Can Italy Be Saved?

Sir / Your Essay "Can Italy Be Saved from Itself?" [June 5] proves what my professor of medieval history has maintained all along: in 1500 Western Europe should have been roped off as a historic preservation area. Modern life could have grown up in the "suburbs," and we would be spared the spectacle of cars being elevated like the Host before the altars of Romanesque churches.

GAIL WHITE

New Orleans

Sir / Artisans of Florence and Rome, I beg you, do not restore the Pieta!

Since Michelangelo intended his work to invoke pity in the mind of the beholder, let his damaged Pieta convey in its brokenness an added dimension of pity.

Pity for the sickness in the mind of him who must destroy as a means of coping with a world he no longer understands; or pity for him who destroys because he feels the world has forsaken him.

DICKIE S. ALLEN

Pacific Palisades, Calif.

Sir / On a trip to Italy last summer, I was dismayed and sickened at the unkempt sight of Rome and its historical monuments. It seemed as though the Italians had very little pride in their priceless surroundings. Perhaps one of the things I will most remember about Rome is that while standing in the Colosseum in the midst of newspapers, magazines and watermelon rinds, I watched as a man fed perhaps 30 cats, which were apparently being kept in order to control the rat population.

CHERYL GOSSETTE

New Bremen, Ohio

Sir / I must commend Robert Hughes' Essay. I too have observed the slow cultural suicide of Italy. The destruction of Italian art is a disaster because it is one of the few human creations with universal appeal. Unlike the beer can-disposable, faddish art of today, a Bernini or Leonardo has a unique, timeless quality.

I propose that foreign governments and individuals withhold all further aid to Italy for conservation and restoration projects until there is a drastic and documented change in Italian laws and attitudes. As an alternative, I suggest that all major art works should be placed under the direct supervision of the United Nations.

FELIX WELNER

Rome

After the Summit

Sir / Why shouldn't President Nixon be well received in Peking and Moscow [June 5]? They never had it so good. Every day the Viet Nam War is prolonged, we exhaust more of pur resources; and every day it goes on with its murderous bombings, we add to the disdain in which we are held by practically all the nations of the world. No Machiavellian Communist could have designed a better trap to ruin us. And the dilemma will not end with the coming of peace, for we will be obliged to provide billions of dollars for the restoration of a war-torn land.

A.L. STRAND Corvallis, Ore.

Sir / The seeming unimportance of Viet Nam at the Moscow summit was regrettable. As long as potential confrontations exist, there can be no real detente. It appears that Mr. Nixon has his schedule confused; it is high time that we withdraw from a war that the vast majority of America does not want to be in. Perhaps then the friendship between the U.S. and the Soviet Union can be developed to its full extent.

ROBERT J.TOMA

Falls Church, Va.

Sir / "The Strangest Summit" should remind us that adjacent to every summit is an abyss into which we can plunge. There are "agreements" over relative trifles, but no change of positions on matters of life and death (Indochina). Nixon has played Russian roulette from his usual position-of-strength seat.

Is it but a matter of time until the hammer in Nixon's pistol hits the cap of a live cartridge? If so, there will be a meeting in the abyss, not at the summit.

FULTON PACE

Holly Hill, Fla.'

Sir / The Nixon initiative in China and the Soviet Union may solve little in Viet Nam, but it is a significant step in changing the nature of the international system which makes such tragedies necessary. It would be the ultimate irony if the man characterized as a "warmonger" were to become the leader of an era which saw the superpowers interacting to form a more peaceful world community by resolving the ideological rifts that force both of us to manipulate the fates of smaller countries for our respective national securities.

One may perhaps surmise that history may judge Richard Nixon much less severely than do his contemporaries.

JOHN C.JAMES

Lindenwold, N.J.

White Slavery

Sir / It is a shame to think that there are such goings on as white slavery in the U.S. [June 5] and that men support and patronize it as they do. I am a high school junior, and it was a fantastic blow.to. see men (supposedly), in my own generation treat girls with such utter disrespect as you reported.

NICKI MILLER

Erie, Pa.

Sir / It would be fitting for those antiabortionists in New York to adopt some of those poor girls described in your story on white slavery, rather than to insist that more be born to end up the same way.

They seem to think every seed has a God-given right to live but forget all those living a hell on earth.

J.I. NORTHRUP

Lakeland, Fla.

Sir / Your article "White Slavery, 1972" was written in such obscene, filthy terminology that I was ashamed to bring the magazine into our home.

CLARENCE CARLSON

Iron Mountain. Mich.

Caring for the Aged

Sir / Your two stories "Toward a Better Death" and "Aging Disgracefully" [June 5] had a particular poignancy for me, since I lost my mother just four weeks ago. My mother shared our home for 20 years, and there wasn't a moment when she didn't know that she was loved and needed and wanted.

Because this great lady bequeathed her body to the University of Minnesota for medical research, we had indeed discussed death and dying in great detail; thereby, she relieved us of all of the usual trauma surrounding the loss of a dear one

MRS. LAWRENCE P. JOHNSON

Mahtomedi, Minn.

Sir / It would seem hard to believe we can "treat [dying] patients as human beings whose thoughts and preferences matter." Hell, most folks don't even treat healthy people that way.

LOUIS SAINT

Bryn Mawr, Pa.

Sir / The photo of the two elderly people in the garden of a Yokohama nursing home is almost more than one can bear to look at.

But we, too, are guilty of treating our elderly shamelessly. A young girl reported at a nursing home for work. She asked the nurse at the desk to which ward she was assigned for the day. The nurse pointed to what she called the "vegetable bin."

SONJA BIERSTED

West Reading, Pa.

Serious Matters

Sir / I am surprised that the only information you gave about the third UNCTAD was in connection with the price of Scotch and brothels.

I am very proud, as are all Chileans, to have contributed to the care of the delegates and U.N. staff and to have demonstrated that we are an organized country that can put up a conference building in nine months and make this conference one of the better organized ones.

GERMAN HEVIA ASTORQUIZA

Banco del Estado de Chile

Santiago

Sir / TIME'S reputation is founded on far better coverage than that accorded the third United Nations Conference on Trade and Development in "Those Hot Chile Nights"

[May 29]. The emphasis on bar and brothel belies the seriousness of the matters at stake. If the world is ever to achieve peaceful development, it will come more through the success of ventures like UNCTAD than through Nixon-Brezhnev talks. Until international trade relations have been established on an equitable basis, the tragedies of Viet Nam and Bangladesh will go on repeating themselves. A more incisive analysis of UNCTAD's failure would have been appreciated.

REGINALD McQUAID Richmond. Prince Edward Island

Sir / If there is a Pulitzer or other prize for the man who said it all in one sentence, it should go to whoever wrote of the UNCTAD in Santiago that "The conference presumes that the U.S. is a giant cow and that there should be a teat for every developing country in the world."

EARLB. MILLARD

Santa Barbara, Calif.

Don't Knock It

Sir / I was very disappointed that such a splendid issue of TIME should have been spoiled by the one-sided attack on the Anglo-French supersonic Concorde [May 291.

The majority of British and French taxpayers are in favor of the project by virtue of confidence in both governments who are sponsoring the venture. Your American airlines will have the choice to buy or not to buy it. so please don't knock it!

BARRY T.LANGRIDGE

London

Sir / Your latest report on the supersonic Concorde and the anecdote about its being too heavy to travel today can only be a poor attempt at humor. One can only assume that your minds are so narrow that one has to prize your ears apart with a bread knife.

America is past its world industrial, financial and political dominance.

STEPHEN J. GEE

Chaplcau. Ont.

Sir / The Concorde is a commercial calamity. It reverses decades of air transport progress, namely increased speed combined with greater efficiency to produce lower fares. Any airline operating the Concorde would be forced to cross-subsidize it. i.e.. raise subsonic fares. I hope no airport operator in the U.S. would be foolish enough to let this noisy, smoky, expensive pre-ecology-awarencss De Gaulle legacy land.

CHARLES H.GESSNER

Marblehead. Mass.

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