The Right To Meat

Sir / I suppose the next thing we will hear from the housewife is that every American has a right to meat [April 9]. I would like to invite some of those housewives to our farm this fall to help feed the cows. Five percent of the population feeds the rest. What is going to happen if that 5% goes on strike?

EVELYN HARDY

Tuscaloosa, Ala.

Sir / The U.S. needs to become accustomed to perpetually higher meat prices. With America's growing urbanization and increasing pressure on the land, there is no way that we can continue to allocate the ten acres of range land necessary for each head of cattle.

BYRON LUND

Magna, Utah

Sir / As an American living abroad, I am aghast when I return home to see the amount of food thrown away each week by average middle-class families in the U.S. And if less were spent on so-called junk foods (soft drinks, sweets and snacks) it seems to me that Americans could be eating steak for breakfast, lunch and dinner. Meat prices are too high, but Americans are spoiled and the rest of the world is unsympathetic.

JOANNE ABDO

Mexico City

Sir / You should be aware that if you go to a good restaurant, have a steak dinner and leave an average tip, the tip is larger than the amount the farmer received for producing the meat you just ate.

TOM MAGILL

Lewis, Iowa

The P.O.W.s' Choice

Sir / Instead of courageously choosing prison or exile when asked to fight an unjust war, the tortured P.O.W.s [April 9] chose to bomb civilian populations. Yes, they paid for it, but not nearly as harshly as their victims did. Let's not make heroes where there are none.

MAUREEN F. CROCKETT

Saint Albans, W. Va.

Sir / After reading about the torture of the P.O.W.s, all I can say is: God have mercy on President Nixon if he sends one dime to rebuild North Viet Nam.

CHARLES E. DAVIS

Satsuma, Ala.

Sir / It is bitter medicine to look at returning P.O.W.s as accomplices of an illegal and possibly immoral same war; but I imagine the Germans felt the same confusion in the late 1940s, when their returning P.O.W.s, like ours, came home in personal victory but national defeat.

DANIEL LOUIS

Cincinnati

Have-Nots and the White House

Sir / TIME describes the aura of greed in present-day Washington [April 2] but fails to explain the cause. The men at the top are essentially havenots, parvenus using the White House to further their personal ambitions.

That is why it is preferable to have aristocrats in high office. Men "to the purple born" have wealth and class before they make their first campaign speech and do not need a high office to acquire either.

(MRS.) URSULA KUGELMAN

New York City

Sir / The sentencing process is not totally arbitrary as TIME suggests [April 9]. It is aided by sentencing institutes, trial judges, colleges, probation and sentencing reports, conferences, seminars, discussions with colleagues and, most important, by hard, practical experience in the real world.

A sentence is a combination of things. It is a warning, a safety measure, a punishment, a specific for aberrant behavior, and often a rescue effort. An effective sentence must come from an alert and educated conscience. Sentencing is not a process susceptible to committee action or digital computation, as you seem to suggest.

RON SWEARINGER

Judge of the Municipal Court

Alhambra, Calif.

Sir / The suggestion that the determinists clammy fingers are being pried loose from a 50-year stranglehold on America's intellectual life is stimulating to contemplate. We may see the day when the dynamic concept that a person must consider himself primarily responsible for his own development will once again become acceptable.

CY POLAND

Reno

Sir / God is the keystone to an understanding of the universe and man. Take him out and the structure falls into a heap of meaningless pieces. The universe becomes a chance arrangement of atoms, and man becomes an accident, a beast, or a machine.

But put the keystone back in, and the universe is seen as an orderly, fantastically complex system directed by infinite intelligence. Science and theology become part of a unified field of knowledge, and human existence once again becomes meaningful.

BEATRICE SHORT NEALL

Singapore

SIR / Why are the behavorial scientists having second thoughts? Are they simply following an "implacable pattern ingrained in the human intellect," or are their thoughts more closely related to their changing environment than they care to admit?

ELLEN WRIGHT

West Newton, Mass.

Seeking a Message

Sir / Thank you for the coverage of my hypothesis concerning the possibility of a space probe from the star Epsilon Booetis [April 9]. It is not claimed that any scientific evidence exists for the presence of such a space probe, nor that my recent paper published by the British Interplanetary Society is a work of science.

Being aware of the distinction between evidence and subjective interpretation when I drew my my first apparent-star map, I would hope to have kept it in mind throughout. As I pointed out in my paper, only a search for the hypothetical probe can settle the questions raided by my interpretation--and the interpretation has aroused such interest that a search is to be undertaken.

As a very minor point, it is believed that if the probe exists, it occupies one of the Lagrange or "moon equilateral" points in the orbit of the moon. It therefore would circle the earth ahead of the moon or behind it, but would not circle the moon itself, as indicated in your first paragraph.

D.A. LUNAN

Troon, Scotland

"Oil, Power, Violence"

Sir / I found your article on Libya's Colonel Gaddafi and the Arab world [April 2] intriguing. and at the same time rather frightening.

I sincerely hope that we can develop other sources of energy before the Arab states make us an offer we cannot refuse.

JOHN MCDONALD

Versailles, Ohio

Sir / I can just see it: "Put a camel in your tank."

THOMAS L. REESE

Albuquerque

Sir / It's a shame that Colonel Gaddafi, who has the qualities and quantities to become the supreme leader of the Arab world, is still living back in the 10th century.

He has to do a lot of running to catch up with his archenemy, Israel, which is already thinking in terms of the 21st century.

AKRAM WAFA DAJANI

Sao Paulo, Brazil

Sir / One can almost sympathize with Gaddafi in his nationalistic fervor and his so far unobtainable goals, but never, of course, with his support of the terrorists and his fanatical zeal for a holy war.

MARY MUELLER

Fort Walton Beach, Fla.

No Resemblance

Sir / TIME has always been a wonderful recorder of current events for me.

That your domestic and foreign sales are great I have no doubt, as calls and mail from friends all over are swamping me, pointing out the caption error that you made in your picture spread on Haiti [Jan. 29]. I will admit that our custodian's picture was excellent, but really bears no resemblance to me, as you can see from my photograph.

JULIUS TOMAR

Tomar Industries of Haiti S.A.

Port-au-Prince, Haiti

Thievery Pure and Simple

Sir / Your pious disapproval of the actions of ITT [April 2] in its attempt to overthrow the election of Chile's Allende leaves this writer unimpressed. The expropriation of ITT property without adequate compensation is thievery pure and simple, no different in spirit and effect than the act of a larcenist, embezzler or any other thief.

MAURICE SOPHER

Baltimore

Sir / Happiness is Allende making it again in spite of U.S. efforts.

T.J. SHEPHERD

Guadalajara, Mexico

A Little Bit of Sugar

Sir / Regarding your offensive review of the Tom Sawyer movie [April 2] -- what's wrong and with a little bit of sugar, whipped cream and good ol' Americana?

PATRICIA S. ANDERSON

Columbia, Mo.

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