Surveying the Summit
Sir: Apropos of the Johnson-Kosygin meeting [June 30], I propose Kosygin for Man of the Year. He was willing to come halfway and break the cold barrier between the Reds and the U.S., to share his views, and to listen to our side at a time when understanding and cooperation are needed for the sake of peace.
JANET TONKA Atlanta
Sir: In that inane reverse-and double-reverse Gaston-and-Alphonse jig that Lyndon and Aleksei trotted out, what would have happened if the surveyor had missed the halfway point by a hundred feet? Would they have thrown up a tent in the backyard and torn up poor old Tom Robinson's rose garden? Honestly!
CHARLES C. FLARIDA JR. Orlando, Fla.
Sir: Your cover evokes a feeling of sadness: what a tragedy for this planet and humanity that two such mediocrities reign over the two great powers of the world.
GEORGE Du Bois Honolulu
Lessons In Finance
Sir: The principal reason for the rapid decline in private higher education that you so vividly describe in your Kingman Brewster cover story [June 23] was expressed with unusual candor in 1959 by then University of Chicago Chancellor Lawrence Kimpton, speaking to state university administrators: "To put it in the crassest terms possible--and I know this will offend many of the brotherhood--it is hard to market a product at a fair price when down the street someone is giving it away." The decline of private education is bound to accelerate unless something is done about this.
Federal grants are not the answer. But the trend toward a near-monopoly for public higher education could be slowed down by adopting a plan for graduated federal income tax credits for expenses in and donations to higher education. Unless such credits are soon approved, we shall witness the end of the diversity and freedom of choice that has characterized American higher education.
ROGER A. FREEMAN The Hoover Institution Stanford University Stanford, Calif.
Sir: TIME refers to Kingman Brewster's "revolutionary" loan program and to sev eral criticisms of it. But in "Learn Now, Pay Much Later" [June 21, 1963], you reported on a similar plan, but one that meets such objections to his program as that made by Howard Johnson of M.I.T.
Since 1 proposed this program in an article in the Harvard Educational Review, and since you saw fit to give it the wide circulation provided by TIME, we should both feel satisfied to have come up a few years ago with an idea that is now apparently making quite an impact through the words of President Brewster.
EDWARD SHAPIRO Professor of Economics Wayne State University Detroit
Sir: You report that Byron Trippett says fathers ask: "What can Colorado College offer my boy for a tuition of $1,700 that the University of Colorado can't do just as well for $300?"
The comparison doesn't parse. The University of Colorado is a large, state-supported, multipurpose institution complete with graduate programs, large scale research operations and the rest. Colorado College is a small, independent college of liberal arts that devotes itself to the education of undergraduates.
We need the universities and we sympathize with their financial problems, but we beg to differ on the thesis of common disaster ahead. Colorado College has carefully rebuilt its physical plant in the past ten years while raising $20 million, balancing the budget and maintaining a 1-to-ll faculty-student ratio. We expect to be scrambling, too, but we have only begun to realize the financial potential of our kind of institution. The evidence is that the independent liberal arts college is in the enviable position of knowing where it is going.
LLOYD E. WORNER President
The Colorado College Denver
Sir: About the long-term loan now being pushed by that articulate and brilliant Yale president, Kingman Brewster: Since I was the one who first presented the theory of the long-term loan (along the lines of a home mortgage) in my Higher Education: Resources and Finance, I add the following.
The long-term loan greatly cuts the burden of higher education on the borrower. In 25 years, per-capita income will be three times what it is today; in 50 years, ten to eleven times, or in excess of $60,000 per family income. The student borrows when family income is $6,000, pays back with incomes up to $60,000.
My only criticism of your discussion of higher education: the financing problems are serious, but I do not anticipate the large attrition that TIME does. It is difficult to put a college out of business; shutdowns have been few. It would be better if there were more. It is difficult on economic grounds to justify colleges with enrollments of less than 1,000. Their costs per student are too high. The sentimental and educational advantages of the small college are not, in my opinion, as a rule large enough to offset costs.
SEYMOUR E. HARRIS Chairman, Department of Economics University of California San Diego
Voice of the Victor, Tears of Grief
Sir: Through the usual din of Middle East hate propaganda, we heard the voice of Israel at the U.N., sincere and compassionate, sweeping before it like a refreshing, cleansing storm all the filth of Arab-Russian intrigue and deception, exposing truth for all to recognize. All this with malice toward none, with condemnation of deeds only, not of people.
Here was a voice that reflected the spirit and will to peace that are the foundation on which the U.N. was built and its raison d'etre. Here is a conqueror offering coexistence and cooperation, claiming nothing for himself but security and the right to exist. Who dares put the tag of aggressor on him?
M. HOLT Windsor Mills, Que.
Sir: Though my sympathies, like those of most Americans, lie with the Israeli cause, I cannot help admiring King Hussein of Jordan. He did more for peace than any other Arab leader. When war came, he led his nation with skill and tenacity, fighting stubbornly and doing his best in the face of overwhelming enemy strength. At the end, he was the only one with the honesty and courage to speak plainly and face defeat. Hussein stands out in the Middle East, a man among whining jackals. I salute him.
STEVE MOORE Quito, Ecuador
Sir: I, too, wept at the Wailing Wall-tears of grief for the children who lived in those Arab huts cleared away by Israeli bulldozers, for their parents and grandparents who are homeless, or dead; tears of anger at the Israelis who prayed with self-righteous piety before their "holy" wall, oblivious to the suffering of the families driven out to accommodate Jewish religious fanaticism. The picturesque houses and narrow, winding streets have been replaced by a broad courtyard to accommodate 200,000 devout Jews.
If this is a representative sample of Israel's plans to "develop the Old City," then God help Jerusalem.
DONNA C. SCHEIBE Fort Benning, Ga.
Sir: I object to what I consider a doctrine of "might makes right" in your Essay on Israel [June 23]. It is a fact that "ability to stake out a territory" with force if necessary will establish a sovereign state, but is that also its justification? What about groups that have identity and tradition but no power, for example, the American Indian and South Africa's Negro population? I am surprised at your lack of a sense of moral consciousness; or should I be glad that a national publication has had the candor to admit that for all of our 20th century sophisticated internationalism, we are still not that far removed from our caveman ancestry?
(THE REV.) MERL L. GALUSHA Mt. Lebanon United Presbyterian Church Pittsburgh
Sir: Your Essay quoted accurately one half of what 1 said: that the establishment of Israel in 1947-48 and its recognition by most countries could be compared to an act of eminent domain by the international community. The other half of what I said was this: that therefore the world community, and not only Israel, in justice owes the Arab nations substantial compensation for resettling permanently the Arab refugees, and for replacing the pre-1947 Arab-tilled land in Israel by a larger acreage of improved and irrigated land, created in other Arab countries with international aid within a reasonable period, 15 or 20 years, once Israel's right to undisturbed existence in its 1948 boundaries has been accepted.
KARL W. DEUTSCH Professor, Political Science Yale University New Haven
Sir: TIME notes that "oddity" that "many of those who are attacking Johnson for not having resorted to force at once in the Mideast are those who attack him most bitterly for having used force at all in Viet Nam" [lune 9]. What is so odd about a philosophy that advocates use of U.S. power only when the nation requesting our assistance can clearly demonstrate its own solid commitment to fight for the right to exist and to be free? If the South Vietnamese showed the kind of determination and willingness to defend their country that the Israelis have shown in the current crisis, it would be easier to convince the doves that the Viet Nam war is worth a heavy U.S. military commitment. But then, a dedicated and motivated South Vietnamese people could have won its war a long time ago--without American help.
BERNARD HERSCHBERG Legazpi City, The Philippines
Under the Gun
Sir: Thanks for your fair reporting on the M-16 [June 9]. But this weapon hasn't given me, a Marine rifleman, or many of my buddies much cause for confidence in its performance. To mention just one occasion: in a recent firefight, three M-16s refused to fire and resulted in our only three casualties of the action--from a V.C. grenade that the enemy never would have had a chance to throw if we'd been carrying M-14s.
As for cleaning, ask any Marine in the field over here which requires more attention, the M-14 or the M16. And why should our opinion be subordinated to and overruled by a lieutenant colonel sitting in an armory? We shouldn't have to "troubleshoot" our weapons under fire or combat conditions. The Marines who survived Hill 881 know what they're talking about.
What will happen during the monsoon when a Marine and his rifle fight, sleep and hike in the mud for days and the most thorough cleaning it'll get will be a quick wipe-off with a wet rag and a quick coat of oil? Colt should have patterned the rifle more after the Viet Cong's K-50, considered by many experts here to be far superior to the M-16 and the finest weapon in its class in Viet Nam.
The statement that "the only thing wrong with the M-16 is that there isn't enough of them" is ridiculous: bent rounds, jammed rounds, unejected rounds; brush a tree and the magazine falls out, get the weapon wet and the selector switch freezes solid on SAFE. I could get you a hundred men to start with and a pocketful of disfigured cartridges to prove it.
PFC. F. C. CRANSTON 9th Marines Viet Nam
A Gallery in Every Home
Sir: Your article on kamagraphic art reproductions [lune 23] reminds me of the remarks of Art Connoisseur Leo Stein (Gertrude's brother) in Appreciation: Painting, Poetry and Prose:
"The museum is a necessary misfortune, and picture shows a worse one. It will be a happy moment when reproductions of paintings can be so perfectly made that originals can be left like first editions and manuscripts to makers of collections, while anyone can have a copy of his own which, like the printed book, is just as good. People then will have private galleries, and there can be circulating galleries, and it will then be possible to get away from the absurdity of regarding it as important to visit shows and supposedly see in a few minutes scores of pictures that one will never meet again."
ARTHUR J. OTTEN East Grand Rapids, Mich.
Two Sons of Harvard
Sir: Your story about Walter Winshall [lune 23] was instructive. Some years ago, a Harvard boy was caught cheating, was suspended, and after a hitch in the Army was reinstated and received his degree; he is now a U.S. Senator from Massachusetts. Winshall fulfilled his requirements for degrees at two outstanding colleges simultaneously. He did not have to cheat or break any rules, yet Harvard refuses, this outstanding young man his degree. Does that make sense?
JOHN S. HOOLEY Merritt Island, Fla.
Agonizing Choice
Sir: I've made my choice! The question was whether to continue going to the movies to find out how the plots turn out in the end, or to go on reading your reviews and not have to bother going. I'm going to the movies! Your spoilsport reviewer should have the last reel withheld from him, 'cause old blabbermouth can't resist giving away the story, as he does in all four reviews this week [June 30].
WILLIAM M. CONNELL Chicago
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