Doing the Job

Sir: So educators complain they have too much responsibility over students' lives because grades are a factor in draft deferments [March 25]. Draft boards must decide which men to take. Army classification people must decide which men to train for combat, which for jobs behind the lines. The Pentagon must decide which units to send to Viet Nam, which to noncombat areas. Leaders in Viet Nam must decide which units to send into combat. The platoon leader must decide which squad to send on patrol. I don't think it too much to ask the educator to do his job and grade his students according to their ability.

BILL SUNSTRUM Oskaloosa, Iowa

Sir: I propose that each prospective college man be asked by the Government to sign a contract guaranteeing the student deferment for four years or until he got his degree, whichever came first. The student would also agree to serve in the armed forces for three years after graduation. His marital status would have no effect on the contract. If he dropped out of college, he would be classified 1-A. If he elected not to sign, he would go into the draft pool and take his chances with his less fortunate, less wealthy or less intelligent fellow citizens.

DAVID L. MCDANIEL Imperial Beach, Calif.

Sir: Richard Bereza's comment that people "who aren't quite as capable are better able to endure the boredom of military life" is an ignorant affront to U.S. armed forces. I doubt that Bereza would be alive to say this were it not for the professional military men who led our civilian soldiers with magnificent brilliance in World War II.

JOSEPH N. HOSTENY III Midshipman 2C, U.S.N.R. Marquette University Milwaukee

Noblesse Oblige

Sir: My mother, two feet shorter than Wilt Chamberlain [April 1] and 40 years his senior, discovered that they lived at the same address when he permitted her to hold the front door open for himself and his dogs. Intrigued with this bit of noblesse oblige, I inquired if he had rewarded her in the customary fashion with "thank you." "I don't recall that he did," my mother replied. Only sportsmen will understand my profound sense of relief for that answer. No irrational, misguided sentimentality shall befog my firm conviction that Bob Cousy, while still at Holy Cross, retired the title to "The Greatest." When one considers that he did so in the prepituitary era, it is doubly awesome.

PHYLLIS R. SUSSKIND (MRS. DAVID SUSSKIND) New York City

Looking at the Veep

Sir: I appreciate TIME'S recognition of the vitality and skills of Vice President Humphrey [April 1]. A favorite teacher has become a favorite statesman. Thank heaven for his glands!

ALLEN DALE OLSON Washington, D.C.

Sir: It's no use trying to build up Humphrey. He has let us liberals down; we won't forget it. He has sold out to expediency, tossed away his birthright for a mess of Administration pottage, even spews out the Viet Nam lump with a smile.

J. WILLIAMS Newark

Sir: I was impressed by the cover picture of Humphrey. It's the first time I've seen him with his mouth shut.

(MRS.) CHARLOTTE MULFORD Monroe, Conn.

Sir: You quote me as comparing certain critics of Humphrey's Viet Nam position to John Birchers. The quote is accurate, but the category emerges indistinctly. When I used the term Birchers of the Left, I referred to those who, in apocalyptic frenzy, denounce all who disagree with them as immoral sellouts. A number of fine liberals disagree with the Vice President's views on Viet Nam (and mine), but it would no more occur to them to accuse him of selling out than it would occur to me to call them comsymps or appeasers. What is characteristic of Birchers of all persuasions is their repudiation of the standards of civility that make meaningful discourse and serious argument possible.

JOHN P. ROCHE Professor of Politics Brandeis University Waltham, Mass.

Crosstown Competition

Sir: I read your fine Essay, "Why Cars Must--and Can--Be Made Safer" [April 1] on the day we won Senate passage of a historic tire safety bill. I congratulate you for a thorough analysis of this emotion-filled issue without repeating the cliche that a safe car would look like a Sherman tank. There is an awakening interest in this issue in both houses of Congress. A number of us will continue fighting for safe cars; we appreciate your help.

GAYLORD NELSON U.S. Senator from Wisconsin Washington, D.C.

Sir: Though there is room for improvement in cars, there's not much that present models won't do in the hands of educated, courteous drivers on roads not cluttered with "booby traps," governed by horse-and-buggy regulations or filled with drivers in worn-out cars who consider driving a right rather than a privilege. The good Senator Ribicoff [March 25] should try a few laps in the Hartford cross-town competition some cold, rainy night--Sebring is safer!

CHARLES B. CORT West Hartford, Conn.

Sir: Perhaps Congress could embarrass the manufacturers into providing standard safety equipment by requiring them to label all new cars, "Caution: automobile driving may be hazardous to your health."

MRS. CLARKE F. O'REILLY Seattle

Assassinating the Assassins

Sir: I applaud David O. Merrick's stand on critics [March 25]. For years I have fought a one-man battle against these freeloading character assassins, though they have generally been good to me. It has always been a mystery to me why of all man's endeavors, only the creative arts should be constantly exposed to public and generally destructive criticism.

FELIX DE COLA Hollywood

Catch It If You Can

Sir: I have read TIME'S Essay on the virtues of patience in America [March 25] with interest and concern. All too often is indecision, ignorance of a solution, or "letting the other guy do it" synonymous with patience. We have a plaque in the wardroom and on the bridge of U.S.S. Krishna with this inscription: "Impatience and sense of urgency tempered with realism can never lead to complacency." Impatience in today's world is a virtue, not a vice.

EUGENE C. RUEFF Lieut. Commander, U.S.N. Commanding Officer, U.S.S. Krishna Viet Nam

Sir: All things come to him who waits, as long as he does something while waiting.

A. R. ESSER Milwaukee

Sir: Our childhood family maxim: Patience is a virtue,/Catch it if you can./ Seldom in a woman./NEVER in a man.

(MRS.) EDNA VON HILLEBRANDT San Juan, P.R.

Magnificent Unknowns

Sir: The Connolly reading list [March 25] is hopelessly provincial. However you define modernism, it is an international phenomenon. Yet Connolly leaves out Ibsen and Strindberg, Nietzsche and Rilke, Tolstoy and Chekhov, all of whom surely have "helped shape the contemporary mind" to a far greater degree than Ivy Compton-Burnett or Henri Michaux. What about Marinetti and Cavafy and Karel Capek and Federigo Garcia Lorca and other influential thinkers who did not happen to write in English or French?

SIMON KARLINSKY Associate Professor of Slavic Languages and Literatures University of California Berkeley

Sir: That Connolly excluded Huckleberry Finn and Henry Adams is justifiable: de gustibus non est disputandum. To exclude the major German, Russian and other European writers merely because, it appears, Connolly could not read them in the original is unpardonable. We might as well ignore the Bible because we cannot read it in the original Aramaic and Greek.

J. C. VORVOREANU London

Stamp for the Postcard

Sir: Your "good things in small packages" analysis of the sale of the postcard-size Hubert Van Eyck oil [March 25, p. 69], and mention of the advantages of the rare stamp [p. 88], made me check the value of the world's most valuable postage stamp, the British Guiana 1-c- of 1856. Last year this l-sq.-in. stamp was displayed at Royal Festival Hall in London, insured for a healthy $560,000--so the portable rare-painting market still has some distance to go to catch up with the portable rare stamp.

FRED S. JACOBY, M.D. New York City

Cleverness or Craftsmanship?

Sir: "A Peek at the Pros" [March 25] is entertaining, but it leaves a distorted impression of continuing legal education. Dean Shapiro's organization is one of 35 in 30 states, all sponsoring courses on which many of the nation's lawyers rely. Those of us who know Shapiro well know a man who is not so much a P. T. Barnum as a dedicated, considerate, high-principled lawyer.

EDWARD J. KIONKA

Director

Institute on Continuing Education of the Illinois Bar Springfield, Ill.

Sir: Watching staged courtroom dramas can be fun; Perry Mason has proved that. But it is doubtful if one learns much. What is usually carried away is the conviction that cleverness rather than craftsmanship wins the suit. If your story reflected the goings-on at Ann Arbor, the judges and professors who participated should be required to write 100 times: DID NOT THINK!

PAUL O. PROEHL U.C.L.A. Professor of Law Bordeaux, France

Tiffany's Hoving

Sir: In your April 1 issue there is a damaging statement about me. You say that Maxey Jarman "kicked" me put of Genesco Inc. There is no truth in this whatsoever. The facts are that much to Mr. Jarman's surprise, I resigned as a director of Genesco and as president of Bonwit Teller in lune 1960. I remained as chairman of Tiffany & Co., and with a group of associates, purchased it from Genesco in October 1961. There is another inaccurate statement that may be just a typographical error. You say, "For at least six years Hoving has tried, and failed, to take over Garfinckel & Co." It was Mr. Jarman who wanted Garnnckel's. I have never had the slightest interest in buying Garfinckel's.

WALTER HOVING New York City

> TIME is happy to have Tiffany Chairman Hoving clear up the record.

Sir: Regarding the article concerning Walter Hoving and me: this is a one-sided matter as far as I am concerned, as I have no fight with Hoving. A few years ago, he tried to back down on an agreement with me, and it took a court case to settle the matter in our favor. But I admire Hoving's ability and wish him success in his business. I do not know his motives in opposing our offer to buy the stock of Julius Garfinckel & Co., Washington, D.C., at a higher price than stockholders have ever had a chance to receive before. But I presume he had some business reasons.

MAXEY JARMAN New York City

Question of Progress

Sir: Judge Heller, quoted in "Prisoners" [March 25], might be surprised to learn that those "genuine subhumans" he refers to are regular humans. And his statement seems to imply that in the case of "genuine subhumans" we are justified in maintaining institutions "with few, if any, facilities for genuine treatment and rehabilitation of the mentally ill." The judge's attitudes, betrayed in remarks that at first sound like the product of an enlightened age, may indicate that we have not progressed so far in our conceptions of what constitutes mental illness as we like to think.

MAX J. HEINRICH Etna, N.Y.

Fox on Guard

Sir: The "basic protection plan" advocated by Professors Keeton and O'Connell for auto accident victims [March 25] would be as unworkable as letting the fox guard the henhouse. Every time two bumpers touched, two motorists would rush to file a claim; the plan lacks any safety incentive. Incidentally, this "ideal solution" dates back to at least 1916, when it was outlined in a Harvard Law Review article, "A Compensation Plan For Railway Accident Claims."

A. W. QUERY JR. Automobile Legal Association Boston

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