After Chicago

Sir: In time, I may be able to forget the sight of Mayor Daley's cops bludgeoning those kids in Chicago. But I expect to be able to remember it at least until Nov. 5.

GEORGE H. BELL

Assistant Secretary of State

State of Oregon

Salem

Sir: Edward Kennedy and Julian Bond are the two men who, for me at least, make the convention worth remembering and the future worth considering. They are gentle men and gentlemen. And 1972 is only 48 months away.

HEATHER PHILLIPS

Aurora, N.Y.

Sir: My God, I have lived in countries where the rabble like we saw in the streets of Chicago took over the governments. They machine-gun protesters, murder the old-line politicians, gag the news media, and impale a few heads on spikes. Better a billy club and some tear gas than a rabble-controlled government.

CATHERINE K. WENDT

New Orleans

Sir: Because of the complete television coverage of the Democratic Convention, the nation was given the opportunity of realizing with sickening force the depths of hypocrisy and the myopic, manipulative selfishness of men like Mayor Daley (characterized by his abortive attempt to crush the spontaneous beauty and sincerity of the tribute for Robert Kennedy by his manufactured demonstration for himself). The goodness and concern of the people in our country who cannot tolerate such a prostitution of democracy will, I pray, triumph in their attempt to create the newer world of truth and love.

SISTER CAROLINE HARRINGTON, PBVM

San Francisco

Sir: I am appalled and angered by the behavior of my fellow students and other young people involved in the riots. Legitimate protest for legitimate cause is something that I believe in, but when thousands of otherwise levelheaded men and women risk beatings in an effort to defame the Chicago police department, which is all that was accomplished, they make a mockery of anything the protest movement has ever stood for. The hollow chant "the whole world is watching" seems to acquire a double meaning.

PATRICK MCMANUS

Chicago

Sir: The demonstrators went too far. While being represented at the convention by men seeking change through the system, they went outside the system and took to pressure tactics. And change outside the system is revolution plain and simple. Fellow students, don't you believe in representative government? As long as you are a minority, you must submit to the majority and try harder.

DUNCAN A. BUELL

Covington, La.

Sir: When individuals arrive in a city with bail money, anti-irritants and take riot training, then subsequently are struck in a police confrontation, there does not appear to be much cause for lamentation. All thinking people deplore overreaction to provocation that results in injury to bystanders, but historically, general assent to the rule of the mob has been followed by harsh repression when some semblance of order must be reinstituted.

Many of the crocodile tears being shed are a manifestation of the losers' syndrome that would brand Agnew as a racist and Humphrey as a rightist, both of which are blatant nonsense.

JOHN F. BERRIGAN III

Manhattan

Sir: After listening to Humphrey's enthusiastic endorsement of Daley's doings, what I'm going to do on Nov. 5 is take a tranquilizer, go to the voting booth, hold my breath, think about something else, and push the button that says Nixon.

(MRS.) THEDA DOEKER

Boulder, Colo.

Sir: Senator McCarthy says some sensible things. But he should take his full share of guilt for what happened. For his own ends, intentionally or otherwise, he has encouraged these young people in the highly emotional involvement in public affairs that led them into irrational conduct and the consequent disaster. For months we have seen screaming mobs of innocent children whipped into frenzy by the "dream" that the fate of the country depends upon the election of a particular candidate. No one man can save America, regardless of how capable he is. Neither Humphrey nor Nixon can do it alone. The Senate, the House, the courts and every .citizen have an obligation to help. We need these young people.

(MRS.) LILLIAN PERRINE DAVIS

Richmond, Va.

Sir: I am young and concerned. I attended the rally at Grant Park in Chicago and witnessed demonstrations. When alongside people my age, my mind told me all their actions were right. I remember myself "yeahing" when my country's flag was torn down and I remember calling the law I've always respected "pigs." Now I ask: How could I?

My generation is one of concern, hope, courage, strength and vigor; also one of neglect, dejection, fear, weakness and impotence. Shall our enemy thrive by taking advantage of our youthful characteristics? I wonder. I wonder who really put the $10 and $20 bills in the hat at the rally in support of the demonstration. I wonder who printed all the propaganda I received those days. I wonder who paid for the transportation of those I met from New York, Philadelphia, Washington, D.C., and Los Angeles. I wonder who supported the ex-G.I.s from Viet Nam who infiltrated my mind with horror and hate. Yes, I wonder.

ROSE SWIDERSKI

Blue Island, Ill.

Sir: Shocked by the convention and its disastrous result I was not. Shocked I was by the blatancy of the tactics of Mayor Daley and his ilk. If Nixon had his Strom, Humphrey had his Richard.

JAMES T. HARP

Los Angeles

Sir: There can be no innocent bystanders at a time of civil disturbance or the repression thereof. The involvement of press and television personnel is even more stupid than that of the public. The veriest Fourth Estate tyro should know that a police officer faced with an unruly mob is too busy to check his press card. The sanctimoniousness of McCarthy and Ribicoff, particularly, was too obvious. The police force in Chicago was the only thing that made it possible for McCarthy's heart to bleed in comparative privacy and for Ribicoff to speak of "police brutality" and "Gestapo tactics" without violent interruption. As a matter of fact, what legislation have these two, and any others of like voice, drafted or proposed during their careers to alleviate or eliminate any of the causes of our current social unrest? It looks like the sympathetic pursing of their lips was caused by the tart flavor of sour grapes.

JOHN F. WINTER

Dania, Fla.

Sir: How sweet it was--the dull Republican convention in Miami. At least the newsmen didn't need Blue Cross.

ELAINE GUBER

Wayland, Mass.

Sir: Are these not the same men who have constituted the majority of our leadership through recent years? These who cannot even hold a convention without chaos? Perhaps we are closer to anarchy than we suspect. Or is that what Wallace has been trying to tell us?

DONALD R. BELT

Leesburg, Ga.

Sir: Nixon could make real progress in his quest for the presidency if he keeps asking Humphrey if he cleared it with Daley.

CHARLES TROXELL

Excelsior, Minn.

All the World's a Sphere

Sir: Your article "A Savage Challenge to Detente" [Aug. 30] made some rather flaccid remarks about American "legitimate spheres of influence" and the soundness of armed intervention in Southeast Asia and the Dominican Republic. But detente is a two-way arrangement. If we feel free to make war in a small country on the other side of the world, using as our excuse the "threat" of external subversion, then I think we're asking too much of the Russians if we expect them to restrain themselves whenever they believe their "legitimate spheres of influence" are endangered. I detest the Russian action as much as I detest our actions in Viet Nam and the Dominican Republic --but I'm sorry to say that, like anyone else with the courage to act against the paranoid diplomacy of the big powers, the Czechs had it coming.

DAVID MENNINGER

Riverside, Calif.

Sir: The scales of the New Left seem almost as much out of balance as those of the Old Left. They have concentrated their attacks for several years on U.S. policy in Viet Nam to the exclusion of criticism of Communist aggressions there and elsewhere, and now that Communist dictatorship has revealed its worst aspects in Czechoslovakia, they cannot manage to criticize that without dragging in the unrelated U.S. policy in Viet Nam.

ALEXANDER GRENDON

Berkeley, Calif.

Sir: The revolting, highhanded, indefensible action of the "Imperial" Russian government in Czechoslovakia is a clear, unequivocal mandate to the U.S. to move at once on Cuba. Not only that, it proves to every reasonable human being how wise, how farseeing, how absolutely necessary is our policy in Southeast Asia. Was ever a belabored, pummeled, meanly assailed President so completely vindicated, so dramatically proved right?

MRS. M. L. CONNELL

Wartrace, Tenn.

Sir: As an eyewitness to the tragic events in Prague, I was quite impressed by your report on the invasion [Aug. 30]. Despite rife rumors and communication difficulties, an accurate assessment of the situation was made. I was, however, disturbed by the article "Historic Quest for Freedom." It was misleading in passing off the history of Czechoslovakia as a history of Bohemia. No mention was made of the determination and success of the Slovaks in maintaining their national identity during 1,000 years of Hungarian domination. Because Slovak nationalism is recognized as one of the prime factors in Dubcek's rise to power, I do not think this matter should be taken so lightly. It explains the Czech-Slovak federation and the Slovak struggle for equal status since the Pittsburgh Agreement of 1918. A simple reference to the "restive Slovaks" contributes nothing to an understanding of this contemporary problem, which has its roots in the 1,000-year Slovakian quest for freedom.

JOSEPH J. KOHUT

Appleton, Wis.

Sir: The statement of the Czech historian, Frantisek Palacky that "The Hussite War is the first war in history that was fought not for material interests but for intellectual ones -- for ideals" is mistaken -- by 16 centuries. In the second century B.C., the Syrian king, Antiochus IV, sought to hellenize forcibly the Jews of Palestine and to compel them to surrender their way of life. In the year 168 B.C., the Maccabees launched a revolt against their Syrian overlords, the purpose of which was the preservation of and the right to practice one's faith. Had the Maccabees not fought this war for liberty of the spirit or had they lost, Judaism would have perished and Christianity would never have been born. There is, therefore, historical justice in the fact that for several centuries the Christian church observed Aug. 1 as a festival entitled "The Birthday of the Maccabees" and that the historical books bearing their names are part of the Apocrypha. In Judaism the Maccabees are remembered by the Hanukkah festival in December.

ROBERT GORDIS

Manhattan

Safe Harbour

Sir: In your article on receding U.S. shorelines [April 26], the statement that in Miami Beach the ocean "threatens to topple a brand-new high-rise apartment complex appropriately named Harbour House" is absolutely untrue. We have been advised by competent engineers and architects that our buildings are constructed on a solid foundation of hundreds of pilings, and the sea wall was designed and constructed so as to withstand every type of hurricane as well as the possibility of erosion. Our architect has reported to us that "if the Harbour House were placed out in the middle of the ocean on its present foundation and sea wall, it would not topple."

Furthermore, one of our tenants, Robert Lynch, reports: "These buildings have sustained two very severe hurricanes --one was the worst we have had in years, yet Harbour House never gave a quiver."

S. M. TAPLIN President

Harbour House

Bal Harbour, Fla.

> TIME regrets that its report was shaky.

Cat Call

Sir: It is distressing to note that in addition to cataclysmic domestic and international crises, the American public must now face myriad indignities at the fins of the insidious Asian walking catfish [Aug. 23]. The time has passed for hysteria, and national introspection should determine which particular fibre of our national morality was so sick as to permit this alarming infestation by the nocuous creature. I, for one, intend to post "Curb your Clarias batrachus" posters in the vicinity of my bunker and urge others who share my concern to do likewise.

DANIEL M. LAMBERT

Captain, U.S.A.

A. P.O., San Francisco

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