Fate of Leaders

Sir: The world was saddened to read of the passing of Herbert C. Hoover [Oct. 30]. In an adjoining column of your magazine, we also read a report of Khrushchev possibly being under house arrest. What a contrast in the treatment shown former leaders, controversial though they may be! Need anyone ask the difference between democracy and Communism? MRS. GRANT VEVANG Rolling Meadows, Ill.

Sir: Every recognized expert on Soviet matters was greatly surprised at the sudden removal of Khrushchev, but they need not have been had they read your cover story of last Feb. 21. You as much as predicted the eventual rise of Brezhnev to the premiership.

BERNARD G. BREINING Long Beach, Calif.

Lyndon's Aide

Sir: The Walter Jenkins case [Oct. 30], aside from being a personal and national tragedy, also shows a tragic side of our society. Homosexuality is cloaked in some of the most deluded ideas of our "enlightened" times. We treat it as men treated certain sicknesses in medieval times. We ignore information that has been provided by Kinsey and others and go blundering down the same old trails of judgment and excuse. Aside from the legal aspect, a Christian organization like the Y.M.C.A. has no business making a final judgment on a man's life. We are presently involved in a search for some positive answers to this problem in Philadelphia. Christianity has always stumbled and fallen in the mud when it has tried to be the judge of a man's worth and morality. Our successes have only been in pointing to the way and helping men find redemption and wholeness.

RICHARD A. EASTBURN Director of Adult Program The Young Men's Christian Association Philadelphia

Sir: Before I drown in the flood of tears for Walter Jenkins, may 1 ask if I am alone in feeling that he forfeited his right to sympathy when he chose to ignore the vulnerability of his position, even after it became a matter of record? Presumably intelligent, he could have resigned in dignity and privately sought psychiatric treatment. He preferred to lay his family, friends and country on the line.

MRS. O. A. ERENSEL St. Paul

Sir: Since when does sending flowers to a sick friend become a curious act? I was taught that it is a charitable act.

MARY MARGARET SUGRUE Detroit

Spook Spaghetti

Sir: I was heartened to see your article on the Pook's Hill Interchange [Oct. 30]. As an everyday commuter along this route, I am gratified to know that I am not the only driver confounded, cantankerous and confused about this ineptness and lack of forethought of highway planning. If the pile-ups at the U-turns continue, it'll be "Spook's Hill" instead of Pook's Hill. In all of this mess of spaghetti, they produced a heck of a meatball. DAVID M. DEANS Rockeville, Md.

Contested Abbey Sir: Re the destruction of the abbey at Monte Cassino [Oct. 30], the monastery, although part of the famous "Gustav Line," was not, as you reported, "being used as a German stronghold." The German commander, Kesselring, forbade, on pain of death, any of his troops' being anywhere near the monastery. It was only after the Allies bombed and destroyed Monte Cassino, on the erroneous assumption that it was being used as an observation post, that the German troops occupied the position. Then, using the rubble as a defensive position, the Germans had a very sizable tactical advantage.

G. ROLF SVENDSEN Colgate University Hamilton, N.Y.

> The Allied commanders responsible for military action in the area split over the decision to bomb the monastery, and later differed about responsibility for the orders to do so. U.S. General Mark Clark wrote after the war that he had been opposed to the bombing. The Germans denied having occupied the monastery buildings, and the Abbot-Bishop of Monte Cassino testified that "only three military police occupied the monastery."--ED.

Active Bishop Sir: As an indignant son, may I say that you do our retiring Presiding Bishop of the Protestant Episcopal Church, the Rt. Rev. Arthur C. Lichtenberger, a great injustice when describing him as being "wasted by Parkinson's disease" [Oct. 23].

True, the bishop's voice is affected. He has, however, lost little mobility, and this past summer could have been found trout-fishing in Vermont streams, no easy undertaking for any 64-year-old bishop.

Now that he has retired as Presiding Bishop, he will become professor of pastoral theology at the Episcopal Theological School in Cambridge, Mass., as an active teacher.

ARTHUR T. LICHTENBERGER Westfield, Mass.

Those Successful Olympians Sir: Every man, woman and child in the U.S. owes a vote of thanks to the American athletes who participated in the Tokyo Olympic Games [Oct. 30]. Oerter's and Roth's performances were made of the stuff that wins Congressional Medals of Honor. Lieut. Mills's run will not only make the descendants of Sitting Bull proud; it makes us all feel better about losing at Little Big Horn. But I seriously suggest that the U.S. withdraw from the 20,000-kilometer walk. Halfway around the world is obviously too much. You meant to say 20,000 meters.

DITMAR H. BOCK Buffalo Poetic Steroid Sir: Perhaps TIME readers will enjoy the scientific name for "the steroid nucleus" [Oct. 23]: Cyclopentanoperhydrophenanthrene. Its dactylic meter is worthy of Virgil.

RALPH S. WOLFSTEIN, M.D.

Cedars of Lebanon Hospital Los Angeles Thomistic Debate Sir: Thanks to Dr. Kreyche [Oct. 23] and thinkers like him, Catholic universities may now evolve as more than mere purveyors of Thomism. Too long have these philosophy factories produced students who resemble simian creatures able to quote the hylomorphic theory* in their sleep. The problem, however, has been not so much with the abused "angelic doctor" as with the cataleptic Thomists themselves. They merely recite Thomas and fail to think him.

VINCENT J. GARZILLI Glen Rock, NJ.

Unselect Schools Sir: You state that Harold Wilson is the first British Prime Minister who is a " 'grammar-school boy'--meaning he did not attend one of the country's select private schools [Oct. 23]." The first part of this statement may be correct, though it should be explained what the British grammar school is. It is very broadly equivalent to an American high school, but entry is confined to pupils reaching a certain academic standard. Neither Lloyd George nor Ramsay MacDonald attended a "select private school." Going back farther into history, you will probably find that some Prime Ministers were educated by tutors and did not attend any school.

J. K. JACKSON Istanbul Not All Hatred Sir: Your justifiably friendly review of Malaparte's Those Cursed Tuscans [Oct.

30] makes me recall how Kurt Erich Suckert explained to me in Rome in 1926 why he had chosen Curzio Malaparte as his pen name (and later as his own name).

"Buonaparte," he said, "won at Austerlitz and lost at Waterloo. Malaparte loses at Austerlitz and wins at Waterloo." I knew him from 1925 until his death, and even wrote a "fictitious reminiscence" about him. I can assure you that the hatred and contempt were of his last writing period alone and never in his personal relations.

PERCY WINNER Washington, D.C.

Another Buddhist Hoax? Sir: That so-called Highlanders' rebellion [Oct. 2]--is it only the word of the Viet Cong? Or are we witnessing another "Buddhist"-type hoax in which the Viet Cong agents are agitating while the policymakers of the State Department are encouraging them in an attempt to exploit the situation as a pretext for taking advantage of their position as "allies" to install some kind of military or political bases more strongly in the highlands, in default of being able to do so in the lowlands? At any rate, it would be a hoax equivalent to the "Buddhist" hoax--and one which can only help those who want to "divide and conquer" us, from wherever they come--if the world swallowed the line now being peddled by the American press to the effect that a "traditional hatred" exists between the Vietnamese of the highlands and those of the lowlands.

Those who would "teach" us how to treat our "minorities" would do better to tend to their own.

MADAME NGO DINH NHU Rome

A Burka for Snow

Sir: You ran Sir Charles Snow's photo in a shaggy, angular Russian coat and called it a "special Russian academic garb" [Oct. 30]. You were wrong. It is the well-known Caucasian burka (pronounced boor-kah), an everyday, all-purpose sleeveless coat originated by the Circassians, Chechens and other mountaineers of the northern Caucasus. In October 1963, Sir Charles visited Russia to receive from the University of Rostov an honorary doctorate of philological sciences, and to be Mikhail Sholokhov's personal guest. It must have been on that occasion that Sir Charles wore the burka as a bit of local color, but certainly not to march in any academic procession.

The degree was arranged for Sir Charles by Sholokhov as a return compliment for the role Sir Charles had played in the bestowing of an honorary doctorate on Sholokhov at Scotland's Saint Andrews University in April 1962, the first Russian writer to be so honored in a British university since Turgenev's honorary doctorate at Oxford in 1879. I was born and grew up in Rostov. That coat of felt and goat's wool is surely familiar to me, even though it does not at all belong in any groves of academe.

ALBERT PARRY Colgate University Hamilton, N.Y.

Biblical Weather Report Sir: In his attempt to update the Bible [Oct. 23] so that it reads like today's newspaper in a common-denominator prose, Translator Speiser sacrifices vision along with poetic diction. The opening lines of Genesis sound like a weather report on Hurricane Hilda instead of an image or symbol of the active power of God brooding over dumb creation and awakening a response.

CYRUS J. PURDY White Plains, N.Y.

Sir: Comparing the King James Bible with the version cobbled up by the Anchor Press, Mr. Webster might justifiably say that they have transformed, transferred, removed, changed, transported and ravished the story of the Bible.

A. J. BALDERMAN San Diego

Boomp

Sir: Jim Phelan apologizes "to TIME for having stolen a vivid line from you--five months before you wrote it [Oct. 23]." But for technique and style you both owe at least a nod to the old English prayer book. The comment seems to have been inspired by the lines in the litany: "From Ghoulies, and Ghosties, and three-legged beasties, and things that go boomp in the night, Good Lord, deliver us." ALLAN W. WENDT Columbia, S.C.

Ask for Men of Balanchine

Sir: Once I was a devoted fan of the New York City Ballet, but I have attended few performances in past years. Your article unconsciously explains why [Oct. 30].

George Balanchine has drained ballet of all its theatricalism and has left us with a series of impersonal ballet exercises and pseudo-acrobatic routines danced by equally impersonal technicians. Nowhere in your article does Mr. Balanchine or your writer give any hope for the sadly lacking male segment of the company.

Are the "ballerinas" all that Balanchine is interested in? Tall ones at that. What about the tall men needed to partner them? As for Balanchine's statement that any one of his ballerinas would be a prima ballerina with any other company --I find this highly improbable. Ballerinas as we know them are far more than impersonal technicians. They are highly individual and technically exacting personalities. Mr. Balanchine's girls are not.

RICHARD MEALEY New York City Uncoveted Neighbors

Sir: Omphaloskepsis, then, is no longer the metier of only the Buddhists [Oct. 30]. The difference is that instead of regarding our own, we are apt to be concerned with that of our neighbor's wife. But perhaps it is only a passing navelty.

NEAL HOPKINS Annapolis

Sir: How do you compliment the lady who has her navel on display? Your Hawaiian readers should surely tell you the cordial solution is their traditional salutation, "Pehea ka piko?" That is to say, "How's the navel?"

JOHN C. UEHLINGER Coronado, Calif.

* Aristotle's view of matter as a union of basic substance and substantial form. The first remains the same throughout change; the latter varies with the movement and interaction of elements in the universe.

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