Middle East Riddle

Sir: The main riddle in the Middle East [May 17] is why the U.S. Government doesn't remember what happened as a result of Chamberlain's forcing Czechoslovakia to give in to Hitler's demand for the Sudetenland. Now Secretary of State Rogers is forcing Israel to give up the Sinai, supposedly to Egypt, but actually to Russia, which really controls the military power in Egypt.

Why do our leaders have to repeat the same mistakes?

DONALD BAILEY

Los Angeles

Sir: In your Sadat story you suggest that we Israelis have become too rigid in dealing with our neighbors. Give us, to the south Sweden instead of Egypt, to the east Denmark instead of Jordan, and to the north Holland instead of Syria, and you shall find us the most flexible people in the world.

TED SIMAN

Berlin

Sir: The expansionist policy of Israel does not coincide with the peace views of the world for the past 26 years. The innocent Arab people are paying for the crimes committed against the Jews. It's about time the American Government and people realized that the innocent little lamb is the true reincarnation of Hitler.

NEIL FERRIS

Rolla, N. Dak.

Sir: As early as 1919, when Jews were 8% of the population, a presidential commission visiting the region found that "the Zionists look forward to a practically complete dispossession of the present non-Jewish inhabitants of Palestine . . ." and also foresaw the likelihood of armed aggression in the accomplishment of the Zionist program. There was never really any doubt.

The forcible expulsion of the Palestinians from their lands and homes was not a "brutal twist of fate" as Amos Elon says; it was deliberate ruthlessness.

A.P. MORAN

Port Washington, N.Y.

Sir: TIME's article on Anwar Sadat seemed to gloss over his plotting with the Nazis as though it were a youthful prank.

In his book Revolt on the Nile, however, Sadat outlined the intention of the Free Officers Movement to betray Britain to Rommel's Afrika Korps: "We made contact with the Germans' headquarters in Libya, and we acted in complete harmony with them" and "We would join with the Axis troops, and the fate of the British Empire would be sealed."

Fortunately, Montgomery's victory at EI-Alamein dashed Hitler's, Nasser's and Sadat's hopes. This is the man with whom Israel must make peace.

FREDERICK BUSI

Northampton, Mass.

Sir: I like President Anwar Sadat. In the Land of the Sphinx, he looms human just like you and me. I feel confident that he will fix his priorities right. For much too long, these were lost in the haze of grandeur and gun smoke. Now the interest of his people will come first. The abatement of Russian infiltration into the heart of the Arab world will be the next task. And if peace with Israel will mean putting a stop to 20 years of crippling war, he will do it.

VITAL ANGEL

Trinidad

Who Has It?

Sir: The Democrats currently in the running for the U.S. presidential nomination [May 17] all have two things in common. One: they don't define and talk to the issues and problems: they all seem to be running on their good looks. Two: as Senators they fail to discuss one of our chief problems: the bureaucratic, gerontocratic U.S. Senate.

In a country starving for leadership, which one of the seven has it?

WALTER KRATZ

San Diego

Sir: The only real mystery surrounding Senator Harold Hughes is whether or not the American people are ready to elect a sincere and concerned man to the presidency. Perhaps the reason he seems too direct is that we have become accustomed to having our Presidents "sold" to us.

SCOTT INGSTAD

Muscatine, Iowa

Sir: The "impeccable credentials on social affairs, economics and conservation" of Senator Henry Jackson are not "lost to view," to anyone who has been paying attention. There is no politician in the country who has a better grasp of the national interest, or who has voted more consistently in that interest.

RON SWEARINGER

Hollywood

Sir: You describe some capable Democratic presidential hopefuls but fail to mention the one American most capable not only of exciting the electorate but of providing the humanistic leadership for which this nation cries: Ramsey Clark.

CHARLES F. MURPHY

Vice Chairman

Citizens for Ramsey Clark

Raleigh, N.C.

The Graduates Next Door

Sir: Your article "Class of '68 Revisited: A Cooler Anger" [May 17] badly represents that class. Most of the individuals TIME chose to interview never left the academic community. What of those who went to Viet Nam, who decided to enter the System? What of those who married and had children? We all don't live in communes; some of us live next door.

DONALD M. MCMAHON

Chicago

Sir: Americans expect perfection in America. Europeans expect perfection in America. We all have indulged in the game of picking apart a great nation. Brian McGuire's youthful and valid protests of 1968 have developed into a wisdom we should all heed: "Nothing is ever 100%." God bless the American protesters for ideals that the entire world, not just America, should listen to and emulate.

JOHANNA J. GROVE

Essen-Steele, West Germany

Sir: I especially appreciated your follow-up article on the students who graduated in 1968. I too am now a graduate student, with a somewhat fatalistic outlook concerning the appropriateness of mass protest in accomplishing change and reform. Middle America rejoice! The radicals of three years ago are not such despicable freaks after all.

MARGARET R. SUTHERLAND

Memphis

Dampening Effect

Sir: Your story on tenure for professors [May 10] attributes to me the pointless sentimentality that it would be unjust to let a professor go ten years after he gets tenure because by then he has a house and kids in school.

What I said was that under this proposal the threat of loss of employment would hit a professor when he needs job security most, around 40, when family expenses peak, and that this prospect could be expected to have a substantially dampening effect both on his intellectual and political risk taking during the contract period and on the willingness of his colleagues and the administration to cut him off. Hence the proposal was both potentially inhibiting of academic venturesomeness and unrealistic as a remedy for the alleged evils of tenure.

SANFORD H. KADISH

President

American Association of University Professors

Washington, D.C.

Japan (Contd.)

Sir: The thoroughness of research and effort that went into your story, "Japan: Winning the Most Important Battle" [May 10], is abundantly obvious from the results. This achievement makes it all the more difficult to understand how the same article could blithely condemn the American textile-apparel industry as "not vital to the economy."

The textile-apparel complex in the U.S. provides employment for 2.4 million people--one out of every eight manufacturing employees. It has annual sales of $21 billion. It purchases millions of dollars worth of natural and man-made fibers, dyes, chemicals, electrical power, machinery and construction. It provides, proportionately, more employment for women than any other industry. If the lives and jobs of textile-apparel workers are "vital," so too are the industries which support them.

JOHN E. REEVES

President

American Textile Manufacturers Institute, Inc.

New York City

Morality and the Auto

Sir: Regarding the article on Andy Warhol [May 17], I'd first like to mention that if it is l'art pour l'art he is after, he has definitely filled the bill and in a new way. Secondly, Warhol celebrates the victorious condition of mass production. If mass production is not what is victorious and heroic, then Henry Ford has been vastly overrated. And who said anything about morality when Ford produced autos?

JEFFREY KELLY

Glastonbury, Conn.

Sir: As an artist and teacher, I view the Andy Warhol machine with no other emotion than disgust. Although I admire Mr. Warhol's attempt to portray his environment in the indiscriminate manner of a ditto machine, I would suggest that he spend a little less time fondly fingering our cultural excrement. The concern should be with changing it.

LOIS J. SCHMITT

Rockledge, Fla.

Night and Day with L.B.J.

Sir: The 31 million pieces of paper and 1,000,000 photographs gathered up by Lyndon Johnson over eleven years [May 17] irresistibly invited some calculation:

1) There are 86,400 seconds in a mean solar day (60 X 60 X 24).

2) This gives us about 31,536,000 seconds in a year.

3) Therefore, there are roughly 346,896,000 seconds in eleven years.

4) This gives us approximately one photograph every 5.8 minutes and one piece of paper every eleven seconds--day and night.

JULIUS SUMNER MILLER

Via Torrance, Calif.

Sir: Re "The L.BJ. Library": What better way for "my fellow American" to leave a remembrance--his own pyramid.

ROBERT LYNN McGOWEN

San Antonio

Religion Factory?

Sir: Your article on Rex Humbard and his religion factory [May 17] would have made better reading under Show Business.

NANCY J. BOHN

Bay City, Mich.

Sir: Thanks for your wonderful story on Rex Humbard and his Cathedral of Tomorrow in Akron.

This man is doing more than anyone I know to bring about the spiritual awakening and rebirth that this country so desperately needs if we intend to survive as a nation.

AJ. KING

Odessa, Texas

Try Penguin

Sir: Stephen Sondheim's gracious compliance with a request to rhyme "silver"' [May 24] reminds me of a run-in I had back in 1957 with a woman even more demanding than Reader Curran. The result:

A woman asked me to rhyme a

penguin.

I said, "Does the erstwhile

Emperor Eng win?

If not, I'll send a brand-new

tractor

To 'Big Boy' Williams, cinemactor;

On the card attached, a smiling

penguin

Will say, 'You're truly a man among

men, Guinn.' "

"All right," she said, "so now

rhyme silver."

But I left, because I'd had my

filver.

IRA LEVIN

New York City

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