Hep to the Hips

Sir: Once again TIME has done a commendable job in dealing with today's youth in the cover story "The Hippies" [July 7]. TIME "told it like it is" without shaking a didactic finger at the hippies.

EDWIN KAPINOS Ludlow, Mass.

Sir: Write what you will about the hippies. They are a repugnant, repulsive, nauseating, filthy, immoral, and utterly useless glob of humanity serving absolutely no purpose.

WILLIAM C. HELLER San Francisco

Sir: The hippies have not dropped out of American society; they've dropped in and have tried to make this society a better consociation to live in free from hate and violence.

RUTH FRISCH Manhattan

Sir: The hippies, who so obviously work hard to say to hell with the world, are deliberately inviting the same reaction from the world. I realized long ago that the world hadn't expected me and that it was up to me to fit in. I haven't quite made it, but I don't think it is at all bright to try not to.

DUANE WOOD WORTH JOHNSON Washington, D.C.

Sir: In your excellent story you failed to note that the new psychedelic, STP, was named after the effects it produces--serenity, tranquillity, and peace.

MICHAEL WOODS Dunkirk, N.Y.

Sir: Yes, but would you want your daughter to marry one?

CURTIS PRENDERGAST Paris

Rhetoric & Restraint

Sir: TIME'S coverage of the summit meeting [June 30] was remarkably balanced and perceptive.

The Russian failure to back rhetoric with substantive help at crucial points has also been well illustrated in the Congo quagmire, which since July 1960 has threatened to draw in the U.S.S.R. and the U.S. as direct adversaries. Each time considerable Russian involvement was needed to give Soviet clients a chance at success, the Communists backed down. This has been a pattern from the fall of

Lumumba to the failure of the 1965 rebel groups. The Soviets have encouraged only so long as they could avoid massive direct intervention.

The Soviet record offers both hope and warning. So long as such restraint prevails, a real confrontation of superpowers may be avoided. But if the Russians begin to feel cornered--to regard themselves as being pushed around too much by superior American power--the trend to moderation may be reversed, with increasing peril to world safety. Similar American restraint in areas of current or potential conflict can help avert a tragic showdown.

FRANK HAMSHER London

Sir: In "The Uneven Record of Soviet Diplomacy" you accurately point out that the U.S.S.R. is torn between acting in its rational self-interest or for the advancement of some theoretical Communist world ideal. Perhaps a story on "The Uneven Record of American Diplomacy" would be in order next, for we face the same problem: to act in our self-interest or to further some ideal image of ourselves as leaders of the free world, whatever the cost. In the Mideast crisis we wisely did our best to keep the conflict local, not part of the East-West confrontation. In Viet Nam, we emphasize the role of Chinese and Russian Communists to justify our own position, despite the fact that the aid provided by more than 400,000 troops far outweighs any material help from the Communists.

It should also be noted that a pragmatic nation can deal reasonably with another nation, but if two ideological nations confront each other, become entrenched and are unable to retreat, the result can be terrible. As long as there is "overwhelming U.S. commitment to South Viet Nam" and "Washington is willing to support its commitments to the end," we must be thankful indeed that Russia is not thus committed.

C. PAUL MINIFIE Martinsville, N.J.

The Human Condition

Sir: After devoting several months of my sabbatical to many aspects of structuralism, I pounced gleefully on your Essay on Claude Levi-Strauss [June 30], equipped to gloat over the mistakes I thought I would inevitably find. Alas! Quelle magnifique synthese!

ALFRED R. DESAUTELS, S.J. Paris

Sir: Levi-Strauss may say so, but humanism has not failed, unless one expects a philosophy to make instant Utopia. But humanism in its various forms--Confucian, that of Erasmus and the French philosophers, etc.--has pointed a way forward. Even now, humanists like Bertrand Russell and Julian Huxley and Durant and Sartre and Remarque pack more weight than all the dreary pessimists put together. So do recent humanists such as Santayana and Croce and Schweitzer. And look at the not inconsiderable progress of education and democracy, those handmaidens of humanism!

TERTIUS CHANDLER Berkeley, Calif.

Honestly, Abe!

Sir: Connecticut's Senator Ribicoff protests that he did not vote expediently on the Dodd issue [June 30]. His mail was 2 to 1 against Dodd. Connecticut newspapers were against Dodd. The Republicans were against him. Respectable Democrats were against him. The case was against him. The cloakrooms were against him. The welfare of Connecticut was against him. The probity of American public life was against him. Senator Russell Long was against him--prolonging the ordeal and doing him more damage than good. Mr. Dodd was even against himself--his own worst evidence. From the beginning he had higgled and haggled himself to a sad frazzle, even arguing that the skin game is an old Connecticut custom, making us worthy of our reputation as peddlers of wooden nutmegs.

The junior Senator, forgiving the smirch, would embrace and redeem. Ninety-two Senators, having tortured Dodd into shoddy sobbing, were going to kick him when he was down. Only brave, urbane, above-the-battle, compassionate, honest-to-Dodd Abe would care for the man who had fallen amongst so many thieves, and put him on his donkey and haul him to the nearest polling booth.

No, Senator Ribicoff didn't vote expediently. We may take him at his word. But he likewise didn't vote responsibly.

PAUL A. REYNOLDS Professor of Philosophy Wesleyan University Middletown, Conn.

Baleful Tale

Sir: "The Rich Get Richer" [June 30], your story about Government payments in excess of $1,000,000 to this and four other companies, is a balanced account of Senator Williams' speech. But the Senator did not know that the type of cotton produced in the San Joaquin Valley, Acala 4-42 (now SJ-1), is not in surplus but is instead in demand.

Our counsel, Thomas Greer, appeared before the House Committee on Agriculture in June 1965, when the farm bill was being drafted, and asked that "any farmer who wishes to grow Acala 4-42 without acreage limitation be permitted to do so, provided that prior to the advent of the growing season he waives any right to price supports for that year." Had Mr. Greer's request been heeded, the U.S. would have saved the $1,000,000 paid us, and the economy would have gained a considerable quantity of a cotton of which there is shortage rather than surplus. The Government allows us to plant cotton on approximately one out of every ten acres. We would prefer that the program of Government payments be terminated and have long been on record to that effect. But if this be done, the Government must also terminate its uneconomic and indefensible restriction on production of cotton fibers that are in demand.

C. EVERETTE SALYER President

Salyer Land Company Corcoran, Calif.

Too Much Credit

Sir: As an alumnus of Yale and a junior faculty member for five years (until 1966), I was delighted with your cover story [June 23] on President Brewster.

While it is doubtless true that the university has become a more exciting place during his four-year tenure, you give too much direct credit to him for some innovations. The decision to eliminate the B.E. degree and replace the engineering school with a department of engineering and applied science was taken during the last years of President Griswold's administration, though it was in large part implemented after his death. The equally new idea of permitting undergraduates a wider choice of courses outside their major field evolved after several months of study by the undergraduate course-of-study committee, of which I was then a member. All committee meetings were attended by Georges May, dean of the undergraduate college, who was an early enthusiastic backer of the plan and to whom the major credit for its eventual acceptance is due. In contrast, Brewster was originally skeptical, fearing with some justification that it might lead science students to avoid the liberal arts completely, and liberal arts students to neglect the sciences. However, his pragmatic spirit prevailed and he agreed to a trial.

Finally, in fairness to both Yale and Harvard, I should state that it was never obvious to me that professors at one of the institutions were either more or less "research oriented," as you state, than at the other. The ideal professor sought by all great universities is (and should be) the scholar-teacher, the man who can contribute to his field as well as communicate knowledge of that field to others. It is obviously difficult to populate a majority of any faculty with such ideal professors. But both Yale and Harvard continue to strive to that end and, in my view, with approximately the same degree of success.

WILLIAM A. BLANPIED New Delhi

Not That Slaphappy

Sir: I am grateful for the good things you print about Harvard University Press and me [July 7].

But there are at least four errors in your brief treatment. Mr. Conant's negative stand regarding the Press was taken in 1943, not 1947; no president could have been more welcoming or helpful than he was on my arrival in Cambridge in 1947. Our bestseller (Harvard Dictionary of Music) has sold approximately 150,000 copies in hard binding, rather than 100,000. I did not say that a university press should publish "as many books as it can without losing its shirt"; my phrasing included the two highly important adjectives "good, scholarly" before the "books." And your statement that Harvard's yearly subsidy is $300,000 is simply untrue. This Press has no annual subsidy. The income from our Belknap Fund Endowment is the only substantial financial help we receive, and that income is far less than the fantastic amount stated.

The life of a Harvard University Press director is indeed a happy one; but it is by no means as carefree and slaphappy as a couple of your errors would suggest.

THOMAS J. WILSON Director

Harvard University Press Cambridge, Mass.

Flickering Nova

Sir: If Florida's new Nova University [June 30] is striving to become the M.I.T. of the South, it would do well to consider changing its name. Webster defines nova as "a star that suddenly increases its light output tremendously and then fades away to its former obscurity in a few months or years."

HOWARD B. ALTMAN University of Florida Gainesville, Fla.

Dry Ayes

Sir: I admit that "Camel Crusade" [July 7] was amusing. After a long dry spell it was good to see mention of our party in your publication once more.

You suggest that our delegates were a group of shawl rustlers. Actually, there were a number of children and young adults present. I am an oldtimer of 34 myself.

The reasons for our convening so early and our votes decreasing nationally are one and the same. Unfair election laws have kept all minor parties off the ballot in many states. Ohio and California each require more than 500,000 signatures on petitions in return for the privilege of not voting Democrat or Republican.

In spite of these laws we expect to be on the ballot in 15 to 20 states in 1968 and to poll our best presidential vote in decades. Besides the three Prohibition winners since Repeal whom you mention, many others have been elected in Kansas and Indiana in this period, and at least six hold local office now in Maine.

EARL F. DODGE Prohibition National Committee Kalamazoo, Mich.

But What'll I Tell Poppa?

Sir: About your groovy story on the Monterey Pop Festival [June 30]: Now that I've made TIME for the first time, I have to send my mother and father a copy in Johannesburg, South Africa, where I come from. I know they will be as proud as I was. Of course, my father is a perfectionist. He would probably have wanted to see our last name spelled correctly. I keep telling him, Poppa, with our last 'name, you can't demand perfection.

HUGH MASEKELA Beverly Hills

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