The Secretary & the Struggle

Sir: Your Feb. 4 cover story on Dean Rusk and the struggle in South Viet Nam is the best and most factual story on this subject that I have read since coming back from five months in South Viet Nam. Dean Rusk is, the best Secretary of State in the past 30 years.

TIGER TORN Taylor, Texas

Sir: Your story seemed to reach the precise central issue in the controversy over the war. You report Rusk's quoting Harry Truman as saying that we must "support free peoples who are resisting attempted subjugation . . ." Agreed--but note that very important word "free." All the arguments of the Lyndon Johnsons, McGeorge Bundys and Dean Rusks have totally failed to convince thoughtful Americans that the South Vietnamese are, or ever were, a "freer" people than the North Vietnamese. Until they are so convinced, many Americans must continue to regard their country's present military activity as 1) immoral and 2) incomprehensible.

RICHARD M. LEMMON Berkeley, Calif.

Sir: The cover portrait is TIME'S most meaningful so far. Dean Rusk, an otherwise most handsome man, becomes a stricken symbol of the war in Viet Nam. The artist has drawn a picture of my own considered reservations about the U.S. commitment in Southeast Asia.

MRS. HOWARD B. SWEIG Highland Park, Ill.

The Draft

Sirs: A 21-gun salute to your statistically infallible and comprehensive Essay "The New Demands of the Draft" [Feb. 4]. Would my financial status permit, I would mail a reprint to every draft-age male.

(Sgt.) EDWARD C. JONES U.S. Army Recruiter San Antonio

Sir: Why not mobilize the Reserves? If they "must serve on active duty for four to six months . . . and be ready for active duty . . . during an emergency," then they should be called up now. If the current situation is not an emergency, when will there ever be one?

MARC BRENMAN Chicago

Sir: The draft being one of the two most-talked-about topics on our campus (sex, of course, the other), we all read your Essay with great interest. Since "they" have decided to take from us the lowest quarter of the junior class, third of the sophomore class, and half of the freshman class, we coeds have come to the point where we must choose between a male-less campus next fall and the supreme sacrifice of deliberately becoming the bottom half of each class.

LYNDA MCLAURIN Freshman

Michigan State University East Lansing, Mich.

Long Live the Republic

Sir: You call the Electoral College "an undemocratic anachronism" [Jan. 28]. It is, indeed. The founding fathers gave us a republic, in which the franchise was entrusted to qualified voters, not a democracy, with the franchise in the hands of the unqualified mob, which they mistrusted. Benjamin Franklin, when asked what kind of government the framers of the Constitution had devised, replied, "A republic, if you can keep it." If we were wise, we would keep it.

CHARLES DENSFORD Pipe Creek, Texas

California's Court

Sir: I read with a great deal of satisfaction the article on the Supreme Court of California [Jan. 21]. I have not always agreed with all of the decisions of the court, but I have always admired the aggressive manner in which it has constantly striven to keep our law in tune with modern life. It is a source of deep pride to me that I have been privileged to appoint six of the seven members of the court.

EDMUND G. BROWN Governor Sacramento, Calif.

Con Among the Pros

Sir: To free men of any generation your cover story on Spain [Jan. 21], was an affront not worthy of TIME'S reasonably impartial standards. The tortured many who fought fascism in 1937 would turn in their unmarked graves to see Franco against a background of a green tree.

HANS WYNBERG Groningen, The Netherlands

Sir: TIME'S article is particularly welcome to me personally. As U.S. Ambassador to Spain from 1955 to 1961, I had to cope constantly with the ignorance and prejudice, of some of our compatriots with respect to Spain's history, her customs and her prospects. There is no country geographically so near to the U.S. around which so much legend and so many myths have clustered. Much of this rather sad misunderstanding was started at the time of the Spanish Civil War and during World War II. Certainly it is high time that the massive changes in Spain should receive appropriate recognition.

Perhaps you will not think it amiss if I point out, however, that during my tour of duty the Spanish Government never indicated to me that it desired to belong to NATO. Indeed, Foreign Minister Castiella specifically made this quite clear to me. He made it clear again the other day in a statement on Gibraltar.

JOHN DAVIS LODGE Westport, Conn.

Sir: Your report is made with objectivity and precision. I am convinced it will contribute to the economic and financial ties with the U.S. as well as with others.

JOAQUIN GUTIERREZ CANO Executive Director International Bank for Reconstruction and Development Washington, D.C.

Sir: Spain used to be an island in Europe, but today it has become an exciting, warm, modern country where one can appreciate an apparent human dignity innate in all Spaniards. I have directed one of my films in Spain, and not only was helped by a superior and enthusiastic technical knowledge, but also met with unlimited governmental understanding and cooperation. For these reasons, I appreciate even more your objective picture of the "new" Spain of today.

JEAN NEGULESCO Beverly Hills, Calif.

Sir: American international businesses and banks are very much aware of Spain's recent progress and great potential. TIME renders a public service when it informs the American people of contemporary Spain, and enables them to modify impressions of the 1930s which have been outmoded by the exhilarating changes.

ROLAND PIEROTTI Executive Vice President Bank of America San Francisco

Sounder Motivation

Sir: In your Jan. 28 issue I am quoted in an article concerning the Peace Corps. It is quite accurate--as far as it goes.

My remarks about the initial emotional response to the Corps triggered by President Kennedy were preliminary to the belief that the Corps today is getting volunteers who are motivated in far sounder ways. Most students who now apply do so in the realization that aside from whatever they can contribute to the country in which they work, they will be educating themselves in a uniquely effective way.

SAMUEL F. BABBITT Assistant Dean Yale Graduate School New Haven, Conn.

The New Reading

Sir: The revolution in the teaching of reading [Jan. 28] was excellent. But it should be pointed out that initial financing for the work of our group was supplied by the Carnegie Foundation. The grant was primarily for research on teaching of foreign languages, and the research produced three unique courses in Spanish, German and French, which are having the same impact on the field of foreign languages that the work in reading is having in that area.

ALLEN D. CALVIN President

Behavioral Research Laboratories Palo Alto, Calif.

Sir: Dollars to doughnuts that Sullivan is righthanded! Doesn't he realize that instead of responding 100 times in half an hour, a left-handed child can answer only about 85 times because Sullivan had all of his books printed with the answers on the left side of the page? The lefty must make more movements, and use more time per item. How about some texts with the answers on the page's right for lefties?

ROGER MERRITT Atlanta

Reasonable Now

Sir: Your story on NORAD COC [Jan. 28] brought memories of that too often ignored military-leadership capacity for professional assessment. In the regime of Gen. B. W. Chidlaw as Air Defense Commander, COC was born. In 1955, before a White House conference, he warned of the 16,000-m.p.h. ICBM threat. Then-Secretary of Defense Wilson whispered to him: "You don't really believe that, do you?" Chidlaw's successor, Gen. E. E. Partridge, spoke in 1956 about the decade ahead when it would be necessary to track "thousands of objects in space." On .Oct. 4, 1957, when Sputnik went up, we were saying that if it were possible to have propulsion systems which could put something in precise orbit overhead then, why not a capacity to put it on our heads tomorrow? On Aug. 7, 1961, after Russia's Major Gherman Titov had orbited the earth 17 times, NORAD's General L. S. Kuter stated that we had now entered the era of requirement for a satellite-weapons system that could deal effectively with an armed enemy satellite-weapons system. These statements were not popular then. They're reasonable now.

BARNEY OLDFIELD

Colonel, U.S.A.F. (ret.)

(NORAD-ADC Chief of Information, 1954-62)

Beverly Hills, Calif.

Sir: Wow! Who needs Dr. No, SPECTRE or THRUSH? NORAD, COC, and BMEWS have them all beat!

JAMES W. BROWN, M.D. Rochester, Minn.

End of the Line

Sir: Being a member of the Ocean City, Md., marlin fleet, I was very glad to see your story on commercial long lining [Jan. 28]. However, your article states that a pair of charter-boat skippers roared out and carved up the long lines with their boat propellers. These lines were in fact pulled up and cut with knives--and anything else handy--aboard considerably more than two boats. In the light of what long lining will do to sport fishing, I would consider it unwise for anyone to set one within the operating range of our fleet. MITCH MIORANA Ocean City, Md.

The Listeners

Sir: I laughed loud and long when I read about unruly audiences [Jan. 21]. But there is one sound left unmentioned--that of a nursing baby. I listened to that through a Rubinstein concert. First the baby chewed on a rubber pacifier--that has a kind of squeak. Then there was a new sound and so help me, the mother was nursing her baby. Rubinstein looked right over the keyboard at us, and played sublimely on--possibly because he had become a father not too many years before.

MRS. WALTER W. KING Peoria, Ill.

Striving & Reaching

Sir: In "Missouri's Upward Reach" [Feb. 4], you note that Missouri University has elevated a St. Louis junior college to a co-equal university campus. What must be added is that Normandy's alert board of education recognized an opportunity when the Bellerive Country Club offered its soon-to-be-vacated property at a moderate price to the school district. An appreciative group of parents sprang into action to pass a bond issue and necessary tax to purchase the property, and an enterprising group of local public school administrators converted an opportunity into reality by establishing a two-year college, which became the St. Louis Campus of Missouri. And all of this without even as much as a glance in the direction of the "Great Provider" on the banks of the Potomac.

H. ROLAND BIESER Normandy, Mo.

Sir: I appreciate very much the fine story. I would like, however, to call attention to one misinterpretation. My administration was given credit for the building of our medical school. While it granted its first M.D. degree after I took office, it was really built in the administration of my predecessor, Frederick Arnold Middlebush. ELMER ELLIS President

University of Missouri Columbia, Mo.

The Batman Cometh

Sir: Once again TIME'S pseudo-sophisticated critics have missed the point. The Batman TV show [Jan. 28] appeals to a whole generation who learned to read with comic books before TV, and now can unashamedly rejoice in the return of their favorite.

JAMES W. RAMSEY Arlington Heights, Ill.

Playing the Game

Sir: Besides all the examples you gave in "The Barrendipity Game" [Jan. 28], we found no Eskimo Pies in Eskimoland, no canaries in the Canary Islands, no Siamese cats in Siam, no Maltese cats in Malta, and discovered that Panama hats are not made in Panama. So my husband suggested checking the Virgin Islands . . .

MRS. BERT RODERICK Fillmore, Calif.

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