The Company He Keeps

Sir:

TIME'S touching tale [Feb. 16] of our virtually friendless, lonely and, by implication, hard-working President Eisenhower, who is "grateful for one of the brief journeys back to himself"--meaning grateful for another vacation--would wring tears from a rock.

DAVID M. MARKSON Vereda de Santa Fe, Mexico

Sir:

It strikes this reader as rather strange that only in the company of multimillionaire corporation presidents and other assorted big shots can Ike find the necessary atmosphere for relaxation. Surely there are lesser citizens who would avoid discussing government crises. The implication is plain: Ike is afflicted with that all too common disease of successful men--snobbery.

GORDON SMITH Cleveland

Sir:

Such hypocritical garbage: So Ike's cronies have no interests in the running of the Government. It's coincidental, I suppose, that his policies so fit their interests and views.

JOHN L. GARDNER Arlington, Va.

Sir:

You forget about Ike's million Americans who are ready, willing and able to be the closest of friends. I'd walk--and have--three miles to have him wave at me from a car. I don't have a friend in the world I'd do that for.

HELEN BERLIN North Oaks, Minn.

The Dean Speaks Sir:

You have inadvertently reported [Feb. 9] a gravely damaging misstatement from the Sunday Express. The points of misstatement were many but one in particular which attributed to me the statement that I am alive and Christ is not was so damaging to the Christian church that I took immediate legal advice and the Express kindly and forthwith inserted a letter in which I denied making any such statement, adding that to me Christ was never more alive than he is today.

HEWLETT JOHNSON Dean of Canterbury The Deanery Canterbury

The Neat-O Look

Sir:

I am interested in the "Princeton cut" haircut [TIME, Feb. 16]. Could you show a picture that would give my barber an idea of what I want?

JIM STULL Wilmington, Ohio

P: See Princeton cut.--ED.

Death in the Skies

Sir:

Re your story [Feb. 16] of the alleged shooting down of an American Air Force C-130 over Russian territory on Sept. 2, it is axiomatic that each man (or government) intends the probable consequences of his (or its) own acts.

The indictment should be of those callous leaders who order airmen to fly observation missions so close to an unfriendly border. EDWARD B. STEVENS Silver City, N. Mex.

Sir:

The death of 17 defenseless U.S. airmen calls for something more than knowledge of how they died and the sympathy of the free world. Let's shake our State Department out of its naive apathy; let's recall our Ambassador to the U.S.S.R., and let's kick Soviet Ambassador "Smiling Mike" Menshikov and the rest of the bastards out of this country.

ROMAN MAKAREWICZ Los Angeles

Sir:

Your story brings back unpleasant memories to me and my family. It was in 1946 that my brother, Capt. Richard Claeys, and his four crew members were shot down by the Communist Killer, Marshal Tito of Yugoslavia. The circumstances: Capt. Claeys was piloting an unarmed C-47 transport on a mail run from Rome to Vienna and apparently he drifted out of the corridor of neutrality. Without warning, other than a Slavic warning over the radio which he didn't understand, his plane and crew were blasted out of the sky. My brother and his four comrades are buried in Arlington. Now six more Air Force men have joined them. How many more Americans will pay the supreme sacrifice before Khrushchev and Tito are delivered a convincing "message" ?

FRANK J. CLAEYS

Santa Ana, Calif.

Hello, Oblivion Sir: Re the Feb. 9 article about Beatniks Ginsberg, Orlovsky and Corso, it is my opinion that the three Beatniks and their pack of oddballs should be put in a Sputnik and allowed to orbit in their own little "scary laughing bowl." LUCILLE T. KARSLAKE Grand Rapids, Mich.

Sir:

Your account of our incarnation in Chicago was cheap kicks for you who have sold your pens for Money and have no Fate left but idiot mockery of the Muse that must work in poverty in an America already doomed by materialism.

You suppressed knowledge that the Chicago Review's winter issue was censored by the University of Chicago; that the editors had resigned to publish the material under the name Big Table; that we offered our bodies and Poetry to raise money to help publish the magazine, and left Chicago in the penury in which we had come.

You quoted what was charming in our speech out of context; you ignored the main event, the reading at the Sherman Hotel which was a religious intellectual exposition of poetry's Truth; you perverted the beauty of Orlovsky's tears; you spat on the appearance of the Soul of Poetry in America at a time when America needs that soul most; you brainwashed your millions of readers.

You are an instrument of the Devil and crucify America with your lies; you are the war-creating Whore of Babylon and would be damned were you not mercifully destined to be swallowed by Oblivion with all created things.

ALLEN GINSBERG

PETER ORLOVSKY

GREGORY CORSO in respect to Shelley New York City

Missiles & Taxes Sir: Your report [Feb. 9] on American defense and strategic planning in the missile age was excellent, and one of the best analyses of its type I have read to date. If another two or three billion dollars are needed to meet this strategic necessity, and if a balanced budget is a fiscal necessity, then Con- gress must raise taxes to make up the difference. That is not too high a price for America to pay to safeguard her vital interests in a dangerous world.

THOMAS L. HARRIS New York City

Sir:

The fact that we may be exterminated with our budget balanced is no consolation.

MURDOCK M. MACLENNAN North Charleston, S. C.

Sir:

The distressing spectacle of our Congressmen jousting with Russian windmills whenever a new Russian claim of progress is broadcast is cause for deep concern. We must follow the sound constructive program of military development without panic, and at the same time re-establish the truths of economic incentives instead of the weak and selfish programs of political expediency, if our country is to endure.

ELTON E. STAPLES Elm Grove, Wis.

The Rock & the Taxpayer Sir: I want to thank you for pointing out the unhappy situation of New York taxpayers [Feb. 9]. Governor Rockefeller may have a hard grip on the legislature, but how hard does he think he can grip the taxpayer?

JOE EARLY New York City

Sir:

It took only a few short weeks for Rockefeller to get a half-Nelson on every taxpayer in New York.

PAUL W. BACHMAN Pittsford, N.Y.

Light on the Dark Continent

Sir: Of TIME I used to say it presents Africans in the worst light possible. But your article on Guinea [Feb. 16] I consider unprejudiced. On the whole, you deserve congratulations.

NEGGA TESSEMA Montreal, Que.

Sir: Why do we not vigorously applaud the birth wails of these African newborns who are desperately striving to make their voices effective? It may be because Sekou Toure and his lovely wife could not come here and choose their restaurant even in a frontwoods Mississippi town -- because in matters regard ing race our moral derriere is dragging.

DONALD F. MEEKS

Northville, Mich.

Those Loyalty Oaths Sir: Senator Mundt may be mystified as to why six colleges would object so strongly to a special loyalty oath for holders of scholar ships that they . would refuse federal funds [TIME, Feb. 16], but this merely shows how little he understands of the freedoms which make this country strong and prosperous.

GORDON P. LIDDLE Quincy,Ill.

Sir: The real threat to academic freedom is the unpublicized -- but nevertheless ever-present and lurking -- conformity to the left.

ROBERT W. CLIFFORD PETER H. HICKEY Bowdoin College Brunswick, Me.

Navel Exercise Sir: I was highly impressed (as were many of my colleagues) by your Feb. 9 article on exercising the navel in Japan. You say that Murata suggests exercising the navel "twice a day," but would you tell me about how many exhalations he suggests at one exercise? ALEXANDER E. BRODY, M.D.

Brooklyn, N.Y.

P:For beginners, Navelist Koji Murata recommends exhalation (by tensing the muscles around the navel) in only three or four puffs per breath, or 120 to 160 exhalations for a ten-minute exercise period. As the student becomes more expert, he increases the number. The master himself averages about 30 expulsions of air per breath.--ED.

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