Mustang Roundup

Sir: Your article on the plight of the wild horse in America [July 12] was an excellent commentary on a disgusting situation. Perhaps we could convert our abundant supply of stray dogs into dog food, thereby sparing the wild horses and alleviating a growing menace to our cities. Of course, the glamour of a dog roundup could hardly match riding the range in a flat-bed truck.

EDGAR P. KLEY Knoxville, Tenn.

Sir: The mustangs' plight may thankfully be offset by the nation's horse producers, who are currently maintaining a horse-population growth rate between 6% and 8% per year, making the American equine population the fastest-growing segment of animal agriculture.

There are also indications that economics will finish this senseless slaughter. Consumers have enhanced the horse's value for pleasure instead of meat. The people wanting cheaper riding horses end up competing with the meat man.

ROBERT R. BASOW

Ralston Purina Co.

St. Louis

Sir: Your article, humane and well illustrated as it was, missed the chief reason for saving our mustangs.

Horned stock--sheep and cattle--are ruminants; seed passing through the alimentary canals of such animals becomes sterile. Reseeding by the usual means is not effective in our arid Western states.

The horse is the only animal that pays for its grazing by reseeding the area over which it grazes. Seed passing through the mustang's alimentary canal will sprout more quickly than otherwise is the case. Not only that, the humus forms a mulch that protects the sprouting seed until roots are sent deep enough into the soil for the new plant to live through the hot, dry period that follows the spring season.

ALLEN FIFIELD Fallen, Nev.

Sir: Don't you have a farm or ranch editor? Your Environment article on mustangs is about as realistic as an Italian western.

DWAYNE S. ROGERS San Salvador, El Salvador

Sir: Why is it that man must always try to oppress the free, tame the wild and humble the proud? There is one thing, however, he cannot take from the mustang --its beauty.

TERRY DAVITT West Covina, Calif.

Cutting the Cord

Sir: I am tired of being Nader-ized [July 5.] Herewith I declare that the symbolic umbilical cord that Nader has forged between himself and me is now severed. I am an intelligent adult male who is capable of shopping for good products without the help of a breathing-down-the-neck Nader. I have driven for 40 years without an accident, and one of the most enjoyable cars I ever owned was a Corvair. I don't eat foods that are full of sugar because I don't like them. But I have started using everything Ralph Nader deplores as my own personal form of protest.

CHARLES W. HARBAUGH

Lieutenant Colonel, U.S.A. (ret.)

Kent, Wash.

The Actual Godfather

Sir: I extend my deepest sympathy to Joe Colombo [July 12] not only for suffering at the hands of senseless violence, but also for failing to rally enough support to get the editors of newsmagazines to observe the "law of omert`a" namely silencing their writers' biased attacks on the Italian-American community. Joe Colombo will long be remembered as a champion of freedom for millions of Italian Americans. He will not be remembered as a "progenitor of the Mafia."

FRANK BATTAGLIA Chicago

Sir: It is truthfully a shame that the legitimate grievances of many Italian Americans are so openly exploited by an actual "godfather" of Colombo's type. This, while he and others in organized ciime continue to exploit and parasitically live off of all Americans.

DON A. STORMS III Jacksonville

Sir: What's a Mafioso gangster like Joseph Sr. doing with a nice Italian name like Colombo?

A.L. JONES III Northbrook, Ill.

Sir: As for all the blabbering about the so-called Mafia, you do not explain that it could only exist either because the Italians have an above-average IQ or because the American authorities are very corruptible. Or for both reasons.

DOMENIC VADALA Rising Sun, Md.

Hodgkin's Disease

Sir: "Fatal Links?" [June 28] contains two irresponsible ideas that may cause unwarranted anxiety and the interruption of normal lives of thousands of people.

To imply that people with Hodgkin's disease are 1) infectious and 2) incurable is to make them modern-day parallels to the lepers of yesterday. Any physician well experienced with this disease knows many patients who are alive, well and free of any evidence of it several years after treatment. Furthermore, if one considers the number of people who have been closely related to Hodgkin's patients for many years but do not have the disease, it is at least as impressive as the evidence presented in your article.

CHARLES C. ROGERS, M.D.

Associate Professor

Therapeutic Radiology and Oncology

Virginia Commonwealth University

Richmond

> New findings hint but do not prove that Hodgkin's disease may be infectious under special circumstances. Dr. Rogers is correct that treatments developed in recent years have proved highly successful in providing longterm, even permanent remissions.

Foreign Aid

Sir: Life in the U.S.A. should soon be perfect. The farmers of Turkey have agreed to abolish poppy production to save the American addicts [July 12]. Next we'll get the Russians and Chinese to quit making arms for North Viet Nam to abolish the current war. Then maybe we can talk the Japanese out of making inexpensive, good-quality steel so that my husband's employer can stay competitive.

(MRS.) ANN R. THOMPSON Bethel Park, Pa.

Extracts and Publishers

Sir: In your issue of June 28, you published an extract from the novel August 1914 with the copyright (c) Alexander Solzhenitsyn. Solzhenitsyn has authorized me to protect and administer his author's rights in all countries except the U.S.S.R. I have given world translation and publication rights to Luchterhand Verlag in Neuwied, West Germany. Therefore, the copyright should have read (c) Luchterhand Verlag.

DR. FRITZ HEEB Zurich, Switzerland

The Parochial Question

Sir: Maybe the Supreme Court would reverse its decision on aid to parochial schools [July 12] if the parents of the 4,400,000 students in those schools would, come this September, simply enroll their children in their local public schools. A little dramatics can go a long way.

MICHAEL MCSWEENEY Redondo Beach, Calif.

Sir: Without meaning to cast aspersion on the nun pictured in your story or on the teaching method she seems to be using, I do not think you give a true portrayal of Catholic education today.

Many teaching nuns by now have changed either to "regular" dress or to modified forms of their religious habit, and many Catholic schools have broken through traditional classroom methods to the newer forms of education.

SISTER MARY FENNELL Norfolk

Sir: You note that the "most promising approach" to gain state aid for parochial schools is now the "voucher" plan.

The Maryland law referred to has successfully been petitioned to referendum, and will not go into effect unless approved by the voters in the November 1972 general election. Most observers here expect the bill to be soundly defeated.

Also, it is highly unlikely that any form of voucher system could pass the Walz-Lemon test. Such programs plainly involve a subsidy to the parochial schools. MEYER EISENBERG Potomac, Md.

Poetry Today

Sir: Hats off to A.T. Baker, who succinctly said in a three-page article what it took our Modern Poetry class 15 weeks to talk around [July 12]!

R.D. GIFFORD Leominster, Mass.

Sir: Pound was only partly right. Poetry did need to escape from its iambic prison, but not break its neck in the attempt. It is high time this pseudo poetry of disjecta membra was put in its place, as you have done in the fine peroration of the article's last two paragraphs.

LAWRENCE ESTAVAN Redwood City, Calif.

Sir: "Flattened" verse? "Depressed" poetic quality? To the contrary, had Baker spent more time and thought on his survey, he would have found well-rounded verse, perhaps even a new renaissance in the poetry of the past two decades. Greater quantity does not necessarily diminish quality, but merely makes it more difficult to discern, as Lowell intimated.

(MRS.) PATRICIA MARVIN Newtonville, Mass.

Sir: Re your fine, perceptive article on the sorry state of poetry:

A poetry lover,

I feel so bad today

(after reading the article)

that I want to write a letter,

I don't care: any letter, this letter.

(MRS.) EILEEN D. OBSER Cresskill, N.J.

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