From the Soul

Sir: If finally people have learned to understand the Negro's music [June 28] why the hell can't they understand the man or woman who's singing it? Soul music is not something that just came on the scene, it has been here since the black man came to America; it started way back in those cotton fields in Mississippi, Georgia, etc. That was all we had, when we were out in the hot sun picking cotton; finally a nice cool breeze came and you just had to let someone know that you had the feeling, so you started singing. Even though we didn't have any music to sing by, we still had soul.

VICKIE MURPHY BROWN Washington, D.C.

Sir: Your attempted analysis of "soul," as expressed by the beautiful and sensitive Aretha Franklin, does little more than perpetuate America's racist dogma that anything indigenous to blacks must be imbued with bestial sexuality, an oblique relationship with God and/or family or, at best, quaint abnormalities of conduct. Your perception of soul is as your perception of those who live it. You see plainly the origins, but not feeling its message, you subject it to comical distortions or paternal niceties. As is evident in many crumbling households, the would-be Great White Father is well advised to "just be quiet and listen."

RANYA L. ALEXANDER Davis, Calif.

Sir: Soul is acting and being yourself-- doing your thing, naturally. Like, I eat chitlins, yams, greens and corn bread because I dig them, not because I am black or have any false illusions that these "soul foods" will make me soulful. Soul is being, not trying to be.

ROBERT L. TEAL Berkeley, Calif.

Sir: Soul is black and beautiful and like any black cat will tell you, baby--it's ours! Blue-eyed soul? The answer to your question--"Does this mean that white musicians by definition don't have soul?"--is simply and unequivocally yes. Obviously they can mouth the words and hit the notes, but, well, it's like Chaucer described the Prioress in The Canterbury Tales:

Fairly she spoke her French, and skillfully, After the school of Stratford-at-the-Bow Parisian French was not for her to

know. That's how it is, baby.

LLOYD W. RAIKES Los Angeles

Sir: To those Negroes who would leave it to us whites to "defend the idea of 'blue-eyed soul,' " I would like to point out that the "funky Memphis rhythm section" that became the vehicle which made it possible for Aretha to dp her thing is composed of all white musicians.

CHARLIE FREEMAN Memphis

Sir: If soul requires the prerequisite of suffering, prejudice, and denigration of human dignity, then we should include the elimination of soul as part of the war against poverty and racism.

ARNOLD ROSENBERG The Bronx, N.Y.

Sir: You stated that "she leans her head back, forehead gleaming with perspiration." Aretha does not perspire, she sweats. Sweat has soul. Perspire is a word invented by blue-veined little ladies who spoke of limbs instead of arms and legs, boy cows instead of bulls.

RICHARD WILSON Aspen, Colo.

Sir: I challenge only the grading that relegates the Master Sherlock Holmes to Straight City, after running him, blasphemously and preposterously, with Charlie Chan, who gets into Valhalla. Chan, an amusing charlatan, should have been paired with Mr. Moto, and that correct company could well sustain your preference. But Holmes should be paired either with Dr. Watson or Conan Doyle (proving again that the creature can be greater than the creator); in any case, to make this correct evaluation is to place Sherlock Holmes automatically into the "Yes" column. If you placed Conan Doyle beside Edgar Allan Poe, then certainly Doyle would go into Straight City with Watson, and Poe would join Holmes in Valhalla. Elementary.

RICHARD HUGHES Chief Banto Baritsu Chapter of Baker Street Irregulars Hong Kong Sir: Okay, I can see leaving Gertrude Stein (straight) and Alice B. Toklas (soul) off your list, but Dear Abby (straight) and Ann Landers (soul) -- unforgivable. BETSY TREMONT Teheran Sir: Please include Adlai Stevenson, soul uncle to all. SP4 A. R. WAYMAN, U.S.A. Avon Park, Fla. Sir: Aero engineers stole the moon out of Junes Medico pioneers took the heart out of tunes About all that's left in the bowl luv, is soul. ESTHER ANN GOLDBERG Lyndhurst, Ohio That Corson Book Sir: In its criticism of Lieut. Colonel Corson's book, The Betrayal [June 28], TIME again underscored one of the major contradictions of the American involve ment in Viet Nam: We cannot make our local allies worth defending without taking them over completely and becoming blatantly colonial, one thing is even-clearer than the improbability of the political escalation required by the Corson solution, it is the probability of continued failure of the Westmoreland tactic. Since the former won't be used and the latter won't work, withdrawal, while no "answer" either, will force the Viet- namese to solve their own problems and will serve notice on the world that the U.S. will no longer let incompetent allies get fat while it fights their battles for them. We may not be able to mold our friends, but we can choose them.

MICHAEL W. DUNLOP St. Louis Sir: TIME should take with the proverbial grain of salt the statements of critics as well as protagonists on Viet Nam. For example, you cite Lieut. Colonel Corson as having me proudly announce "the distribution of 150,000 more tons of fertilizer in five northern provinces in 1967, failing to mention that the region's rice production fell by 150,000 tons during the same period."

First, his memory is faulty. We didn't bring 150,000 tons of fertilizer into Corps in 1967; it was more like 12-13,000 tons. Second, I was stressing the importance of using fertilizer to counteract precisely the type of production decline which Corson cites. Without fertilizer, rice output in I Corps would have declined even further. I learned a long time ago that just because a statement appears between hard covers in a book does not make it true. Corson's book is replete with allegation, short on fact.

R. W. KOMER A.P.O., San Francisco

Anti-Semitism in the Soviet

Sir: Your article on the visit of Moscow's Chief Rabbi Yehuda Leib Levin [June 28] contained a number of misleading points. The American Jewish Conference on Soviet Jewry is not an "antiCommunist" group. It is ideologically neutral, being concerned solely with the ame- lioration of the condition of Jews in the Soviet Union. Most unfortunate was the juxtaposing of anti-Semitism in the Soviet Union and other nations. They are by no means similar. In the U.S.S.R. the government itself is responsible for a program aimed at the religious and cultural restriction of Jews. Indeed, so extensive is this anti-Jewish policy that it is not at all certain that Jews today are better off than in czarist times, except materially. The religious Jew before 1917 could practice his faith, unlike the contemporary

Jew. He could also emigrate if conditions became unbearable but not so today.

ALEX LITTMANN Elmhurst, N.Y.

Sir: What I heard the Rabbi say, through the din of protest, was what I know to be a fact: That Jews suffer no greater restrictions on their religious life than do others in Russia who still believe in God. Great numbers of Baptists and Orthodox Christians are no more, no less persecuted for their faith than Jews. Why must the American Jew assume he has a priority on suffering?

PETER D. KNAUL Minister

Community Church of Elmhurst Elmhurst, N.Y.

The Late Great

Sir: As one "growing up with borrowed nostalgia," I applaud your most interesting Essay "The Late Show as History" [June 28]. The oldtimers may not have had perfect style, but they had class.

KATHLEEN GANG Cleveland

Sir: To keep the record straight for future generations, I feel it my duty to point out that in the movie Desperate Journey, Errol Flynn returned a rebuilt Lockheed Hudson bomber to the British and did not hijack a Nazi bomber as you reported. In either case, I'm sure this action shortened the war considerably.

JOE B. WILKINSON JR. Athens, Ga.

Sir: May I add the following to Harry Purvis' collection in "Film Fossils":

"Fight, fight, fight . . . that's all you ever do, Dick Plantagenet." Virginia Mayo to Laurence Harvey in King Richard and the Crusades.

"This trick can put us over on Broadway." Vincent Price in The Mad Magician.

"I'm still not to be had for the price of a drink. I'm not a salted peanut." Bette Davis in All About Eve.

FRED SLITER Studio City, Calif.

Sir: Trivia nothing! The impact of late show dialogue far outweighs the cliche factor. John Ireland to Montgomery Clift in Red River: "There's only two things in the world nicer than a good gun: A Swiss watch and a woman from anywhere. Ever have a good Swiss watch?"

MAJ. CONSTANTINE ALBANS, U.S.M.C.

LIEUT. PHILIP D. FLYNN JR., U.S.N.R. LIEUT. ALAN R. POSNER, U.S.N.R. Annapolis, Md.

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