Man of the Year

Sir: You have restored a sense of majesty to the man and to the office.

HENRY ALLEN WHITE Chesterfield, Mo.

Sir: I must admit that I was disappointed to see the cover; however, after reading the first two paragraphs of your article, I realized that he was the first and only choice.

CHRISTINE SALINA Baltimore

Sir: Surely you jest.

JILL CLEVELAND New York City

Sir: You have a reputation for being snide, biased and right-wing. Anyone who says so would be well advised to read your cover story on President Johnson. It is the most honest and intelligent piece of political journalism I have read in a long while. That it was not written 50 years hence, after historians had hashed over the subject and all its implications, makes it a masterpiece.

ROSEMARY WELLS Boston

Sir: I see that Johnson has pulled the wool over even your usually very perceptive eyes.

GEORGENE BRUNELL Philadelphia

Sir: He should appoint Goldwater his "ViceMan of the Year." If not for Barry, Lyndon would never have made it.

NORMAN H. SELLENGUT Brooklyn

Sir: Though no Democrat, I read with enthralled interest your masterly and understandably admiring presentation to us of our President. Your analysis of this remarkable man has done much to obliterate the staggering effect of our last election on me.

COLIN S. DOUGLAS Milford, Conn.

Sir: But why, pray tell, should an excellent publication take such pains to insult 26 million people by crowning Mr. Johnson? I supported Mr. Goldwater at the cost of a few friends, which I considered negligible, but now to have lost TIME as a friend also is more than I can take!

NORMAN VAN COR Pease A.F.B., N.H.

Sir: I do not believe there is an American today, regardless of party affiliation, who could doubt the facts in your story on L.B.J. However, the President should realize that Americans will not vote for him if he does not assume international leadership immediately. He is no good to us as a domestic leader and a foreign flop.

DAVID K. FIEDLER St. Louis

Sir: Not only the Man of the Year, but the man of our time, L.B.J. is proving to be the most astute of domestic and world leaders. He avoids crises knowing that time cures all ills. He knows how to talk to the Congress, business and labor. He respects economic science and medicine. He is preparing the nation for the new world of peace, science and trade, where there will be no poverty but educated masses equipped to cope with our problems through training and sacrifice. Finally, what other leader would have the courage to discard the white tie and the morning coat?

WALTER WANGER New York City

Sir: May God forgive you your grave error!

DOUGLAS B. HOEHN Wyckoff, N.J.

Sir: Let's be honest. Lyndon Johnson is a man of crass aspirations. He is President because he panders to our ignoble inclinations to be self-seeking and to shrink from hard duty.

Eventually we will pay the price of our indulgence.

NOEL G. PETERSEN Berkeley, Calif.

Sir: TIME has made an intelligent selection with a favorable prognosis: President Johnson + time = the Great Society.

E. ABRAHAM JR. Chicago

Sir: I am thoroughly convinced President Johnson is a far greater con man than W. C. Fields was--but only time will tell if he is as comical.

W. R. LAMBERT Norfolk, Va.

Sir: President Johnson is your softest choice since that automaton Elizabeth II of England was named Woman of the Year for just stepping into her dead father's shoes in 1952.

FINBARR SLATTERY Killarney, Ireland

Sir: Your cover of President Johnson looks as if he had been injected with embalming fluid.

MARTIN M. FILLER Camden, N.J.

Sir: Peter Hurd and his wife Henriette Wyeth Hurd captured a true likeness. His squinting, almost closed eyes are a most graphic illustration of his myopic, if not blind, views of many of the situations now facing this country.

H. MICHAEL WAMSLEY Waukegan, Ill.

Sir: TIME's cover painters presented not gloating triumph but a beautifully sensitive portrayal of the President as a man of concern, dedication and awareness.

THERESA LAWRENCE Jacksonville

Christian Renewal

Sir: Many a Christian, disgusted by prosaic sermons, repelled by archaic dogma and beset by honest doubts, will find renewed hope in your Dec. 25 issue. No reform--social, political or religious--filters down from the top; it rises from the bottom, out of an undeniable need. For Christians of all sects your article has brought that need into sharp focus.

MARGARET S. HINDE Warrington, Pa.

Sir: May Pike, Robinson and Tillich take their places beside Augustine, Francis and Luther for their contributions to the modern Reformation.

WILLIAM L. HAYES Peoria, Ill.

Sir: Your article had an impressive array of quotations combined together to form one beautiful piece of incoherent nonsense. To some (even graduates in the sciences), it is not intuitively obvious that a better human understanding of the world around us robs God of the ability to perform miracles. My understanding of Christianity is God in search of lost men, not men in search of a lost God.

RONALD R. HATCH Ellicott City, Md.

Sir: Re your fine reproduction of Graham Sutherland's monumental tapestry: the story of this remarkable work of art is told and illustrated in a little book recently published in London called Sutherland: Christ in Glory in the Tetramorph, The Genesis of the Great Tapestry in Coventry Cathedral. It is distributed in the U.S. by the New York Graphic Society.

BURTON CUMMING New York Graphic Society, Inc. Greenwich, Conn.

Reverses in Viet Nam

Sir: It appears that the U.S. is considering either a negotiated settlement or a withdrawal in South Viet Nam [Jan. 8]. Any solution short of victory, which is possible, will nullify all the efforts of those who have given so much. They will have died in vain. Unfortunately it is the Vietnamese people who will suffer the most. Our involvement in Viet Nam is rapidly becoming the greatest political and military debacle in our history. If we were incapable, there would be an excuse. There is no excuse.

JAMES RUSSELL Saigon

Sir: I take vehement exception to your statement, "It can be argued that there is nothing wrong with a military dictatorship in a war-torn country [Jan. 1]." If there is one thing that the U.S. advisory effort in Viet Nam has attempted to do, it is to impress upon the Vietnamese army the supremacy of civil authority. Your statement flies in the face of every tenet held by the armed forces of the U.S., and we should be worse than hypocritical if we failed to apply the same standard to others as well. Is there a difference between Communist dictatorship and anti-Communist dictatorship?

DONALD E. CLOSE Captain, U.S.A. Fort Sill, Okla.

Sir: It should now be very apparent to all that our biggest mistake in Viet Nam was to bow to the demands of the "oppressed" Buddhists and permit Diem to be overthrown.

WILLIAM G. MURMANN Cleveland

Insulted

Sir: You insulted all Africans by calling the brave nationalist Simbas ignorant savages [Dec. 4]. Who is brutal? U.S. imperialists who help butcher 15,000 innocent Africans to save 80 dead whites? Or the Simbas who punish traitors who recognize imperialist-installed Tshombe?

MWAKOLO MGOGO Mbeya, Tanzania

Sir: If "savagery, corruption and anarchy" rule in the Congo today, it is hardly fair to imply that Patrice Lumumba helped make it that way [Dec. 25]. Tribal rivalry and warfare has existed in the country for much longer than 39 years. The fact is that Lumumba was the only Congolese leader who has ever commanded anything close to a national following. Lumumba was idealistic and uncompromising and he made many mistakes. But if he was not a saint, he was not Satan either.

KATIE FRANKLE New London, Conn.

Nazi History

Sir: Your analysis of Germany's problem with trials of Nazi murderers [Dec. 25] was thorough. But in addition, it should be pointed out that the 20-year statute of limitations for murder only means that within those 20 years there must take place at least one act of judicial prosecution (e.g., hearing of a witness, seizure of incriminating documents). If this is done the limitation is void, and an entirely new 20-year period is set in motion. This is why it is so tremendously important for all persons or governments still retaining evidence of these murders to bring it out now, as the federal government of Germany has asked them to do.

UWE KAESTNER Bad Godesberg, Germany

Cruel Parents

Sir: For "Katherine B. DeHinger" shouldn't we read "Katherine B. Oettinger?" Someone at TIME must have worse handwriting than mine.

ROBERT S-W-E-Z-E-Y JR. Chicago

Someone does. TIME regrets its misspelling of Mrs. Oettinger's name.

In the Bag

Sir: You neglected to mention the following in your article on collegiate expressions [Jan. 1]: Moose: inferior brew; remus: tall tale; taking pipe: to flag a quiz; thrash: any of the modern dances.

DAVE JEFFS Hoboken, NJ.

Sir: Those folk singers who strum their axes have embraced some of the old jazz slang--you don't really strum an ax, you blow it, no matter what instrument you have in mind. Also, bag has long meant musical style; Dave Brubeck quotes his son's pithy statement: "One man's bag is another man's prison."

GREG KOSTER Westbury, N.Y.

Sir: The tube who wrote your article better book a little more; a B is not a B, it is a bomb. But on the whole, I would give him a hook plus.

GUY R. MACMILLIN Paris

Sir: At Indiana University, a B is a Beulah.

RONALD L. CAHN Bloomington, Ind.

Compleat Something

Sir: For a steelhead trout fishing trip [Jan. 1], I arose at 5 a.m., drove 2 1/2 hours over snow-covered roads, experienced a near-fatal skid, stood from dawn to dusk in icy, chest-high water, and was buffeted by 50-knot gales. After being forced to drive the last 32 miles of the return trip home at 15 m.p.h. because of ice and slush, I at last staggered into the house at 8 p.m. proudly holding aloft the object of my efforts--a nine-pound "buck" steelhead! What do you mean, steelhead fishermen are "screwy people"?

HOWARD S. ARNOLD Morton, Wash.

Good Grief

Sir: Little Orphan Annie's Sandy is going to get a beastly shock when he finds out he's been upstaged by that flop-eared beagle Snoopy [Jan. 1]. It's about as far upstage as you can get, actually.

BARBARA WATSON Bellevue, Wash.

Sir: Damn! Leave Peanuts alone.

J. W. MANNING San Francisco

Sir: Happiness is Robert Short keeping his mouth shut about my favorite comic strip!

(MRS.) SHERRI W. FRAZIER Milledgeville, Ga.

Sir: Mr. Short left one question unanswered: Who is the Great Pumpkin?

MARYANN LANCE BRANDY Oklahoma City

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