For Man of the Year

Sir: The American Negro, for 400 years of patience, tolerance and dignity in spite of it all.

ISAAC T. GRAVES

WALTER H. FOSTER JR.

Howard University

Washington, D.C.

Sir: Robert McNamara, who holds the evil world on his shoulders.

JAY ROSENZWEIG

Milford, Ohio

Sir: The late Walt Disney, who stood for joy, happiness and childlike innocence.

DREW D. JORDAN JR.

Norfolk, Va.

Sir: The technicians who insured the safe and accurate launching of our manned spacecraft.

ROBERTA HUGHES

Loveland, Ohio

Sir: All the way with R.F.K.

JONATHAN F. COHANNE

Washington, D.C.

Sir: Anyone but Bobby Kennedy.

MRS. J. B. KOWENHOVEN

Jacksonville

Sir: Dr. Alan Guttmacher, president of the Planned Parenthood Federation, for his efforts to awaken humanity to the awesome problem of overpopulation.

MRS. DAVID N. RIGGS

Hastings-on-Hudson, N.Y.

Sir: Pope Paul VI, a living inspiration in a world shadowed by clouds of war and uncertainty.

KAREN CAHILL

East Jewett, N.Y.

Sir: Adam Clayton Powell, for his unintentional disclosure of the moral decline in the U.S.

B. M. DOWNE

Tampa, Fla.

Sir: Sandy Koufax, who set an example of courage, intelligence, style and greatness.

P. FLEMING

Camarillo, Calif.

Sir: New York City's Thomas Hoving, for considering people more important than grass.

DONNA ROSS

Waltham, Mass.

Sir: Mario Savio, not for being a demonstrating beatnik, but for putting Berkeley on the map.

DIANNE SEIDELL

Milford, Ohio

Sir: Judging from some of the nominations I've read in TIME [Dec. 16], I think that Peanuts' Snoopy is a sure bet for Man of the Year.

BOB WOLFE

Manchester, N.H.

Here's to Cerf-dom!

Sir: My compliments for a job well done in presenting a profile of Bennett Cerf [Dec. 16]. I have always admired the man and enjoyed his brand of humor.

HARVEY JOEL WEITZ

Brooklyn

Sir: There's a dearth

Of mirth

In Cerf.

MRS. SIBBY SLOTOROFF

Margate, N.J.

Sir: The cover portrait of Bennett Cerf, his head below a truncated M, gives him somewhat the appearance of a horned owl, a symbol of wisdom not inappropriate, though Mr. Cerf is a mite less taciturn.

J. G. OLSON, M.D.

Ogden, Utah

Sir: About those pundits on your staff and elsewhere: since antiquity, Pundora's Box has loosed upun us many a punatic with an overproductive puncreas who has wrought pundemonium (remember the Punic Wars). Have you no pungs of conscience? Your puny puntomimes are sure signs of mental puntrefaction! But the punneymoon is over--it now behooves the punblic to take pun in hand to try to puncture with punpoint accuracy their impunetrable hides.

Not to puntificate any further before it is too late--repunt!

PAUL VOLTAIRE

New Milford, Conn.

Sir: Tis said a 17th century English poet proclaimed, "He who perpetrates a pun would pick a pocket."

SAMUEL O. CARR

New York City

To the Red or White?

Sir: If Mr. Romney's comprehension of the Constitution is reflected by his statement that "as far as I am concerned States have no rights" [Dec. 16], I believe he should be running for the little red school house instead of the White House.

I suggest you refer him to the Tenth Amendment to the Constitution, which reads, "The powers not delegated to the U.S. by the Constitution, nor prohibited by it to the States, are reserved to the States respectively, or to the people."

K. K. HYERS

Richmond, Va.

Sir: I am one of many Democrats already planning to vote Republican in the next presidential election.

However, if the Republican Party can't present a better candidate than George Romney, they deserve to lose again. The prospect of having to choose between another vague do-nothing candidate and one who tries to do too darn much leaves me cold.

HELEN B. ERRION

Springfield, Ill.

Sir: I am not a fan of Mr. Romney, yet I don't think you have presented his position fairly. You seem to criticize him because he has not made a definite decision on the Vietnamese war.

Considering the many valid arguments both for and against the Government's stand in Viet Nam, and considering the many unpredictable factors, I think that, based on the facts alone, an honest and intelligent attitude must necessarily be ambiguous.

JAMES W. SHEPARD

New York City

The Enemy Below

Sir: About "The Value of Bombing the North" [Dec. 16]:

Humanitarian motivation is fine, but I feel that in war it is somewhat out of place. It seems to me to be completely asinine for anyone, especially a Government official, to come out with the statement that it would not be to the advantage of the U.S. to bomb North Viet Nam back "to the Stone Age."

If it means killing one thousand North Vietnamese, civilian or otherwise, to render useless a munitions plant producing bullets that kill American soldiers--do it. Remember that they are the enemy, and that most of the G.I.s are only civilians in uniform.

It is against federal law to impede the progress of men and materiel to Viet Nam. Should we not also look with disfavor upon aiding the enemy by allowing him to continue producing the weapons he needs to kill Americans?

E. G. HOFFMANN

Ames, Iowa

Sir: With Robert Kennedy wanting to give his blood to the Viet Cong, a group of Quakers who want to send gift packages to the North Vietnamese, and Administration leaders who do not want to bomb certain targets in North Viet Nam because the bombing would cause suffering among the enemy, just what are the chances of the American soldier in Viet Nam?

JAMES ELIOPOLO

Atlanta

Dubious Distinction

Sir: President Johnson's reluctance to recommend either a tax increase [Dec. 16] or a reduction in expenditures brings to mind a legendary character created about the turn of the century by a Washington newsman. Senator Sorghum. When asked to what he attributed his long tenure in Congress, he replied: "I have never voted for a tax or against an appropriation."

G. G. COMMONS

Austin, Texas

Sir: When historians record Mr. Johnson's current program of planned uncertainty, he may be given the dubious distinction of being the only President to succeed in having a bust in the middle of a boom.

RUSSELL J. HILL

Berea, Ohio

Not Guilty

Sir: There are 20 different kinds of polls, some with excellent records and some with poor. Your blanket indictment [Dec. 16] fails to make this important point.

While the prediction of human behavior will never become an exact science, it should be noted that in the past seven national elections, the Gallup poll has, on the average, been right within 2 percentage points of absolute accuracy, and has never been farther off the mark than 2.8 percentage points.

In the November election, the Gallup poll produced the most accurate survey results in its history, and the best in the history of polling.

JOHN DA VIES

Editor

Gallup Poll

Princeton, NJ.

Guidelines at Berkeley

Sir: I commend you for your generally fair and objective reporting on the conflict at Berkeley [Dec. 16].

The fact that there are neurotic and destructive elements among the 27,000 Berkeley students is no reason to run the university like a kindergarten. If boys of 18 and 19 are old enough to die for their country, for a cause in which many of them do not believe, they are old enough to have a voice in the affairs of their country and their university.

The best of our young people are deeply disturbed by much that they see: the cynical conduct of our foreign affairs, the gap between civil rights legislation and reality, the spreading cancer of gross materialism and dehumanization in a shrinking world in which millions are starving, and a grade system perverted to act as a threat to those who stand in the shadow of the draft board.

There is more to learning than books and lectures. The free, open and continuous discussion of important issues is one of the most vital functions of a great university. It is essential that students, administrators and faculty be jointly engaged in such continuous discussion and communication.

HENRI TEMIANKA

California State College

Long Beach

Sir: Whether or not one supports Ronald Reagan, one cannot help being impressed by his lucid guideline to the Berkeley situation: "No one is compelled to attend the university. Those who do attend should accept and obey the prescribed rules or get out."

Perhaps if these words were heeded, the disgraceful nonsense perpetrated by a handful of malcontents would cease. As a graduate student, I often wonder how these demonstrators have so much time to lie around in corridors and march through the streets echoing the inane rallying cries that some long-haired, empty-headed rabble-rouser has put in their mouths.

N. DONALD DIEBEL

Bloomington, Ind.

Acknowledging a Debt

Sir: In response to "A Letter from the Publisher" [Dec. 2]: we wonder about the criteria used in determining the "corporate grant of $250,000 to be divided among 25 women's colleges selected for academic excellence and leadership."

Does your employment of "more than 800 graduates from these colleges" necessarily imply that these are the 25 best women's colleges?

SUSAN J. BALINSKI, '68

PATRICIA L. CREAN, '68

FLORENCE M. MURPHY, '68

DEECY STEPHENS, '68

Marymount College

Tarrytown, N.Y.

-- By no means. TIME did not undertake to designate the "25 best women's colleges." The program is designed to support women's education and to acknowledge our debt to 25 outstanding colleges that have provided us with many valuable employees.--ED.

The Defenders

Sir: The "admitted logic" [Dec. 16] of Gideon v. Wainwright has been carried out in Massachusetts, where representation for those who cannot afford it has been required since 1964 in all criminal cases with a possibility of imprisonment, misdemeanors and felonies alike. The 60 lawyers of the Massachusetts Defenders Committee provide representation in 12,000 cases per year.

You point out that misdemeanor cases in many states now take only a few minutes, and that "to require lawyers might inflate them into regular trials." We feel that this is a desirable kind of inflation, since a defendant in a misdemeanor case in Massachusetts can be imprisoned for as long as 2 1/2 years.

But there is no question but that implementation of the right to counsel is expensive. For example, in Massachusetts, state funds, Office of Economic Opportunity funds, and Ford Foundation funds allocated to our committee to provide lawyers for the poor in criminal cases total approximately $820,000. Nevertheless, this would appear to be a small price to pay for affording the constitutionally required right to counsel to all on an equal basis, regardless of ability to pay.

WILLIAM C. FLANAGAN

Chairman

Massachusetts Defenders Committee

Boston

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