James A. Linen

IN the Pentagon office of the U.S. Secretary of Defense, on the ornate library table once owned by William Tecumseh Sherman, perches a model of the Oozlefinch Bird, a wondrous creature indeed. This week, as the Congress returns to a Washington torn between the costly requirements of national defense and the allure of economy in an election year, and as a high-powered Rockefeller committee reports on the faults of the nation's defense organization, the Secretary of Defense need be even more wondrous than the Oozlefinch. For an appraisal of Neil Hosier McElroy, sixth U.S. Secretary of Defense, see NATIONAL AFFAIRS, The Organization Man.

TEENAGERS all over are bypassing rock 'n' roll for rockets--not always with happy results. For news about kid rockets and how not to build them, see SCIENCE, The Young Rocketeers.

SOMEWHERE in the maze of U.S. weapons technology, some gold-braided Navy and Air Force officers sat down in the Pentagon last week to consider the destiny of the shitepoke. What is the shitepoke? See NATIONAL AFFAIRS, A Nuclear-Powered Plane?

UNDER the banner of "peaceful competition," the U.S.S.R. has taken the offensive on a cold-war front that it long ignored. To measure the success of this offensive. TIME'S Foreign News section queried correspondents in 15 countries for on-the-spot appraisals of the Soviet foreign-aid program. For the results, see FOREIGN NEWS, Challenge in Giving.

SURGEONS dream of the day when they will be able to replace any worn-out or damaged human organ with a spare part, either artificially made or taken from another person. That medical Utopia seems to be coming closer. Last week a little boy with a ruptured aorta was technically dead for 2 3/4 hours while surgeons put in a new bit of vital plumbing donated by a man recently dead. Another surgical feat, less dramatic but equally remarkable in its own way, was performed on a pretty teen-ager who, without knowing it, was becoming deformed by a curvature of the spine. For a progress report on both patients see MEDICINE, The Heart That Stopped, and The Role of the Turtle.

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