Pius XII & the Jews

Sir: I did not find the play The Deputy [Nov. 1] anti-Catholic. Pope Pius was played in London as a sensitive intellectual, confronted with a moral dilemma to which no other man in recent history was subjected. That the Pope weighed it carefully and had the added political responsibility of determining a buffer against the Communists is also emphasized. What the playwright strongly states is that this religious leader's first responsibility was to speak out against the liquidation of the Jews, and political considerations should then have followed.

The moral analogies prevail today. The choice of man to sneak out or to remain silent is not only for history. One could easily change the characters of Hochhuth's play and retain only the moral charge. We would then have a play about religious leaders in America confronted with the choice of speaking out or remaining silent on any aspect of man's inherent rights.

DAVID ROTHENBERG New York City

Sir: In what way is Pius XII's "calculated prudence" to save Nazi-threatened Catholics any different from Neville Chamberlain's appeasement to gain "peace in our time"?

(THE REV.) RALPH WEINHOLD Milwaukee

Sir: It is rather ironic that a person like Rolf Hochhuth cannot wait till the "Last Judgment" to discover truth! Why should he pour more salt on the wounds of World War II by questioning the integrity of a dead man who did so much good for humanity?

JOHN J. MORGAN Washington, B.C.

All the Way for Home

Sir: TIME'S excellent portrait of Lord Home clearly indicated that, far from having scraped the bottom of the barrel, Britain's Tories have reached into the top of the top drawer for a leader who seems to be a sparkling blend of Benjamin Disraeli and Adlai Stevenson.

EDGAR H. LEONI New York City

Sir: If the British do not appreciate Lord Home, would it be possible to have him run for President of the U.S.? Our aristocracy at present available to that public office has not managed to develop Home's strength of character, and I am in a quandary as to which of the three poor bets currently available would do the least harm to our future.

MRS. B. S. KLAYF Miami

Sir: In your article on Sir Alec Douglas-Home, you quote his brother as saying that under Home there will not be the nepotism of Macmillan's Cabinet. This seems hard to believe, since his very succession could be regarded as nepotism. Lady Macmillan and Sir Alec are cousins. Both are descended from the interesting-looking great-great-grandmother who is holding him in the picture accompanying the article. This ancestress, whom you left unidentified, was Louisa (1812-1905), daughter of the 6th Duke of Bedford and wife of the 1st Duke of Abercorn. If her contemporary, Queen Victoria, can be described as the mother-in-law of European royalty, then the duchess was the mother-in-law of the Establishment. At her death, she left 162 descendants. Today they include, aside from Lady Macmillan and Sir Alec, the Duke of Devonshire, Under Secretary of State for Commonwealth Relations and brother-in-law of the late Kathleen Kennedy; Lord Lansdown, Minister of State for Colonial Affairs; the half-Vanderbilt Duke of Marlborough; and the Duchess of Gloucester, aunt of the Queen.

WILLIAM M. LALOR Forest Hills, N.Y.

Sir: There is no similarity in name and, I'm sure, no likeness in character, but when I saw the picture of Lord Home, on TIME'S cover, I was reminded of Dickens' Pecksniff.*

MARY HOLWORTH New York City

Ethnics Aloft

Sir: Re "Over the Sea, Ethnically" [Oct. 25], why not combine Irish and Israeli airlines with the slogan "Aaron go bragh"?

(MRS.) CAROL DORSEY SENTY River Falls, Wis.

LSD Means Transcendentalism

Sir: The mysticism evoked by LSD [Oct. 25] recalls Aldous Huxley's observation on soma. In direct antithesis to Karl Marx's charge that religion is the opiate of the masses, Huxley foresaw an opiate becoming the religion of the masses.

RONNIE MCDONALD Tucson, Ariz.

Sir: I've tried for years to describe my experiences under anesthesia to somebody. Never have I been in the same room with LSD, but the reactions of the users sound very close to what I have felt under ether or Pentothal Sodium.

In my case, I was not a "person," nor was God present as a "person," but this "oneness is all" feeling prevailed to the extent that all history and existence were in reality only a split-second flash in the mind of God. This has happened to me three times. The most recent occasion was this past July, when I had only short whiffs of gas. I woke up smiling because the Voice said: "You are witnessing a hysterectomy on Eve in the Year One."

I look forward to my next surgery.

MRS. PATRICK P. CAREY San Francisco

Sir: To me, one of the main questions is: Does LSD make better people? Do the experimenters find it easier to overcome faults? Do they become more active in promoting racial justice? Do they have more real love for their fellow men? Does LSD produce loyal saints and disciples?

W. L. STAFFORD Pastor St. Paul Methodist Church Dayton

Sir: Oliver Wendell Holmes Sr. had an experience similar to the effects of LSD. He underwent minor surgery with the then newly developed sulphuric ether.

When he regained consciousness, he reported that he had enjoyed sensations of transcendent beauty and divine wisdom while under the drug.

Determined to recaoture this experience, he submitted to anesthetization once again while a friend stood by with a pencil and paper. Soon the great physician and poet signaled for the pencil. In a shaking hand he wrote the transcendent words:

"Oh, Lord, what a stink!"

HOWARD L. MORRIS New York City

Sir: In the East, many of our best-known philosophers have used vision-inducing "drugs" and have recorded their experiences. Our Chinese poets Li Po and Po Chue-I were well known for their ability to subdue their "baser instincts" by imbibing wine. In such states of consciousness, they wrote their finest poetry. These experiences are not new to the East or the West, and they should be treated with more respect.

CHING MI KAO New York City

Sir: Your story was the fairest and most objective account of LSD research that has appeared thus far in an American magazine.

After the prejudiced and almost hysterical material on LSD that has appeared in several other magazines, TIME'S objectivity is especially admirable.

ROBERT ANTON WILSON Antioch Bookplate Co. Yellow Springs, Ohio

In with the Wine

Sir: As social commentary, your story on Gabriele Lagerwall [Oct. 25] ranks with Trimalchio's banquet.*

JAMES R. MANLEY Mountain View, Calif.

The Twist & All That

Sir: I am a Republican, but--my "Irish is up."

I must now take a verbal swing at G.O.P. National Chairman and "Chief Swinger" William Miller for his remarks about what goes on at the White House [Oct. 25].

I see nothing undignified in "twisting," "swimming-pool antics" or "allnight parties." It's refreshing--and gives one a feeling of empathy to realize that our presidential family, which is surely versed, through birth and breeding, in propriety, fitness, decorum and dignity, is also human, vigorous, imaginative and "just plain fun," without a false sense of projecting a "godlike public image."

NORMA O'CONNELL LARGER Evanston, Ill.

Sirs: So Pierre Salinger is having Kennedy Administration feats compiled. I didn't realize they were now manufacturing paper of such infinitesimal size!

(MRS.) JOANNE CLARKE Tariffville, Conn.

Wild Blue Laws

Sir: In your article [Oct. 25] on antiquated, obscure laws that are still on the books, you should have noted that at the vanguard of the movement to catch up with the times is Democratic Congressman Frank Thompson Jr. of New Jersey. He is fighting singlehanded for repeal of the 1892 law that forbids kite and balloon flying in the District of Columbia.

Thompson finds the law particularly repressive to Washington politicians, who ought to be able to urge their opponents to "go fly a kite" without being punished for soliciting the commission of a crime. And "what student of political science," asked Thompson in a speech on the floor of the House, "does not know the value of the trial balloon as an instrument of government? Are we now to label all our Chief Executives (not to mention aspirants to that great office) common criminals when they send aloft the name of a prospective Cabinet appointee?"

ROBERT W. BENSON New York City

Orbiting Icosahedrons

Sir: You stated that an icosahedron is a two-sided solid figure [Oct. 25]. Shape up, sir! It's really a 20-sided solid figure. However, we may be wrong because "there are icosahedrons to every story."

BOB ARBOGAST JACK S. MARGOLIS Los Angeles

o That was a side-splitting typo.--ED.

Sir: You presented our X-ray astronomy experiment in a lucid manner intelligible to the layman. We would like to point out that the Lunar and Planetary Exploration Branch of the Air Force Cambridge Research Laboratories, through its Dr. John Salisbury, supported this program as part of its continuing search for X rays from planetary sources.

RICCARDO GIACCONI Vice President Space Research and Systems Division HERBERT GURSKY Senior Project Director FRANK R. PAOLINI Director Space Research Department American Science & Engineering, Inc. Cambridge, Mass.

Computed Compatibility

Sir: Computer party matching [Oct. 25] is nothing new. As undergraduates at Stanford several years ago, curious and date-hungry electrical engineers in the name of research plied a hundred-odd students with dozens of questions and fed the data into an old IBM 650. Individuals were not only machine-mated but rated as to closeness of compatibility. Strangest match was an 18-year-old freshman paired with a thirty-fiveish divorcee mother of three.

What machine knows the ways to love?

STEW GILLMOR The Graduate College Princeton, N.J.

High Grade Confidence Games

Sir: Your summary of ways to work the profs [Nov. 1] was delightfully accurate. But did you have to let them in on the secret? Where will we be if they wise up?

PATRICIA SEELEY University of California Berkeley

* Dickens describes Seth Pecksniff in Martin Chuzzlewit as "a most exemplary man; fuller of virtuous precept than a copybook. Some people likened him to a direction-post, wnich is always telling the way to a place, and never goes there . . . His very throat was moral. You saw a good deal of it. You looked over a very low fence of white cravat . . . and there it lay, a valley between two jutting heights of collar, serene and whiskerless before you. His person was sleek though free from corpulency."

* A lavish feast described by Petronius in a fragment of the Satyricon, a penetrating report of social life in the days of Nero. Trimalchio, the host, was a wealthy freedman with more farms "than a kite could flap over," and so many slaves that "not one in ten has ever seen his master."

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