First Jaws and Now Bugs

To the Editors:

In the beginning there was Jaws,which sent people fleeing from the beaches, and now you've created Bugs [July 12]. Your cover alone was enough to send me screaming from the garden.

Nancy H. Garner

Moline, III.

Does putting a bug on the cover of your magazine automatically place it in contention for Man of the Year?

John R. Montgomery

Madison, Wis.

"The Bugs Are Coming" mentions new effective pest-killing innovations but declares that the evolution of the insect will outmode the best of them. It has been suggested that this would not be the case if the various techniques were intermittently applied. When one method is only used for a short time and then replaced with another, evolution of the insect is prevented without destroying the environment.

William Powell

Ridgefield, Conn.

One sure-fire way of decreasing the number of insects would be to treat them as a valuable natural resource, such as oil and agriculturally produced food. An insect industry would develop, and in 20 years we would face a shortage.

Karl Shaffer

Howard City, Mich.

Bees and grasshoppers have been served as delicacies for years, without upsetting anything worse than people's preconceptions.

I know an American who survived five years in a Japanese prison camp by loading his thin soup with bugs; there is no telling what delights Julia Child could stir up. Since the insects outweigh us 12 to 1, they could keep us alive through many expanding and otherwise hungry generations.

Schuyler Yates

Toledo

Insects can be processed to look, taste and spread like peanut butter.

Scott J. Lyford

Bloomington, Ind.

Anyone for grasshopper pie?

Robert N. Franz HI

Wilmington, Del.

There once was a fly named the tsetse,

Who thought that life was just peachy.

She looked at the earth

At her moment of birth

And said, "Veni, vidi, vici!"

Christopher Mendola

Denver

An Israeli Lesson

The Israelis have taught the rest of the world a valuable lesson in dealing with terrorists [July 12]. Violence of all kinds can be stopped only when the perpetrators are convinced that even greater violence will be inflicted on them.

Millage E. Nesler

Nogales, Ariz.

The good guys won, and the bad guys lost.

Stanley C. Shapiro

Southfield, Mich.

Has Israel forgotten her own terrorist-laden past? The Stern Gang and the Irgun were formed to undertake terrorist acts to help establish the state.

Philip Borge

Magnolia, Mass.

Are we to make heroes of the exponents of an eye-for-an-eye philosophy that could incinerate the world? Hasn't history proved that violence can only beget violence? Can we afford this luxury of revenge in a thermonuclear age?

John Schalestock

Washington, D.C.

Why don't the Israelis sentence the terrorists in their jails to execution if and when terrorists kidnap new hostages? This would render any future kidnaping counterproductive.

Richard H. Lee

Boston

I too rejoice in the rescue. But let's not allow our momentary elation to obscure historical and political realities. As long as the world continues to dish out injustice to the Palestinian, ignoring his national rights, it must expect his growing desperation and his increasingly brutal response to his own oppression.

Alexander K. Hurkowitz

Hartford, Conn.

What about the slain Ugandans? Didn't they have the right to life too?

Jean M. Muthleb

Detroit

Though any loss of life is a high price to be paid in an operation designed to foil terrorists and deter further terrorism, the hijacking was particularly hideous because it smacked of genocide. How else does one characterize the terrorists' release of all but the Jewish passengers?

Jean Hugues

Paris

Despise and Destroy

Regarding your Essay "Religious Wars: A Bloody Zeal" [July 12]: What is it that the children of Belfast and Beirut have in common--besides the bloody ground they walk upon? Isn't it that they have never been compelled--by a power greater than their parents' prejudices--to sit in a school classroom along with "those others"? Instead they have grown up, nurtured by "their own kind," with the hardening conviction that those others--over there--are to be despised and, if it should come to that, destroyed.

E. Scott Pattison

Dunedin, Fla.

I'd rather have my neighbors "live" in darkness than kill for the love of God.

Joseph Tal

Haifa, Israel

Non-American Is the Enemy

You comment that "independent Eurocommunism is harder to combat than the old dreaded monolith" [July 12]. My question is why do we have to combat them at all? These European nations are choosing their own form of government now just as the U.S. did 200 years ago. It scares me to think that there are many Americans who still label any non-American form of government as the enemy.

Risa Riegel

Leesport, Pa.

Good Men or Animals

I am glad to know the Marines "want a few good men" [July 12]. I'd hate to think they were turning a lot of men into animals.

(Mrs.) Cheryl Alikhan

Cleveland

The Marines are living up to their slogan--"We want a few good men" very well. Apparently, all they have is just a few good men--very few. And from what I can see none of them are drill instructors.

Albert M. West

Nashville

Marine boot camp has been upon occasion called brutal. Rigorous it is from design, but true brutality would be to send Marines into combat without the benefit of it.

Neri G. Terry Jr.

Huntsville, Texas

Honor to Wilkins

Your article on Roy Wilkins [July 12] distressed me. No single person has done as much to bring the N.A.A.C.P. honor and respect as has Roy. The reflection is on the governing body that took steps to discredit him.

Ruth H. Bunche

New York City

Mrs. Bunche is the widow of the late U.N. Under Secretary-General (1968-71) Ralph J. Bunche.

One Giant Step Backward

The Supreme Court decision on capital punishment [July 12]: one giant step backward for mankind.

Marian L. Toohey

Evanston, III.

Justice Thurgood Marshall opposes execution because it is "a total denial of human dignity and worth." It is not executing the criminal that denies dignity and worth, but the criminal himself, by his commission of the offense.

Clark Nickerson

Bel Air, Md.

A Fine Kern

Cole Porter write A Fine Romance [July 12]? Jerome Kern is turning in his grave, sighing Miss Fields regrets.

Robert S. Picard, M.D.

Shreveport, La.

A Fine Romance was composed by Jerome Kern with lyrics by Dorothy Fields for the 1936 RKO film Swing Time, with Fred Astaire and Ginger Rogers.

Leo N. Miletich

El Paso

Out of Orbit

You said John Glenn [July 12] was "the first man to orbit the earth." Glenn was the first American to orbit the earth. Two others preceded him: Yuri Gagarin and Gherman Titov in 1961.

Joe Farrell

Ridgewood, N.J.

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