London Bridge

Sir: Many thanks for your simply wizard London cover story [April 15]. As a native Londoner, I assure you that London has always been a wonderful town. But it needed a shrewd Yorkshireman and TIME to turn the spotlight on the old girl.

DOROTHY M. WILSON Wichita Falls, Texas

Sir: As Henry James wrote in 1881, "London on the whole is the most possible form of life."

JOHN AND PAMELA McBETH Puerto la Cruz, Venezuela

Sir: You aver that London is in the midst of a renaissance, that its theater is "in a second Elizabethan era." Nonsense. While it may be the world's pleasure capital, London smacks more of Las Vegas desperation than of Renaissance gusto. Compare the solitary John Osborne with Marlowe, Shakespeare, Jonson and Webster. The contrast is humbling.

RICHARD S. REID Robert College Istanbul

Sir: Thousands of young people with the same haircut, the same facial expression, rush out every Saturday to buy what everyone else is wearing so they can look different. One can no longer have his own opinion: he must wait until he is told whether a movie is In before he can like it. He can't buy a suit unless it comes from Carnaby Street. He must listen to discordant noise sung by rude, pseudo-intellectual malcontents because it is the sound of his generation. He must be atheistic, anarchistic, hedonistic. Hooray for liberated British youth! I can hardly wait for the brainwashing machine to come to America so I can be liberated too.

SARA OSWALD Montclair, N.J.

Sir: You have looked decadence in the face without seeing it. If London today reminds you of Shakespeare's London, why? Shakespeare's London was animated by patriotism born of the achievements of Elizabethan sea captains. What victories do Londoners celebrate today? All the turned-on young men and women will burn out as quickly as a light bulb of British manufacture.

SCOTT W. WORKMAN Dallas

Sir: They have mini-packages of mini-cigarettes, minicars, miniskirts, even mini-turkeys. But your article was a queen-size mini-haha. Not to worry. As one Englishman remarked, "At least our American friends still love us." A pox, etc.

DANIEL H. SAKS London

Sir: SCENE six: Switched-on, Texas-born ex-Genius Donald Carroll, 25, looms in corner of Scene 3, glooms over trendy TIME exposure (tucked inside Chelsea football program) looking for minimis-takes. Spots Belgrade Square in map of Belgravia. Grins cheerily. End of scene.

DONALD CARROLL London

More About God

Sir: My deeply felt thank-you for a perceptive analysis of religion today [April 8]. It was a masterpiece of objectivity. a fresh breeze in an area often smothered in emotionalism. The question "Is God dead?" is a shocker. It stimulates thought and shakes one loose from the unthinking acceptance that is too often mislabeled "faith."

(MRS.) BETTY WASSER Spokane, Wash.

Sir: TIME'S story is biased, pro-atheist and proCommunist, shocking and entirely unAmerican.

R. A. ELLSWORTH Colonel, U.S.A. (ret.) Laguna Hills, Calif.

Sir: Spend some time reading the Word of God rather than the word of men, and you will be writing not about "the death of God" but about "the God of death." / Corinthians 15: 55-56.

(THE REV.) CLYDE SHOWALTER Red Hill Lutheran Church Tustin, Calif.

Sir: I wonder what significance lies in the fact that throughout this long article the word "love" is mentioned only four times. In each instance, you do so rather incidentally: you make no reference to the pre-eminent role of love in the history of religious thought and experience. Whether this omission happened by accident or design, you have managed to reveal one great flaw in your approach and in the whole modern approach to religion--the absence of love. Your article would have brought more light to this vital issue if those who wrote it had first asked themselves, "Is modern man unfeeling?" and "Is love dead?"

ALEXANDER REID MARTIN, M.D. Former President of The Association for the Advancement of Psychoanalysis New York City

Sir: So Reader Rowland Allen [April 15] feels that the existence of intangibles can't be proved! Ever put your hands around love? Pour loyalty into a test tube? Examine courage under a microscope? Of course not, Mr. Allen, intangibles don't exist!

JOSEPH HOFFMAN Livingston, N.J.

Sir: What bothers me about the "death of God" theologians is the amazing failure of these informed men to take seriously the implications of psychology. We do not have to agree with all psychoanalytic theory to recognize the fact that our view of God involves a projection of ourselves. Talk of God's death reflects our personality condition. The weakness of the death-of-God theology lies not so much in what it says about God as in what it does not say about man.

(THE REV.) JAMES G. EMERSON JR. Larchmont Ave. (Presbyterian) Church Larchmont, N.Y.

The Dispeptic Generation

Sir: You're wrong if you think that today's youth aren't conscious of an American tradition [April 22]. They are--and are rebelling against it more than any previous generation did because they are more aware of the difference between America's creed and its deed. Young people are sick of the hypocrisy, the double standard, the platitudes of American tradition. They sense acutely the absurdities of life, thus live it as one big "goof."

I. A. STEINFINK Flushing, N.Y.

Southern Justice

Sir: Your Essay, "Breaching the White Wall of Southern Justice" [April 15] is a responsible effort to explain a complicated problem. 1 was particularly interested in your discussion of segregated juries. One approach is to challenge them county by county in federal district courts. But this is slow, costly and painful. With Phillip Burton of California and Joseph Remick of New York, I have introduced a bill that would employ federal jury registrars and use a population sampling system to insure that juries represent a cross section. Whatever formula Congress adopts, essays like yours encourage enlightened debate.

WILLIAM F. RYAN New York Congressman Washington, D.C.

Sir: No one, Negro or white, will spend much of his life directly before the law; justice there is necessary but not sufficient for the individual human being who happens to be a Negro. It is in the tiny affairs of daily living that the individual needs to be treated as equal; as long as the average white Southerner feels set upon from without, he will take revenge on the Negro in those tiny affairs: the idle salesgirl who lets him stand unattended for five minutes; the white taxi driver who doesn't see him trying to flag a cab; the teacher who doesn't go out of his way to help a colored child; the service-station attendant who services everyone else's car before he gets around to the Negro's. The goal of reform should be fair treatment of everyone by everyone else, not simple unprejudiced treatment by a color-blind law. And this goal of voluntary equal treatment is national. TIME oversimplifies; the South participates in efforts to reach this goal in it as a part of the whole, not as a separate entity.

WILLIAM KEMP State College, Miss.

Who Does the Risking

Sir: Air safety is of intensely personal concern to me and to all other airline pilots. But we live within myriad rules and multiple pressures. For example, at New York's traffic-saturated Kennedy Airport, 8,400-ft. Runway 4R has been equipped and designated by the FAA as the main instrument runway. But 14,500-ft. Runway 13R, which provides the length today's jets need to land safely on wet surfaces, has no ILS (instrument landing system). This becomes especially inappropriate considering Kennedy Airport's frequent combination of very low ceilings and visibility with accompanying southeasterly surface winds. In theory, the pilot has the right to decide whether to land or not. However, chief pilots are frequently called upon by profit-conscious managements to question such decisions. While others in the aviation industry can be detached in weighing the economics and calculating the risks, the pilot can never forget that while others do the calculating, he and his passengers do the risking.

JOHN C. CARROLL Airline Captain Palos Verdes Estates, Calif.

Where to Get Off

Sir: I am the mother of one "kid" who would like to tell the airlines where to get oif. My son, a university student, on half-fare standby [April 22] from St. Louis to Atlanta, waited eight hours in St. Louis, then bought another ticket to Washington, D.C., where he waited four more hours, then bought another ticket to Atlanta, arriving home after nearly 24 hours in transit. Needless to say, by then "standby" was just a dirty word, and we purchased still another ticket for the return to school. I'm not too happy to learn that American Airlines has earned two million plus exploiting our kids.

(MRS.) ROSE R. GOLDMAN Decatur, Georgia

Here in Big D

Sir: I suppose Dallas [April 15] is doomed to be the national whipping boy for a great many more years; it makes it doubly hard on thousands of Dallasites who loved and honored President Kennedy, and whose sense of impotent frustration is made almost unbearable by being lumped as one with those of our fellow citizens who would go to any lengths to forget. Why is mention so seldom made of the thousands of floral tributes, verses, photographs, and pathetic handmade memorials regularly left at the assassination site? Or of the petitions to have a permanent marker of dignity and respect? Or of the letters to local newspapers decrying the "official" attitude of our city? Please don't lose sight of us. We are here. And we are part of Big D.

(MRS.) SHIRLEY ACHOR Dallas

Naval Engagement

Sir: Despite alleged grading flaws, the Naval Academy last year won six Fulbright scholarships. But, of course, regardless of scholarship, present-day educators are bound to take a dim view of any institution in which there has never been a campus riot or a dirty-speech rally. The academy's mission is to prepare Americans to defend their country at sea. If the professors will consult their history books, they will find that, judging from the Navy's battle record, the academy does a pretty good job.

D. V. GALLERY Rear Admiral, U.S.N. (ret.) Vienna, Va.

Sir: The academic caliber of midshipmen could be raised if admissions procedures were changed. Most midshipmen are selected by competition for their Congressman's nomination. No matter how many qualified candidates compete for a nomination, only one can be selected. The reverse can be true: if there is only one candidate seeking a particular Congressman's nomination, he may be nominated regardless of his qualifications. This would change if admissions were made nationally, as for the Coast Guard Academy. DAVID M. SISSON Deerfield Academy Deerfield, Mass.

Sweet Reason

Sir: So you consider Cardinal Gushing "suddenly stiff-necked" for expelling eight rebellious seminarians [April 15]? Would you consider the Marine Corps commandant unreasonable if he didn't listen to a bunch of second lieutenants who tried to force him into running things their way?

ELIZABETH HART West Chester, Pa.

Back-seat Drivers

Sir: About the Kienholz exhibit at the Los Angeles County Museum [April 8]: Thanks for letting us see just what was in that Back Seat. Now we know what we didn't miss by not driving across town to get a peek.

MRS. WILLIAM HORSEMAN Compton, Calif.

Prickly Point

Sir: About "In Defense of Women" [April 15]: HAT PINS ARE NOT DEAD. We sell millions of them every year, and many women under 70 use them.

RUBEN BONDY The Hat Pin with the Perfect Point New York City

Ouch!

Sir: I only wish the "friendly" gerbil that "never bites" had been "curious" enough to read your article [April 15] before biting me. OUCH!

DAVID JAY ARLUK Richmond Hill, N.Y.

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