Wild Life?

Sir:

As your [July 14] cover story "Ah, Wilderness?" suggests, Daniel Boone would be ashamed of the present-day luxury-laden camper.

Two years ago, we embarked on a rather rugged hitchhiking tour of the western U.S. Although traveling with only knapsacks on our backs, we found room for a stove, transistor radio, camera and a fishing pole.

After 2 1/2 months and 10,500 miles, we ended our wheelless camping trip, which led us into 17 states and Canada.

Paraphrasing your question, we say of TIME'S article, which revived many memories of pampered campers we met on our adventure: "Ah, wonderful!"

TOM GRIMM JON BEYER Peoria, Ill.

Sir:

Your Virgil Partch cartoon amused me greatly, because it is not so far from the truth. I watched my mother hook up her electric blanket to the overhead light in one of the permanent tents at Yosemite National Park last summer with great howls of derision, and found at 3 a.m. that the extra warmth was quite welcome !

PATRICIA MUSTEN National City, Calif.

Sir:

Your article reminded me of a verse that my stepfather once wrote after a disappointing visit to Yellowstone:

The thing to do in Yellowstone Is to leave the grizzly bears alone, Find a geyser, watch it spout, Express surprise, and drive on out.

MARY DAMEREL Cambridge, Mass.

Sir:

Your two-page cover panorama brings to mind some of the unfortunate experiences we have had, but suddenly they seem a lot funnier than they did at the time.

MAHLENE FRITSCHI Los Angeles

Sir:

In our five years of family camping (mostly weekends, I admit) solitude is harder and harder to find each year. We are so grateful for the rare areas that allow primitive camping (box toilets and a pump) and an opportunity not to hear your neighbor snore and his baby cry. Acreage is what we need more of, not hot water and electric power.

PATRICIA H. FITT Washington, D.C.

Sir:

Over the years it has come to my attention that the original material for TIME'S cover is sometimes given to the person pictured thereon.

Having identified myself, having been identified by my wife (reading TIME while she does all the work), and having been identified by my children (departing from tent not entirely clad), I am curious to know what disposition is intended of Artzybasheff's original drawing for this issue. If one of the many others also shown in the picture has not already staked his claim, will you consider mine ?

CHARLES G. WILLIAMSON JR.

Washington, D.C.

P:The line forms at the gatefold.--ED.

Sir:

I was immediately struck by the resemblance of the July 14 cover illustration to that of a Flemish painting entitled The Garden of Earthly Delights, a 15th century masterpiece by Hieronymous Bosch.

I find them similar in subject matter, the pursuance of pleasure, and in color and arrangement. I do not suggest that this comparison is more than a far-fetched coincidence as the action shown in both cases is by no means identical. But one cannot deny that both boil down to the same idea: the important role that pleasure plays in the life of man.

CAROLE BERGMAN

New York City

P: Says cover artist Boris Artzybasheff: "But one could hardly say that Bosch's people were having good, clean fun."--ED.

Berlin's Nettle

Sir:

Your recent presentation [July 7] of the American willingness to stand up to the Soviets over Berlin strikes me as 100% correct. Indeed, all we need is bold, unhesitating leadership, the need that has been America's for eight years.

PAUL K. GORDON Captain, U.S.A.F. Sherman Air Force Base, Okla.

Sir:

Referring to the determination of the U.S. to throw back the challenges of Communism at any cost, TIME states that therein lies the great opportunity for President Kennedy and adds, "but it is an opportunity that he must seize upon unhesitatingly and with boldness." Buhver Lytton (Owen Meredith) put it this way: "The world is a nettle, disturb it, it stings; grasp it firmly, it stings not."

JAMES B. STEWART Denver, Colo.

P: Reader Stewart is the former American Ambassador to Nicaragua, 1942-44.--ED.

Sir:

You cost me a sleepless night, and yet I don't quite hate you for it. I hope the President knows that even mothers of small children are losing sleep over this dread situation. But I can say that this mother would rather lose all than raise her children under less than freedom. Courage, J.F.K.!

MRS. NILES CHAPMAN Seattle, Wash.

Sir:

I'd like to record myself as a minority of one who prefers almost anything to war.

DIANNE HART Watsonville, Calif.

Sir:

I believe that my position in regard to the Berlin situation was best summed up by President Theodore Roosevelt when he said: "If we shrink from the hard contests where men must win at the hazard of their lives and at the risk of all they hold dear, then bolder and stronger people will win for themselves the domination of the world."

SALLY CARROLL Chicago

The Prophecy of Art

Sir:

Soviet Delegate Georgy Pushkin says the troika is beautiful [June 16].

Now perhaps we ought to hear from Gogol, who, in Dead Souls, started it all in the first place.

"And you, Russia of mine--are not you also speeding like a troika which nought can overtake? Is not the road smoking beneath your wheels, and the bridges thundering as you cross them, and everything being left in the rear, and the spectators, struck with the portent, halting to wonder whether you be not a thunderbolt launched from heaven?"

ANTHONY SANT AMBROGIO Bloomfield, N.J.

The Staff & the Serpent

Sir:

In the LETTER FROM THE PUBLISHER [July 7], an attempt was made to explain the origin of the serpent and the staff as the symbol of medicine. The mythological explanation you have advanced is somewhat farfetched. It is more likely that the symbol has its origin in the Bible, Numbers 21:8:

"And the Lord said unto Moses, Make thee a fiery serpent, and set it upon a pole: and it shall come to pass, that every one that is bitten, when he looketh upon it, shall live."

RABBI EUGENE GRUENBERGER Chaplain

California Department of Mental Hygiene Los Angeles

P:There is no proof of the source. However the A.M.A. accepts the Greek mythology explanation, since it predates the scriptural reference.--ED.

Sir:

Your article makes it appear as if treatment by a single doctor rather than a panel of specialists were the real concern of those who love freedom. In my view, the real issue is who arranges for the financial relation between doctor and patient. As long as each patient pays each doctor (or panel of doctors) for services received, they are free individuals dealing with each other.

When an administrative machinery takes from patients an amount that it determines, and likewise pays doctors a fixed amount, both doctors and patients are to that extent not free but dependent. When that machinery is the Government, one more string is added to the many by which the modern state holds each of us bound to it through control of our vital needs.

GERHART NIEMEYER Professor of Political Science University of Notre Dame

Sir:

TIME'S enlightening cover story may serve to persuade its readers that the American Medical Association is something other than, and more than, a professional pressure group with a single objective: "to protect their (i.e., its members') economic interests as doggedly as any trade union does." For that is precisely the "image" of the A.M.A., formed by its practices, in the minds of responsible citizens--one of the most obnoxious and offensive pressure groups in America today.

Nor is this the view of medical "outsiders" only. I cannot think of one of my doctor friends, including a number of the foremost leaders of the profession in the nation, who does not flush with mortification at mention of the A.M.A.'s political activities. Their explanation is always the same: control of the association's operations by an entrenched salaried bureaucracy incapable of learning the most obvious lessons of history, including the failure of their predecessors to block Blue Cross, the Red Cross Blood Bank and other foundations of the health security of our citizenry.

Clearly, only prolonged, determined, indomitable struggle for internal reform could redeem the A.M.A.'s ill repute. Its members who enlist in that effort have the gratitude of all who share their shame over the unworthy representation of the profession, which all revere as mankind's most valued servant.

HENRY P. VAN DUSEN President

Union Theological Seminary New York City

Sir:

Kudos to TIME for reporting the many facets of the A.M.A. It should now be apparent that this physicians' organization is more than the ephemeral ogre it is too often characterized to be.

I. E. HENDRYSON, M.D. Denver

In the Groves of Academe

Sir:

I could not let go unchallenged your remarks about William Appleman Williams [The Contours of American History, July 7].

What we need on the nation's campuses are more men of Williams' mettle, not fewer. Few classrooms are alive with vital ideas set forth with talent and conviction, as his are. Professor Williams [who holds that the U.S. should create "the first truly democratic socialism in the world"] brings American history sharply into focus from a new perspective, and he dares to stand where his mind and his heart dictate, when far too many of his fellows on campuses everywhere choose to assume an easier posture. Whether one agrees or disagrees with Williams' interpretation, or holds any position in between, is unimportant. What is central is the necessity either to alter or to support one's own view.

It is this challenge that stirs the intellect into becoming a creative organ instead of a feedback mechanism; it is this challenge that leads to the most rewarding academic experience.

CAROLYN HILLIER University of Wisconsin Madison, Wis.

Sir:

Unfortunately William Appleman Williams' views do not necessarily make him unique among his fellow professors. For some time, the main trouble with American education has been, as it continues to be, American educators.

A. P. SAILER Sellersville, Pa.

Into the Trees

Sir:

The stimulating discourse on Hemingway [July 14] is indeed a valuable gift from TIME to its readers.

CAROLL PRICE Mount Wolf, Pa.

Sir:

I have never shared the enthusiasm that a considerable number of people felt for the works of Hemingway. He worked his lifetime creating an illusion of a virile, life-loving, death-mocking Hemingway. In the last short moment of his life he himself shattered that grand illusion, which was, perhaps, the most nearly honest thing that he ever did.

L. J. STEVENS Sandpoint, Idaho

Sir:

This is a fan letter. I hope you will pass it along to whoever wrote the Hemingway article, because I should like to convey to him my admiration and gratitude.

The writing bespeaks a person of scholarship, insight and maturity, who appreciates Ernest Hemingway's greatness, and also his limitations.

There has been so much discussion of the subject since Hemingway's death, and this article has expressed, as I could not, an objective assessment of him as a writer and thinker.

MARY COWAN Camp Hill, Pa.

Sir:

I eagerly awaited your account of the death and life of Ernest Hemingway after reading the miserable wire-service coverage of same.

Your account was very complete and well done. Those in daily journalism who disparage TIME'S reporting ought someday to learn a lesson.

DON L. HOFFMANN Kansas City, Mo.

This file is automatically generated by a robot program, so reader's discretion is required.