Charred Hearts & Politics Sir: It is expecting quite a lot of the Vietnamese [Dec. 11]; to stand by patiently and watch their country slowly disintegrate for a political principle that to them is not only an abstraction but also an invitation to death and destruction. Now, against their will, these people have be come the pawns in an ideological struggle between the great powers. It is no wonder that, contrary to Buddhist teachings, violence erupted in this atmosphere of frustration and fear. We fail to see that Asiatics dislike our disregard for their ancient cultures. Expecting them to adopt our attitudes and political institutions can only lead to regression, which may violently alter the course of history.

WILLIAM GILBERT Skokie, Ill.

Sir: You write about "believers" who tossed hand grenades, and teen-agers "supposedly raised in 'the and Middle Way,' " etc.

I suppose that your American soldiers who have occupied Viet Nam against the wishes of the people are representative of the Christian and Democratic principle of charity and believe that all people have the right to determine the method by which they will be governed. The fact is that if you were to give the people of South Viet Nam a free choice of government, these people would unhesitatingly throw out the so-called American advisers. Then, without the necessity of "Communist" interference, they would choose a government that would respect all kinds of political and religious ideas without favoring any one of them.

CHIN MEI KAO New York City

Sir: Your cover story on Buddhism was at times hasty, flip, sarcastic, snide, sniping, pompous, preachy, and in bad taste.

With these few exceptions, it was fine.

R. F. BAKER Cambridge, Mass.

Sir: In recounting the myth of Buddha's conception, you have supplied us with the granddaddy of all elephant jokes.

ALBERT SACK Philadelphia

Massacre & Mercenaries

Sir: Your cover story about Dr. Carlson and the Congo [Dec. 4] was all the more moving because of its restraint. Carlson, picked out and identified but carefully not glorified, shines like a good deed in a very naughty world --to whose conscience you spoke very clearly.

JAMES BYROM St.-Jacques-de-Grasse, France

Sir: As Dr. Paul Carlson's pastor, I wish to express my deepest appreciation for the magnificent way that you told the story of his martyrdom.

ROBERT A. HONNETTE Rolling Hills Covenant Church Rolling Hills Estates, Calif.

Sir: Artist Vickrey has captured a look of unbelieving disappointment in the face of the late Dr. Paul Carlson. This is an emotion that clearly expresses the futility of many efforts in the Congo, but was nevertheless an emotion not shared by that indefatigable missionary.

ELLIOTT BRAM SEWELL Louvain, Belgium Sir: The picture of the corpse of Dr. Paul Carlson is an offense to the man, his work, and the mission to which he dedicated his life. You have in this picture brought dishonor to an honorable man.

LANCE A. HERRICK Evanston, Ill.

Sir: Although not an Afro-American, but nevertheless an American Negro, 1 was outraged by your reporting of the Congo massacre, with your sophomoric generalizations on the savagery of the blacks on the African continent. If Americans were able to remember their own history, they would find these Simbas no more savage than those responsible for Hiroshima and Nagasaki. Perhaps one day when the white people of the West, and particularly the whites of America, can become true humanitarians, then the African states can bemoan the bestiality at Stanleyville.

L. S. SENHOUSE JR. Newark

Man of the Year

Sir: I nominate the Chairman of the Communist Party in the People's Republic of China, Mao Tse-tung. This insidious and inscrutable leader of one-fourth of the world's population now holds his finger on the trigger of China's newly developed atomic device. He most certainly altered the course of history in 1964.

BERNARD K. FRANK Portland, Ore.

Sir: The Chinese scientists who helped Communist China achieve a place in the Atomic Club.

SHUAIB MIRZA Rahimyar Khan, Pakistan

Sir: Nikita Khrushchev, since he may never again be eligible.

ROY C. BOYER Warren, Mich.

Sir: There can be no suspense about your Man of the Year: L.B.J.

LAWRENCE W. PAHL Chicago

Sir: Barry Goldwater, the man who persuaded millions of Republicans to vote Democratic.

STUART CUTHBERTSON Glendale, Calif.

Sir: John F. Kennedy, whose memory has been the inspiring force of 1964.

PAUL F. FABERMAN Piedmont, Calif.

Sir: U Thant of the U.N.--the man entrusted with the toughest job on earth: keeping the peace of the world in the '60s of the 20th century.

TET KHAUNG Myingyan, Burma

Sir: Brooks Patterson.

BROOKS PATTERSON Detroit

Sir: The commuter! You should run a story pointing out the woes of us taxpaying, straphanging, deficit-burdened, tail-crushed 8-to-6 slobs.

G. G. COONEY Marshfield, Mass.

Rebel Students

Sir: Students who organize a college strike cannot be much of an asset to their university or our country. Manual labor might be more beneficial for them and all of us.

NATHAN D. SHAPIRO Brooklyn

Ire in Omaha

Sir: I do not know why you keep putting your joke section under "Art" in your magazine. Artist Johns [Dec. 4] lets his beer go to his head, his beer cans to the canvas, and your Art section to pot!

W. A. MURDOCK Omaha

The Big Eye

Sir: In regard to whether ,or not public hearings should be televised [see PRESS], I offer my authoritative opinion: there should be no such intimacy going on. In campaigns America has already been drugged into measuring only what the candidate looks and sounds like, not the importance of what he puts on paper. It frightens me to think what would have happened if TV had been as influential in the time of Socrates, who was not very pretty; or of Moses, who had a great impediment of speech; or of Jesus, whose Hebrew had a strong Galilean accent; or of Lincoln, whose wart, beard and shrill voice would have made Madison Avenue get rid of him immediately. It was what Mr. Lincoln said at Gettysburg that will be remembered, not how he "looked or sounded on television.

GEORGE JESSEL Los Angeles

Self-Help in Louisiana

Sir: The fruitcake manufacturer you mentioned in regard to the Poverty Program [Dec. 4] is the Southern Consumers' Cooperative. A majority of its members and officers are Negroes. For five years, S.C.C. has carried put an intensive program of education in cooperation and economic matters among the extremely poor people, colored and white, of southwestern Louisiana. Eight hundred S.C.C. members have recently raised from their meager incomes the capital to finance a small fruitcake factory at Lake Charles, La. Since this is a seasonal operation, S.C.C. sought from the Office of Economic Opportunity a $25,000 loan with which it is purchasing equipment for the production of other confections during the offseason. The valiant effort, against great odds, by officers and members of S.C.C. to help themselves out of poverty may be among the standards that prompted Sargent Shriver and his staff to approve the $25,000 loan.

EDWARD W. O'ROURKE Executive Director

National Catholic Rural Life Conference Des Moines

Saving What?

Sir: Apropos of J.B.S. Haldane's antiwar passions [Dec. 11], one of my favorite stories, apocryphal or otherwise, concerns his reply to an indignant-female type who, encountering him in London during World War II, demanded of him what he was doing "to save civilization." Replied J.B.S.H.: "Madame, I am the civilization you are trying to save!"

DOROTHY L. TYLER Detroit

Family Friend

Sir: As one of the many members of TIME'S family who look for the point and counterpoint of fine writing in each issue, I may not be the first to confirm the editorial aim set forth by Bernhard Auer, but surely I will not be alone.

The charter has been lived up to with admirable consistency in the past, but he Dec. 4 issue will have to be ranked high on the list for hitting the center ring.

LEE C. JONES Washington

Volunteers

Sir: In "The Electronic Tomato" [Dec 4], you suggested that Julie Newmars best chance for getting the husband she wants might be getting M.I.T. to build one for her.

We would like to help. If you send Miss Newmar up here for a few weeks we'll do the best we can.

MARTIN S. KOHN STEVEN R. POWELL Massachusetts Institute

of Technology Cambridge, Mass.

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