Forging the Partnership

Sir: Your cover story on HEW Secretary Gardner [Jan. 20] brought his warm personality and talent into focus. When I began work at Carnegie Corporation in 1963, he was its president, and from that time I have considered it a privilege to know him. The Great Society has an excellent chance of realization if only because Mr. Gardner is one of its patrons.

MRS. BENJAMIN GERTZ

Manhattan

Sir: Let's hope Gardner and his colleagues can forge federal partnerships that will preserve the individual initiative that allows us to afford HEW.

ARTHUR D. SECOR

Toledo

Sir: Relative to Gardner's thought that "the need for money is less acute than the need for new ways to use it," I suggest the following: that the Federal Government establish a national council for ideas, made up of representatives from various Government departments, business and labor, plus farm, religious and educational leaders, to receive suggestions to fight poverty and strengthen human rights. As matters now stand, individuals with ideas must trudge from department to department, only to be told finally that there are no provisions in the budget for new ideas. If a commission were to act on proposals and give Ks approval, this might win acceptance for suggestions that might not otherwise come to light.

DAVID STAHMER

Omaha

The Struggle Behind the Wall

Sir: Your informative and penetrating cover story on the chaos inside Red China [Jan. 13] reveals one clear fact: Red China is a dragon in trouble, if not a dragon in sleep. Communist rule, after 17 years of "leap forward" and "construction," has never been stable. Even the Great Wall could not prevent the outside world from knowing that the developing power struggle might mean the end of the regime.

MICHAEL NAI-KIANG PAN

Southern Illinois University Carbondale

Sir: The Red China crisis makes me curious to see what the Chiang Kai-shek haters will come up with this time after all those variations on "I have seen the future, and it works," after each visit to the Communists. Also to be heard from are the ChiCom dreaders, with their dire forebodings about the mighty Red Chinese nation, a dedicated monolith poised to crush all Asia at any provocation.

JOHN NICHOLS

Berkeley

The Young Lions

Sir: A good if belated choice for Man of the Year [Jan. 6]; the "under 25s" have been the men and women of every year.

The young are probably luckier than their predecessors, so we feel rather envious and accuse them of being little monsters. Are they? To my mind they are hardly different from previous young generations. It is our nature to call them freaks, theirs to mistrust us. And their inheritance is not all roses, but they manage. They face religion boldly, honestly, making us look the old fools we are. As for sex, with which we are happily or unhappily obsessed, it is no problem to them; they are cutting it to size.

H. FARUQI

Kuwait

Sir: When one generation crosses its optimum age and sees clearly that it has not accomplished what needed to be done, it looks to the young; it attempts to rationalize its failures and unfinished works by fervently believing that the next generation will come through strong and victorious.

This great faith and support from our elders is much needed, and not altogether unrealistic. We will accomplish much in the next 50 years, because we have more to start with and because we have fewer routine burdens to bear. But we will not wipe out illness, hunger, crime, war or hatred. We will give these problems to our children to solve, just as you have given them to us.

LOWELL S. HUSBAND, M.D., AGED 24

Rome, Ga.

Dollar for Dollar

Sir: An attempt to find a moral basis for war [Jan. 20] indicates that mankind is subliminally aware of war's madness. The ugly truth is that man loves war and has always pursued his selfish aims by means of war. Those means were always as cruel and inhuman as the technology of the times would allow, but a moral justification could always be found, as your Essay correctly points out.

Man loves war because it is a legal and socially approved way to release his aggressiveness; it is legal murder. If a man takes a shotgun to the top of a tower and kills a group of strangers, he is shot down as a mad dog. If a man climbs a tree in a jungle and kills a group of strangers as a soldier in his country's army, he is given a medal for bravery.

Both sides in a war believe that they are "right." Hitler didn't say to himself, "I am evil, I am wrong, but I will go to battle anyway." He felt his war was just. So also the Achaeans and the Trojans, the Romans and the Carthaginians, the Crusaders, the North and the South, and now the East and the West: all in the right, all morally motivated and smug in their Tightness. So are our foes in Viet Nam and so are we.

If, as you have shown, morality, Christianity and conscience have never succeeded in ending war, then pragmatism must force us to it now. It is possible to attempt unilaterally to find an alternative to war. The Peace Corps is a start. Foreign aid must be changed from a political bribe to a program of "show by example." If part of a country's population is starving, we should get its government's cooperation in starting a showcase farm that the populace can visit and study. Modern methods that will help man regain pride in himself and help him to help himself must be the aim.

We must stop shrugging our shoulders in the face of war. The militarists must not be the sages of the modern world. If we would vote equal appropriations to achieve an understanding with, as well as the destruction of, our fellow man, we would make a substantial leap forward: a dollar for life for each dollar for death.

ROGER BASS

Manhattan

Mere Prole

Sir: Your excellent analytical Essay on "The Technology Gap" [Jan. 13] correctly places the blame for the technology gap on management. But the underlying cause of the management gap is the prevalent European mentality of adamant refusal to self-examine, learn, and make changes, since a change is too often considered proof of previous shortcomings that must never be admitted by chauvinistic European managers. New ideas and risks are accepted in the U.S. but rejected in Europe. A "limited market" is not the cause --Dutch Philips, for instance, has plants or subsidiaries in countries with well over 400 million people.

FREDERICK K. BAUER

Beverly Hills

Sir: The Frankfurt businessman described in the 'Technology Gap" Essay is obviously a member of the lower classes --a mere prole, in fact.

The wealthy and aristocratic American rises from a bed furnished with Irish linen sheets, brushes his hair with English bristle hair brushes, dons a Viyella shirt and Savile Row suit, brightens his outfit with a Carnaby Street tie, and goes down to a breakfast enlivened by English marmalade or Greek honey.

Having eaten, he crosses the Persian carpet, checks his appearance in a Louis XV looking glass, and then strolls toward his Mercedes. Looking back, he catches a glimpse of his wife, trim in her Bogner ski pants, carrying her Italian boots out to her M.G. He notices she is wearing only a cashmere sweater, and he hopes she remembers her Russian sable jacket for her trip to the ski slopes. The memory of her French perfume haunts him on his trip into town, and he toys with the idea of buying her a South African diamond as a surprise.

In the evening, after a mild Scotch, he eats a solitary dinner, wishing she were there with him to enjoy the Russian caviar and the really excellent Burgundy. Later, after reading a few chapters of Ian Fleming, he glances at his Swiss watch and realizes it is time for bed. Who needs technology?

PATRICIA H. HEARD

Lexington, Mass.

Giftie Gie Us

Sir: It would have been easier on Artist Peter Kurd [Jan. 13] if L.B.J. shared Robert Burns's sentiment: "Oh wad some power the giftie gie us. To see oursels as others see us! It wad frae monie a blunder free us. An' foolish notion."

MARCIA DUNWELL

Plainwell, Mich.

To Bring the Spring

Sir: As a 30-year-old American in my ninth year of religious life, may I express another viewpoint on "The Restive Nuns" [Jan. 13]?

The members of religious communities are the only ones who can change them. To stay within the community and help renew it according to today's insights is, I think, very worthwhile. A seminarian friend of mine put it in a nutshell: "We are not in the real 'light of Vatican II' as yet; we are only at the dawn of a stormy day. But we have the opportunity to determine the weather. We can't go south for the winter; we have to stay and bring about the spring."

SISTER BERNADETTE MARIE, SCMM

Medical Mission Sisters Philadelphia

Bronx Cheer

Sir: You have a lot of chutzpa to call Jack Ruby [Jan. 13] what you did in that caption.

Your editor must have been meshuga to have let that word schwanz slip by. Don't you goyim know that this is a schmutzike word, not used by fineh men-schen in a national magazine? You don't have to be Jewish to use the words, but you sure have to be Jewish to know what they mean in order to use them correctly and not get fahrblundjet. Don't be a nahr. Ask me next time you get the urge to zich austzeigen your knowledge of yiddishe chochmes*

MRS. SIDNEY WEINGART

The Bronx, N.Y.

* Chutzpa--nerve; meshuga--crazy; goyim--gentiles; schmutzike--dirty; fineh menschen--nice people; fahrbhundjet--very, very lost; nahr--fool; zich austzeigen--show off; chochmes--jokes, wisecracks.

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