned the Constitution, especially the Bill of Rights, in an effort to "preserve democracy." Would those who founded this country have chosen a flag if they knew it would be used as a justification for beating up college students in New York?

JAMES L. CASSERLY Princeton, N.J.

Sir: I love, honor and respect my father and mother, too, but I don't cremate them each time they happen to make contact with God's good earth. Why all the big panic about who wears star-studded trousers, red-and-white-striped bikinis, or displays flags superimposed with symbols of peace? Let us stand up for and preserve the ideals that this country and its flag represent, but please let's don't bow down and worship a piece of cloth as a false idol.

(MRS.) JAN MALLERY Rancho Cordova, Calif.

Sir: It is probable that the most massive desecration of the U.S. flag takes place in the U.S. Post Office. Every 60 flag stamp that is used gets canceled.

Ross FREEMAN Urbana, Ill.

Sir: Consider this recent episode at Grand Bahama's Britannia pub, where barmaids fetchingly wear maxi-miniskirts fashioned from the Union Jack.

An American visitor, aghast at such wiggling disrespect, remonstrated to a retired Royal Navy commander. This very model of Britain's Establishment explained: "Our flag's not the Holy Grail; it's only a bit of cloth. In the services, when we've done with it, we put it to polishing boots or brass."

National maturity, sanity and compassion, we are again reminded, do not come readily. In our ubiquitous display and near deification of Old Glory, might we not unwittingly be borrowing a page from Hitlerian Germany? Respect, like love, cannot be dictated--or produced by fiat.

FREDERIC HENRY Key Largo, Fla.

Sir: The original flag design called for a star and a stripe for each state admitted to the union. By 1818 there were 20 states in the union, and it became apparent that the continuous addition of smaller and smaller stripes would adversely affect the flag's appearance.

My great-grandfather, Captain Samuel Chester Reid, a naval hero who had distinguished himself in the War of 1812, was asked by Representative Peter H. Wendover of New York to suggest a plan for the flag that would meet with the approval of Congress. Captain Reid's simple suggestion to hold the stripes to 13 commemorating the original states, and have a star for each state, was enacted into law on April 4, 1818.

The first flag, with 20 stars and 13 stripes, was made by Mrs. Reid in her home on Cherry Street in New York City. It was flown from the Capitol in Washington, D.C., on July 4, 1818, the date the flag law became effective.

EDWARD B. WELLS St. Augustine, Fla.

Don't Color Us Green

Sir: Your attempt to put down the 1950s generation [June 29] as a bunch of selfish, unfeeling nonsensitives stuck in my craw.

I don't know what part of that generation you were in, but my group was in college, desperately trying to get good grades, and all the time wondering whether we would go to Korea (remember Korea?) or the Berlin Wall. We kept our mouths shut and worked, not because we were mindless robots but because we were not stupidly arrogant enough to think that we knew better than persons with 20 years more experience in the world.

But the ultimate insult is to state that we are envious of the present young generation. Of a generation so incredibly naive that it equates fornication with love, liberty with license, freedom with selfishness; a generation so irrationally hypocritical that it gets stoned on pot while decrying air pollution, screams "Get out of Viet Nam" while advocating arms for Israel, and expresses disgust with the profit-making Establishment while greedily wasting its parents' money on luxury items made by this Establishment; a generation so arrogantly self-centered that it has no belief in anything but what it sees, no respect for anything but what it wants, no responsibility toward anything but what it feels is "relevant" today, this minute.

Envious? Come on!

RICHARD F. OLES Baltimore

Sir: On Tuesday I circulated a petition against the war in Viet Nam and later signed one against our local supermarket; on Thursday I listened to Simon and Garfunkel records while reading instructions for my self-cleaning oven; on Friday I read Dr. Spock's treatise on dissent in the morning, then checked his Infant and Child Care in the afternoon regarding the baby's rash; on Saturday night I discussed Soul on Ice with my baby sitter before going to a party where the only pot was the one my husband is developing.

Your Essay "The Silent Generation Revisited" expressed so eloquently this sense of "non-belonging." However, we may have one last chance to shake off our do-nothing label. By taking the best from both generations, perhaps we can provide our children with those values that will bring them happiness.

(MRS.) MARSHA Z. DOLLINGER Cherry Hill, N.J.

Hickory-Dickory

Sir: As a longtime enthusiast for and avid collector of wristwatches that are more than merely functional, I smiled to see Dr. Dougherty's new addition: the Spiro Agnew Original [July 6].

I have but two qualms preventing me from rushing out this minute to purchase one: 1) its degree of accuracy seems ill-fated to be minimal; 2) its "tic-tic-tic" would probably sound closer to "Dick-talk, Dick-talk, Dick-talk."

JIM BARTLEMAN Richmond, Calif.

Sir: Let us have a Ted Kennedy wristwatch, waterproof, of course. I'm sure Ethel would love one.

ROBERT B. VAN WEY Toledo

A Price for Morality?

Sir: With regard to the Supreme Court decision to enlarge the grounds for the exemption of conscientious objectors [June 29], it seems to this reader quite proper that no man should be compelled to kill, or to abet killing, in violation of his moral code.

On the other hand, it seems equally proper that any man who willfully evades on this, or any other grounds, his obligation to hazard his life in his country's wars should not be allowed to vote or to run for any public office--should be, in fact, a perpetual minor. He might also be required to refund the entire cost of any education he has received at public expense. Morality should not come too cheaply. Society, too, has rights.

PETER H. PEEL Los Angeles

The Interest Factor

Sir: Your story about campus antiwar attitudes [July 6] doesn't add up. Regarding the survey conducted by the Swarthmore psychologists, you tell us 1) that "pure self-interest was a relatively minor factor" in antiwar attitudes on campus, then you tell us 2) that fully one-third of the students polled "changed their career plans as a result of the war--many aiming for draft-exempt occupations."

Please help me. I'm an old man and understanding TIME is about the only thing I still have going for me.

WINSTON BROADFOOT Chapel Hill, N.C.

Stripping to Essentials

Sir: It's pretty sad that Freudians overlook the simple and common-sense answers in preference for the more intriguing unconscious motives. Instead of the analytical garbage [July 6], I'd rather accept the explanation that girls strip because they're exhibitionistic (just like men are voyeuristic), or that they love money enough to disrobe in public. Skipper's and McCaghy's interpretation reminds me of the standard Freudian explanation when the patient aggresses against the analyst: he's really angry at his parents. It's more likely it's the analyst he is mad at for being such an ass.

ROBERT SONE Pittsburgh

Spirits in Store

Sir: The story of Rosemary Brown [July 6] should both enlarge and enrich the domain of spiritualism, which typically has concentrated upon exchanges with deities, family and friends. Possessed by past human greatness, Mrs. Brown may help to free spiritualism from such doctrinal and familial restrictions, help it attain a level more meaningful to modern man, who may be losing his gods and his sense of family but certainly not his human soul.

Mrs. Brown reminds us that great composers give us a store of embodied spirit by which we can never fail to be illumined as we seek to express the soul of music today in our way or theirs.

RICHARD WAND Tallahassee. Fla.

Sir: Rosemary Brown sounds like one of the biggest put-ons to come along, and will probably make a fortune by bilking the public out of their hard-earned money through her chicanery!

Can she tell us, I wonder, what color eyes Chopin has?

KATHLEEN L. BRIGGS Milwaukee

Elucidating the Lingo

Sir: In your review of The Cheyenne Social Club [June 29] you call Henry Fonda's phrase "I used to be a real cedar-breaker, but now I'm just bringing up the dregs" an obscure Old-West metaphor. The way you quote it, it sure is.

A cedar-breaker is a brush-popper, a wild-cow hunter, a man who gets up into the canyons and thickets to root stubborn stock out of the rough country. It takes a man with rawhide ears and a horse that don't stop for nothin'. The drags (not dregs) are the cattle at the tail end of the drive, the sorefoots and the slowpokes, and "bringing up the drags" means riding slow at the tail end of the outfit, shooing the laggards along, and it's not what you'd call a demanding job. What the phrase means, then, is that Harley (Fonda) used to be some punkins, but now he has run down considerable and likely has some trouble holding up his end of the business.

WATSON PARKER Associate Professor of (Western) History Wisconsin State University Oshkosh

Nothing's Too Bad

Sir: Confronted, for a change, with a genuinely outrageous parody of nothing in particular except moviemaking, TIME's critics are moved to be serious and emotional (". . . an insult to intelligence, an affront to sensibility and an abomination to the eye") where only the usual good humor and honed satire could properly dismiss the movie from the attention of the serious moviegoer. The simple denunciation should be reserved for innocuous offenders; Myra Breckinridge deserves worse.

JAMES H. CLEMMER JR. Clarksville, Tenn.

Matters to Ponder

Sir: In his letter about Mike Nichols' famous-name game [July 6], University of Wisconsin Professor Schnore failed to answer the sleeper question: When he tires of such nonsense, does Leo Schnore?

CARL THOMPSON Hastings-on-Hudson, N.Y.

Sir: In these troubled times on Wall Street, will Merrill Lynch Pierce, Fenner and Smith?

CHARLES BURCK Manhattan

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