Here & There
Sir: I have come to rely upon TIME as a lucid and reasonably objective commentary on the events that are taking place in this world of ours. I find, however, that your recent commentary on the war and the Tet offensive [March 1] is blatant alarmism, shrill with Cassandra's cry and, from my vantage point at least, unsupportable in fact. This is painfully evident to anyone serving here. Your reporting of the impact of the recent offensive on the war, the government, and the economy, is exaggerated and misleading.
ROBERT L. SHAW Major, U.S.A. A.P.O., San Francisco
Sir: Thank you for a glimpse into the truth of the Viet Nam war. It is disgusting to read nothing but optimistic foolishness that leads one to think that the war can be won in a few weeks. It is time we realize that this war will not be won in a few weeks or a few years, and that it is probably not worth the effort anyway. May I suggest we stop patting ourselves on the back and start kicking some tails.
JAMES T. AUTEN Madison, Wis.
Stop the Press
Sir: Bravo for the honesty and courage evidenced by Columnist Howard K. Smith [March 1]. It is about time that the whole journalistic profession stood back and took a long look at what they have done to our nation. One searches daily, in vain, through the mass of publications and news broadcasts for one word that would reassure the common man that all the colored people are not Stokely Carmichaels, that all our youth are not chick-en-livered draft dodgers, that not all the people have lost faith in our President and in his honest efforts to do the best job he can under most difficult circumstances, that some of us are still proud to be Americans, living in a working democracy and ready and willing to do what we can to help anyone else achieve a like state.
MRS. R. E. WICKHAM Los Angeles
Sir: I don't think I have ever before agreed with Howard K. Smith to the extent that I felt the need to write about it. But I am so moved by his feeling about the American press. Sitting out back here gives me a perspective I didn't have when I was in the midst of it. I am convinced that the metropolitan editors and byliners are snobs, fearful that if they don't join the prevailing intellectual line they will be considered "mere reporters." What happened to the guys who used to stick pins into pomposity?
WILFRED WEISS Publisher
The Winchendon Courier Winchendon, Mass.
Sir: As a mother with an almost 18-year-old son who will this fall begin his college career in the U.S. with no fear of the draft awaiting him because of his British passport, I can endorse every word of Britain's Bernard Levin, columnist for the Daily Mail [March 1]. My heart goes out with gratitude to those American families whose sons are holding back the Red tide in Southeast Asia--and with shame for the paltry attitude taken by many in Britain and the Western world who have been only too glad to accept American assistance in their own hour of need.
CORALIE POWELL Somerset, Bermuda
As He Likes It?
Sir: Now that Senator Fulbright has shown that the Gulf of Tonkin incident was a fabrication [March 1], perhaps he will make some equally useful probes into such questions as: Did the Germans really sink the Lusitanial Did the Japanese really attack Pearl Harbor? Did the Russians really bring missiles into Cuba? When these disturbing issues have been settled, he can turn his attention to the Pueblo incident, and he is certain to conclude that the North Koreans did not really seize the ship. The Senator could then use his discoveries to author a new interpretation of modern history, complete with the subtitle, As I Like It.
ROBERT M. SIMMONS Providence, R.I.
Sir: Your otherwise well-written account of the Tonkin Gulf incident is marred by what I consider a gratuitous wisecrack, "... and the patrol--now known grandiloquently as Task Group 72.1 ..." A task group does not have to consist of a carrier and escorts to be so designated. It can be, as in the case at hand, two relatively small ships more or less brought together by happenstance. I am sure that the men of the Maddox and the Turner Joy, as well as the command which called them a task group, did not view the designation as possibly grandiloquent.
DAVID A. SADLER Omaha, Neb.
Hull of a Guy
Sir: TIME'S hockey cover [March 1] was without a doubt the most interesting story you have printed this year. Bobby Hull on ice is sheer poetry in motion.
A. DZIEKANSKI
Chicago
Sir: Your story is a fine tribute to a superb athlete and an incomparably exciting sport. However, I wish to take issue with your endorsement of the statement that Bobby Hull is "the greatest player of this or any day." Gordie Howe of the Detroit Red Wings, in the prime of his career, possessed the same overwhelming strength, speed and reflexes that Hull now displays. However, Howe's unparalleled command of the more subtle aspects of the game has allowed him to score almost 700 goals during a career which spans an era when hockey was played by six rugged teams that emphasized solid backchecking and forechecking and conservative defensive strategy as opposed to the modern skate-and-shoot style exemplified by the expanded N.H.L.
GEORGE D. RUTTINGER Ann Arbor, Mich.
Sir: Being a Canadian and an avid fan of hockey, I was delighted to read your article on the immortal Bobby Hull. I have always been amazed at his fantastic skill and clean play. However, I doubt whether Bobby Hull, or anyone in the future, can ever equal the 50-goals-in-50-games season of Maurice Richard; it took Hull 70 games to equal him.
TIMOTHY W. HOLLAND Henniker, N.H.
Sir: What a cover! Powerful and compelling--yet you fail to mention the artist. LeRoy Neiman is a friend of ours, and we've followed his career closely for 20 years. We met in a small art class in St. Paul, when LeRoy was working in a foundry during the day and painting at night. He is certainly one of the outstanding artists on the scene today. His violent, colorful paintings of people at play, at the opera or at sporting events may turn Neiman into the Lautrec of our time.
MR. & MRS. IRVING A. PINSKY Minneapolis
See How He Runs
Sir: What's wrong with a two-time loser? Richard Nixon first went down to defeat in one of the closest races ever recorded. His second loss was to Governor Pat Brown of California who, at that time, was solidly entrenched and supported by an invincible political machine. Defeat was inevitable. The 1966 congressional elections resulted in Republican victories in both the House and Senate. The results were due in large part to the strenuous campaigning of Nixon through some 30 states in a three-month period. Truly a remarkable achievement for a two-time loser.
C. P. OLSON Janesville, Wis.
Poetic License
Sir: In TIME'S People section [Feb. 23] my photo was published with "a mysterious Chilean admirer" who, says the article, was accompanying me from Chile to Montevideo and was living with me in the same hotel. Unfortunately, I myself can classify this article as inaccurate. First. this woman is not a Chilean. She is Uruguayan, and she has no reason to live with me in the same hotel because she has a home in Montevideo. Secondly: in the photo she appears alone with me, but at our side, at the same time, were many of my Uruguayan friends and friends from the Russian embassy who, together with her, accompanied me to the airport where I disappeared alone to Bogota. Third: in the photo she is at a distance from me of no less than 50 centimeters. Thus through TIME, I wish to advise all of the women of the world, including North Americans, to please stay a distance of no less than one kilometer away from this wicked Evtushenko, because immediately some reporters could interpret this as "amor-r-r," with three Rs. Be careful of Russian poets!
EVGENY EVTUSHENKO Bogota, Colombia
>Poet Evtushenko is right about the picture, but the women of the world need not take his warning to heart.
Striking Sparks
Sir: The people of Flint, white and Negro, who voted the city's fair housing ordinance into being, resent your reference, "Black Power exponents pushed through an open-housing ordinance" [March 1]. People believing in people and their community voted in the ordinance. The chairman of the committee striving for the ordinance was the white executive director of the Greater Flint Council of Churches.
FLOYD J. McCREE, Mayor And Citizens of Flint Flint, Mich.
Other Side of the Mountain
Sir: I have just read your article on Bobby Kennedy's pilgrimage to Appalachia [Feb. 23]. I would love to be in Harlan or Letcher to hear the chuckles and knee-slapping guffaws about that peculiar-talking outlander with the sissy haircut. Doesn't Bobby know that the ancestors of those deprived mountaineers left the crags of Wales and the glens of Scotland while his forebears were still sharing the parlor peatfire with the pigs? Their English may hark back to Elizabeth I, as do their music and customs, and they may live on poke salad and fatback, but in some ways they are better off than the rest of us.
Their womenfolk walk the cove trails without fear of rape, though perhaps not immune to seduction at early ages, and they don't depend on LSD or pot to send them. You hardly ever hear of an ulcer or a nervous breakdown in the hills. The only air pollution problem is the smell of wood smoke on a frosty day. I don't believe I've heard a word about draft dodging or antiwar demonstrations in the mountains. Honor, manhood and pride mean a lot to the hill people. They are living in the coves and on the mountaintops because they like it there. They ain't beholden to nobody. Should we drag them down to our level?
ANNE RIGGS OSBORNE Augusta, Ga.
Battle Report
Sir: I would like you to know that our Jordanian Arab army sustained very minor losses during the serious outbreak of fighting with Israel [Feb. 23]. Our losses were mostly among civilians--victims of Israeli bombardment. It also seems that you are not aware of the statement issued by the U.S. embassy in Amman--that neither the ambassador nor the embassy had received a request from any Jordanian quarter to help arrange a ceasefire and that the embassy denies all knowledge of any such request.
ZAID ALRIFAI
Private Secretary to His Majesty King Hussein Chief of Royal Protocol Amman
The Coat
Sir: Your statement that Mrs. John F. Kennedy accepted $30,000 worth of rare leopard skins from the government of Somali and had them made into a coat [Feb. 2] has been called to our attention. Mrs. Kennedy did in fact pay a private furrier for her coat long before the visit of the Somalian Prime Minister to this country, and she at no time received any gift of leopard skins from the government of Somali.
NANCY TUCKERMAN Secretary to Mrs. Kennedy Manhattan
Exam Time
Sir: I was glad to see your Education article "Walkout in Florida [March 1]." Your publication is one of the few to break through the news blackout. I have just resigned my position as second-grade teacher in one of the newest schools in Escambia County. Children are stuffed into classrooms, sit in broken chairs, taught on the stage in the "cafetorium," have speech classes in a closet between a Coke machine and the teachers' mailboxes, eat a 15-minute lunch in silence. Our affluent society is cheating children. It is time to stop.
ELNORA W. SOMES Cantonment, Fla.
Flip of the Coin
Sir: May I correct an obviously bona fide error of your reviewer of The Ghost in the Machine [March 1]? The term "schi-zophysiology," intended to indicate the mental condition of Homo sapiens, was not coined by me, but by Dr. Paul MacLean of the National Institute of Mental Health, Bethesda, Md. The speculative conclusions of the book are my own responsibility, but the neurophysiological evidence on which they are based is derived from the Papez-MacLean theory of emotions.
ARTHUR KOESTLER London
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