Politics and Promises

Sir / Any Republican should be deeply ashamed of the handling of the 1972 Republican National Convention in Miami Beach [Sept. 4]. Nixon managed to disinfect the hall and eliminate anyone whose thinking might differ from his, while still campaigning on the same old promises we gullibly swallowed in '68. He had the gall to suggest that the majority of the youth in this country, many of whom he has lumped under the category of "bums," would abandon their principles and support him rather than Senator McGovern. Perhaps the worst part was the sugarcoated, stagy testimonials of all the Great Things Our President Has Accomplished.

I fear for the survival of my sanity if Richard Nixon succeeds in his scheme to induce a four-year amnesia in the minds of the voters.

JEFF RISTINE

Ann Arbor, Mich.

Sir / It seemed odd that the Republicans strove so vigorously for a national convention of but one mind and with no discord. This country did not develop from such a put-on. There has never been an American season without winds of countless directions. So just what country did the Republican Convention depict?

HOWARD W. GABRIEL III

Sacramento, Calif.

Sir / For whatever it's worth to the polltakers, I'm one of many fed up with too little too late, White House East, White House South, White House West and with President Kissinger and Vice President Connally. The Russians, Chinese and Japanese won't be going to the polls in November to elect the President of the U.S., but the forgotten voters of the home front will.

MARGARET B. YOUNG

Decatur, Ga.

Sir / Well, Senator McGovern in July announced his August program.

In August he announced his September program. I can hardly wait until he changes to a modified program for October.

I cannot but wonder, if McGovern becomes our President, what the future holds for solid citizens in the coming four years. We could all be double-jointed by 1976.

RONALD H. DALLAS

La Palma, Calif.

Sir / As one of the 3,700 young voters for the President who attended the Republican Convention, I resent your biased and mistaken view of us as "carefully coached" cheerleaders taking part in "youth-led demonstrations timed to the minute." We were there because we love and respect Mr. Nixon, and our demonstrations were spontaneous and sincere.

GINA GUTRU

Burbank, Calif.

Sir / If the criteria for national office are common sense and competence, Richard Nixon has earned reelection.

ANN STORMER

Dallas

Drugs and the Market

Sir / Your very excellent feature article, "Search and Destroy--The War on Drugs" [Sept. 4], neglects alternative programs to dry up the drug trade. One alternative would be to eliminate its profits by selling it to addicts cheaply or giving it away.

The "flock of new agencies" to be created for the purpose of controlling the drug trade represent a powerful vested interest for the maintenance of the status quo.

HUGH L. LUIGGI

Las Vegas

Sir / To end the narcotics problem, the Government should make this standing offer: any confirmed addict who betrays his supplier to the authorities will be rewarded with a lifetime prescription to his favorite stuff, free injections at any federal dispensary (or the cure if he prefers). When pushers are afraid of their own customers, they will abandon the business and retail outlets will dry up. There might be complications, protecting informers from retaliation, but the principle is a sound one with potential for great impact on illegal trade.

The real difficulty is the objective, stopping the trade efficiently. People are not as interested in this result as they are in the battle, the puritanical delight of catching bad guys and addicts and punishing them.

WILLARD WELLS

Pasadena, Calif.

Sir / No amount of pigs and money will stop the junk trade in the States. If anything, increased law enforcement will only drive prices up, forcing the growing number of addicts to steal more money for their habits. As long as the law looks at addiction as being the evil, and not at the legal obstacles that drive the junky to insane means to get his junk, the problem will not go away.

ANDRE ALLAERT

Portland, Ore.

Working It Off

Sir / I enjoyed and appreciated your superb Essay on the psychology of chess [Sept. 4]. Oddly, I have never learned to play chess, but after reading about the people who do play and why they play, I think I should take it up. Like Dr. Karl Menninger, I need a hobby in which destructiveness and aggressiveness can be worked off. Like Dr. Menninger also, I think it is time for me to give up hunting because it is too destructive of our remaining wildlife.

WILLIAM S. HOWLAND

Little Deer Isle, Me.

Sir / As a psychologist and as an avid amateur chess player, I found your Essay listing ridiculous "psychological" reasons for playing chess offensive on both counts.

CHARLES DOBSON

Riverside, Calif.

After the Nonokini?

Sir / I presume that in the wake of the bikini and the monokini, as described in your article "The Naked and the Med" [Aug. 28], we shall soon be regaled on our beaches by the "nonokini." And after that, what?

JACK CONRAD

London

Territorial Changes

Sir / In your story "The New Perils of Peace" [Aug. 21], Foreign Minister Abba Eban's views on territorial changes in an Arab-Israeli peace settlement are inaccurately described.

Apart from Jerusalem and the Golan Heights, Mr. Eban is on record on countless occasions as supporting the general principle though not necessarily any detailed map ot the Allon plan, under which there would be changes in the previous Israel-Jordan armistice lines without, however, including the Arab populated areas of the West Bank. Similarly Mr. Eban opposes a return to the previous Egypt-Israel armistice lines, and advocates such changes as would ensure Israel's security and control of its navigation in the Straits of Tiran.

These are the only views that the Foreign Minister has ever expressed or that have ever before been publicly attributed to him. Mr. Eban has also emphasized that while Israel has a position for presentation in the negotiation, it has not drawn ultimative maps.

AVRAHAM AVIDAR

Spokesman

Ministry for Foreign Affairs

Jerusalem

sbIn an interview published last June that he has never disavowed, Eban said: "We are prepared to return 98% of the occupied territories." He included Jerusalem and the Golan Heights in the remaining 2%.

A Vote for the Beatles

Sir / Hurray for Ronald S. Berman, head of the Endowment for the Humanities [Sept. 4], who wants to revive Shakespeare and ignore the Beatles!

If Elizabeth I had commissioned him to promote cultural achievements during her reign, he would have tried to revive Virgil and ignore Shakespeare.

P. DAVID PRICE

Assistant Professor of Anthropology

Hamilton College

Clinton, N.Y.

Be Unaware

Sir / I was glad to see that you carry on the tradition in your Essay "Summer Gamesmanship" [Aug. 28]. Your suggestion that one blame the loss of the game on a twisted ankle, however, is in bad taste. A gamesman is never a bad loser. The correct approach here is to pretend to be unaware that you have lost: "Wonderful game. Must have lost a pound."

Opponent, who has given his everything to win, is made to feel that he has not understood the purpose of the game and mutters lamely: "We should play more often."

JAN DAHLSTEDT

Rio de Janeiro

In the Best Sense

Sir / If you quote only half of Luther, you will not see why he is known as a reformer. If you quote only half of my book Why Priests? [Aug. 7], you will not see why my book is Catholic.

Was I wrong to think that the time for the hunting of heretics is over and that we need ecumenical solutions? Whoever really reads the whole book will see that it is Catholic in the best sense of the word.

HANS KueNG

Professor of Catholic Theology

Tuebingen University

Tuebingen, West Germany

Full Consent

Sir / Regarding your article on the Olympics [Sept. 4]: you are in error when you say Olga Connolly defected from Czechoslovakia. On March 27, 1957, my son Harold married Olga Fikatova in Czechoslovakia with full consent of her country.

Is that defecting?

MRS. HAROLD V. CONNOLLY SR.

Boston

Red, White and Blue

Sir / The "problem" of the Supreme Court's overload [Sept. 4] could be easily solved by borrowing a page from industry's book: when orders exceed the present plant's capacity, enlarge the plant. Therefore, why not a 22-man court, for example? Nothing in the Constitution forbids it.

Let the court be divided into three seven-judge sections, each of equal authority (to be called the Red, White and Blue sections, perhaps), with a Chief Justice to act as superintendent for production. With that system in effect there should be at least two sections to mind the store while the other members are tending their roses.

HARRY R. CARTER

Bradenton, Fla.

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