War of Words

Sir: I read with consternation your piece describing the explosive situation in the Middle East [May 26].

The statement that the state of Israel has never seriously tried to make peace with the Arabs is absurd on its face in light of the repeated appeals by Prime Minister Levi Eshkol and by his predecessor, David Ben-Gurion, for a peace meeting between Israel and the Arab states, a meeting repeatedly rejected by Nasser and other Arab leaders.

You describe Jordan as one of Israel's "least aggressive neighbors." I was not aware that there were degrees of aggression, some worthy of condemnation, others to be countenanced due to their mildness. Even if this were true, Jordan, jumping-off place for the terrorist Palestine Liberation Front, is far from being a mild aggressor.

The state of Israel is an island of Western culture, freedom and law in a morass of premedieval hate. The land "carved from the land of the Arabs" was, under Arab rule, a desert; it is now a rose garden in a wasteland of thorns. Israel is the only democracy in the Middle East, and the only nation in that area openly siding with the U.S. in the international power struggle.

HENRY M. HOCHERMAN

Baltimore

Sir: At last you have exploded the myth that Israel is interested in making peace with the Arabs. When will you explode the second myth, that "Israel is more than a match for all the Arab forces combined"? Why doesn't she prove this by going to fight now? After all, it has become clear to the world that Nasser has "brazenly" challenged her to do so. This should be her chance, for wouldn't a total defeat inflicted on the Egyptians mean a welcome end to her troubles? Why is she hesitating? Or will she this time create still another myth--that the Soviet Union is going to send down the Red Army to fight her glorious forces? O David, where is thy sling?

F. EL-MANSSOUR

Munich

Mission Critique

Sir: A sensitive Essay on Charles Lindbergh [May 26]. God love and bless the man for his many contributions to mankind and for the agony he so nobly endured. Bad cess to his detractors.

W. N. BERGIN, M.D.

Hilo, Hawaii

Sir: I am bitterly disappointed with the conclusions you reach. To admit Lindbergh's admiration for and connections with Hitler's Germany and Nazism, then to label this aviator "a great man" and "a hero," is a fantastic journalistic somersault. Physical courage (or foolhardiness) is not to be equated with intellectual maturity. And political imbecility does not create a hero in any democracy.

STEVEN L. WILLNER

Gambier, Ohio

Sir: As a fan of Alcock and Brown, who flew the Atlantic nonstop eight years before Lindbergh's flight, I am baffled by what goes into the fabrication of American folklore. Would you resent the observation that Lindbergh was at least the 64th person to cross the Atlantic by air?

SIDNEY KATZ

Chicago

>The fact remains that Lindbergh was first to conquer the Atlantic nonstop solo.

Sir: One facet of Lindbergh's life often overlooked is his role in rocketry. In 1929, attracted by skeptical reports of the pioneering rocket research of Dr. Robert Goddard at Clark University, Lindbergh visited Goddard at his Worcester home because, he said later, "I was trying to look far into the future of flight, and this took me into space. I realized the limitations of the propeller, and this led me into the field of rockets and jet propulsion, which I decided to investigate."

Unlike those who derided Goddard as the personification of the mad genius with dreams of space exploration, Lindbergh rightly thought Goddard's theories worthy of support at a time when Goddard had all but exhausted the meager research funds available to him. Lindbergh turned to Daniel Guggenheim, telling the philanthropist: "As far as I can tell, Goddard knows more about rockets than anybody else in the country," and "if we're ever going beyond airplanes and propellers, we'll probably have to go to rockets." Guggenheim, already a spirited benefactor of aeronautical progress, was convinced. During the 1930s, the Daniel and Florence Guggenheim Foundation aided Goddard's work with $190,000 in grants, hardly enough to fuel a Saturn rocket today, but then enough to permit the Father of Modern Rocketry to build sophisticated systems that became the basis of America's postwar entry into the Space Age.

BRUCE G. HOLRAN

Director, Public Relations

Clark University

Worcester, Mass.

Merit Is the Measure

Sir: "The Negro in Viet Nam" [May 26] is a well-deserved tribute to the courage, devotion and intelligence of the black troops serving in battle. However, one statement in your excellent report cannot go unchallenged. Noting that the proportion of Negro inmates in the military prison at the Long Binh jail is the same as that of white inmates, TIME asserts: "Unlike Negroes in previous wars, the Viet Nam breed is well disciplined."

The difference is not a matter of discipline but of treatment. In previous wars Negro troops were just as heroic, disciplined and devoted as at present, but they were then subjected to official, systematic insult, discrimination, humiliation and frameups in efforts to discredit them. Thanks to the pioneer work of President Harry S Truman, segregation in the armed forces has been virtually eliminated, and the Negro, in the main, has been accepted on the same basis as other fighting men. As a result, the U.S. military establishment is now, ironically, the most democratic institution in American life, which accounts for the widespread support the military receives from the Negro community despite frantic efforts to subvert such support.

ROY WILKINS

Executive Director

N.A.A.C.P.

Manhattan

Sir: Thank you for "The Negro in Viet Nam." It made me, as a Negro, immensely proud of America's black patriots in Viet Nam and of those who have fought and died in other wars. I hope this article will help non-Negro Americans to realize that the Glide Browns, the Lawrence Joels, and other American Negroes are first-class citizens.

WILLIAM R. BEATY JR.

New Haven, Conn.

Sir: As a citizen of Lawrence Joel's home town, I am naturally proud of him, indeed of all our soldiers in Viet Nam. Perhaps this war will accomplish what no amount of marching in our streets can: make us, the white citizens of the U.S., realize that there is no place for second-class citizens in this country. If we can make this dream come true, then possibly we will have justified the tragic loss of life, both Negro and white, in Viet Nam.

KATHERINE M. JENNINGS

Winston-Salem, N.C.

Sir: You say a truth has been proclaimed, that "color has no place in war; merit is the only measure of the man." Unless we are to doom ourselves to perpetual conflict, we have a more profound truth to discover and learn to live by: color has no place in peace; merit is the only measure of the man.

LEE GREEN

Bend, Ore.

Sir: "The Negro in Viet Nam" pays scant tribute to the worthy contribution of the Negro during the American Revolution. Washington first barred Negroes from enlisting, later welcomed freed men and slaves alike into the Continental line. Negroes fought in practically all major battles, spied on the British, crossed the Delaware with Washington. The majority fought in integrated units. "No regiment is to be seen in which there are not Negroes in abundance," commented a Hessian officer. In all, some 5,000 Negroes shouldered arms in defense of American liberty. Wrote Harriet Beecher Stowe: "It was not for their own land they fought, not even for a land which had adopted them, but for a land which had enslaved them, and whose laws, even in freedom, oftener oppressed than protected. Bravery, under such circumstances, has a particular beauty and merit."

L. PA'RAN NIXON

San Francisco

Sir: I cannot speak about the behavior of the 92nd and 93rd divisions during World Wars I and II, of which you write, but I want to defend the Negro who served with and under me during World War II, when I was a platoon leader and company commander for more than three years.

I found the Negro an exceptionally good soldier and a very willing worker, particularly when it was necessary to work 36 hours without rest to ensure General Patton's gas supply. One of our fuel trains was ignited by saboteurs or by accident, but it was saved by the willingness of some of our Negro men to risk their lives by riding the burning cars far enough to uncouple them before the entire train was lost. I have seen Negro troops called on for heavy labor while being strafed and subjected to buzz bombs, particularly during the Battle of the Bulge, again without complaint and for long periods without rest.

At no time was it necessary to remind them of their military obligations. The only real criticism of the Negro soldier I have heard has been voiced by "someone who had heard from someone else."

ROBERT P. CONDON

Captain, QMC, A.U.S. (ret.)

Augusta, Me.

Drawing a Perspective

Sir: As a high school social studies teacher, I found your Essay "The Right to Dissent and the Duty to Answer" [May 12] one of the most valuable items in your magazine this year. It provided an excellent yardstick by which the students could measure the validity of their conduct, comments and attitudes on Viet Nam; it was a long-overdue lesson on perspective.

JAMES G. CHAMBERS

Morton, Wash.

Sir: When irrational and biased dissent in the U.S. and elsewhere outside the Communist bloc has reached the distorted proportions that it has, when the free condemn the protectors of the freedom they share, enjoy and abuse, and curse the resisters of totalitarian aggression (and it is irrelevant whether the aggressors are North Vietnamese, South Vietnamese or Eskimos, whether their aggression takes the form of a frontal assault, blitzkrieg, treacherous tactics or the barbarous slaughtering of innocents), and dishonor the noble flag under which millions have been and are being saved from tyranny for the fourth time this century--one can only marvel in alarm at the subtle efficiency with which international Communism has succeeded in corrupting the thinking and moral fiber of so many and enlisting them in a cause against themselves.

H. LOMBARD

Windhoek, S.W. Africa

Hats Off

Sir: In "Liberate the Southwest!" [May 19] you write that a Chinese proverb underlining the independent spirit of the Szechwanese goes, "In Szechwan the dogs even bark at the sun." Actually, the proverb is generally used to indicate provincialism, and refers to the fact that Szechwan, being surrounded by mountains, does not enjoy the sun for long periods. But TIME is to be congratulated for using Chinese proverbs typical of Chinese thinking--even though their meaning be tailored to the story in question, perhaps a case of Chang kuan Li tai--"Li wearing Chang's hat"--in other words, the right proverb in the wrong place.

CHARLES F. BERLITZ

President

Berlitz Publications, Inc.

Manhattan

Quote, Unquote

Sir: Poet Masefield would not be pleased to see your misquotation of his famous line [May 19]. It should read: "I must down to the seas again"--without go.

RICHARD T. GORE Wooster, Ohio

> Says Masefield's daughter: "I must down to the seas again" is the early version of Sea Fever. Thirty years ago, it was changed to read as TIME quoted it--"I must go down to the seas again."

For the Record

Sir: The story about Gordon McLendon's ban on "suggestive" records [May 26] was disgusting. Honni soit qui mal y pense. Most "adult" minds could find dirt in anything if they looked for it. Mr. McLendon may be able to ban records, but the teen-agers are the ones who buy them, and we do not have to buy records we do not like. It is our business how we interpret each record. Has anyone ever thought that we might buy records for other reasons than "dirty messages"? You can find these in any alley, and you do not have to pay for them.

SHARI NICHOLSON

Mason City, Iowa

Sir: Talk about the generation gap! Young people are to be fed a diet of musical pap predigested by McLendon and his American Mothers' Committee; only a connoisseur of "serious" music may sample Bomarzo, the hero of which is "sexually ambivalent and frustrated, ghost-ridden, and obsessed with death." One shudders to consider the effects of Mr. McLendon's taste on works such as Tristan und Isolde (premarital sex), Salome (fetishism and degeneracy) and Wozzeck (sadism and murder). "English records that deal with sex, sin and drugs" are what make the best popular music true, if controversial art, precisely because they deal with an imagery that is valid for youth today.

WILLIAM F. TAYLOR

New Haven, Conn.

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