More than Barbed Wire

Sir: TIME'S cover story on Eastern Europe [March 18] is excellent. You have compressed an enormous amount of perception into the judgments you express; what's even more difficult, you are sweeping without being superficial and as accurate on the fact as you are authentic on the feel of this complex region.

GEORGE G. LORINCZI Milwaukee

Sir: Your objectivity is refreshing, and is, indeed, a crosscurrent in the sea of biased, erroneous information about Eastern Europe with which the American people have been flooded.

GEORGE M. TELATNIK Student

Soviet and East European Institute Niagara University Niagara University, N.Y.

Sir: So the captive citizens of Eastern Europe don't want to defect! Can they travel without leaving families and property behind? Where in Eastern Europe may they fill out application blanks for immigrant visas? Doesn't TIME know that last year West European governments v/ere unable to arrange for employment of unemployed Polish workmen because no one would guarantee that the Poles would return to Poland? Doesn't the fact that millions of people may not buy one-way tickets arouse indignation?

NORMAN ROTHFELD New York City

Sir: As a European, I commend you for that exquisite pictorial section on Eastern Europe. It shows Americans that Eastern Europe still has the "Old World" touch and the glittering night life that European tourists cherish, and it demonstrates that Eastern Europe is not all barbed wire just because it is Communist.

EDWARD R. HUBER Philadelphia

Exploring the Universe

Sir: Many thanks for capturing in your Schmidt cover [March 11] the essence and excitement of man's closest approach to creation-his deepest penetration yet into the fundamentals of a universe being revealed by astrophysics.

MICHAEL A. G. MICHAUD Washington, D.C.

Sir: When the French invaded Lombardia, the people went to Leonardo da Vinci crying: "Maestro, there is fire, death and ruin in our cities." // maestro, holding a fly in his hand, answered calmly: "People always were stupid and always will be. More interesting is what I have just discovered-that a fly uses his hind legs to drive his flight." It is still interesting to learn about nature's miracles of nature. RUDOLF HUB Lima, Peru

Sir: An excellent story on Schmidt's quasars and discussion of the possibility that they may have been ejected from our galaxy. Reports on the death of this idea have been greatly exaggerated. The energy problem is considerably simpler on this basis than on the conventional basis of immense distance. The receding hydrogen cloud discovered by Koehler in front of 3C 273 can more plausibly be interpreted as ejected from our galaxy, in the same manner as in other galaxies, than as part of the Virgo cluster of galaxies. The local model of quasars also has the advantage of accounting for the far-out locations of radio sources associated with other galaxies.

JAMES TERRELL

Los Alamos Scientific Laboratory Los Alamos, N. Mex.

Sir: Your story on quasi-stellar sources is well researched. It may not be amiss to note that while Schmidt has concentrated on the spectra of QSS, others have contributed more importantly to their identification and photometry.

H. W. BABCOCK Director

Mount Wilson and Palomar Observatories Pasadena, Calif.

A Fundamental Difference

Sir: It is disappointing to read your unbelievably irresponsible statement that Bob Jones University [March 18] boycotted the recent Billy Graham Greenville Crusade because it was an integrated meeting. To set the record straight: this university cannot support Billy Graham, a man for whom we have warm personal regard, because he violates the Biblical principle forbidding the unequal union of belief with unbelief (II Corinthians 6:14, 15; Galatians 1:8, 9; II John 9-11; etc.). BOB JONES III

Vice-President Bob Jones University Greenville, S.C.

Sir: About Bob Jones University students' being forbidden to attend Billy Graham's crusade: I remember a nightmarish day in chapel in 1957 when the university students were asked to stand to show support of the "Jones boys'" denunciation of Graham. Students who remained seated were spoken to by the deans. Supposedly, Graham was "selling out" fundamentalism. With this fundamental lack of Christian love and tolerance, who wouldn't?

BEVERLY REESE Chicago

Transistors & Teddy Bears

Sir: Our children's childhood is being snatched from them by greedy adults [March 11]. We have endured the pre-teen-bra era and the pre-teen coketail party. Now we are faced with children aping the sad folksinger types. How tragic that the "nubes" wail of lost loves before the age of ten! If we lower the level of disturbance much more, prenatal psychiatrists will be needed.

(MRS.) PATRICIA C. HOSMER Chagrin Falls, Ohio

Sir: With the stress on early sophistication, can anyone doubt that somewhere an enterprising genius is planning contraceptive bubble gum?

(MRS.) ELINOR C. LEWIS New York City

Sir: Cousin Brucie and his teenie-weenie listeners make me want to get off the world.

DAVE JULIEN Columbus

Academic Bankruptcy?

Sir: The trimester plan [March 11] may lead colleges to financial brinksmanship; this is for trustees to decide. What is more definite is that the system verges on academic bankruptcy. Students have no time to acquire perspective; they obtain a veneer of knowledge. The faculty suffers equally. An instructor may teach twelve courses in a calendar year on up to nine topics; he could not possibly do the reading required for top performance. One week between terms is grossly insufficient for "catching up." As for research, publication or public service, when would there be time?

ROGER H. CHARLIER Professor of Geology Chicago Teachers College North Chicago

The Sex Buffs

Sir: The Stanford Sexual Rights Forum [March 11] wishes to dispute the "free sex" label TIME attaches to it. We advocate no particular sexual ethic but rather individual decision and individual responsibility. In the spring quarter we will initiate campaigns to make women's social regulations voluntary and to allow undergraduate women to live off-campus. The fastest-selling buttons at Stanford have been "If it moves, fondle it," "Unbutton," and "Make love, not war."

JAMES K. SAYRE Chairman

Stanford Sexual Rights Forum Palo Alto, Calif.

Sir: There's nothing new about nude lovers. What is new to the American college community is the desire to see one's own sex in the buff. Though these clubs make much of heterosexuality, they seem to be a manifestation of unconscious homosexuality. They represent still another aspect of our one-sex society.

RACHEL W. SMITH Boston

Sir: Berkeley's brats are not talking about sex (because they have not the sensibility to understand it) but about an insane promiscuity that satisfies their need for immediate infantile self-indulgence. More is the pity when the body is mature and the mind should be. And what are minds like this doing in universities? Stop coddling them. Expel them.

(MRS.) LORRAINE HOLLENDONNER Yard ley, Pa.

Sir: If those students are actually liberated, why the fuss, the cheap publicity, the organizations, the gimmicky buttons? This can only encourage the frustrated unenlightened to strike back with more deadly and repulsive conventional morality. Nietzsche warns: "Beware when you fight a monster that you do not become a monster yourself." Now that you at Berkeley have got over being ashamed of your bodies, take a look at your minds.

LAURA J. PLISKIN, '68 Connecticut College for Women New London, Conn.

Sir: The way kids dress today, maybe naked parties are the only way to tell 'the boys from the girls.

C. D. McCARROLL Pittsburgh

Sir: Where do they pin those buttons at those parties?

MARY JANE STEVENSON Lewisburg, Pa.

Salute to the Flute

Sir: Your flute story [March 11] was excellent. Boehm would be thrilled to learn that 70.000 flutes were made in the U.S. last year by a dozen makers. An additional 15,000 were imported.

JACK FEDDERSEN

President

H. & A. Selmer Inc. Elkhart, Ind.

Sir: You overlook some revolutionary developments in flute technique: 1) the range is now six-plus octaves: 2) there are four ways to produce sound besides the normal way-"air rush," "buzz," "hhh-ttt" and "pop"; 3) the mobility of the performer reveals new potentialities for "stereophonic glissando," antiphony between direct and reflected sound, etc. Such potentialities signify the emergence of a new musical humanism!

ROBERT B. CANTRICK Dean of Fine Arts Wisconsin State University Slevens Point. Wis.

Sir: We are nonplused at the omission of Duquesne University's Bernard Goldberg, flutist of the Pittsburgh Symphony and the Musica Viva Trio, soloist with the Casals and Marlboro festivals.

ALBERT R. GOLDSMITH AUDREY B. SAYRE Pittsburgh Flute Club Pittsburgh

Sir: There is room at the top-for Claude Monteux.

(MRS.) LORE GRISHMAN Hyde Park, N.Y.

Sir: A glaring omission: Maurice Sharp of the Cleveland Orchestra.

WILLIAM L. FRAZIER Cleveland Heights, Ohio

Hockey & the Humanities

Sir: Because of our small budget, we give our athletes much less than the N.C.A.A. would allow. Our hockey players [March 11] are recruited on the basis of ability to complete rigorous professional degree programs. Since 1956, 93 out of 98 hockey lettermen have completed their degrees. All players are oriented to business and industry, not to hockey. Only two Michigan Tech hockey players have signed N.H.L. contracts.

R. L. SMITH President

Michigan Technological University Houghton, Mich.

Sir: Allow me to commend you for your fine article on "hockey mania" here in Houghton. The one-sidedness you spoke of is not confined to athletics. Tech's humanities department is a disgrace to the state of Michigan, just as much as our sportsmanship is.

GEOFFREY E. MCKENTY Michigan Technological University Houghton, Mich.

Sir: TIME'S picture shows Alan J. Bovard, director of athletics at Michigan Tech, not Coach John MacTnnes, as the caption states.

WILLIAM A. BROMMELSIEK, '68 THOMAS J. PREMO, '68 Michigan Technological University Houghton, Mich.

De Gustibus

Sir: TIME has the most sensitive and intelligent motion picture criticism of any publication I read. And the astonishing thing is that your judgments are always in perfect taste; you are always correct. At least, TIME always agrees with me.

JAKE GASKINS Baltimore

Sir: Why do you so seldom have anything nice to say about any movies? Do you really feel they are all that bad and so worthy of derision, or is it just that you have some bad-review quota to fill? My husband and I used to rely on your taste, but now it seems that if we accept your guidance, we will miss many worthwhile films. Do try to be a little more objective.

EILEEN MERICLE Ames, Iowa

A Very Tasty Dish

Sir: I strongly object to your statement, in "Raising Hake" [March 18], that on the West Coast saumon blanc goes by the "unappetizing" name of hake. It happens that in some American circles a hake is known as a very tasty dish.

SUSAN HAKE Woodside, N.Y.

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