Election Returns

Sir: Hooray for Richard Nixon! He has survived presidential defeat in 1960, his personal nadir in the 1962 California Governor's race, the 1964 Republican fiasco, and even L.B.J., to reunite the Republican Party and become President. Political shades of Horatio Alger!

S. BOWEN MATTHEWS Manlius, N.Y.

Sir: Richard M. Nixon's moving quotation of the Ohio teen-ager's sign stating "Bring us together again" is a most fitting theme for the launching of a new administration. I can think of no more appropriate way to begin this than by Nixon's utilizing the magnificent talents of Hubert H. Humphrey in some capacity after the inauguration.

PHILIP BESONEN Edwardsville, Ill.

Sir: The most disturbing aspect of the election is that 43% of the voters slaphappily approved of the Democratic leadership of the past eight years, under which: Cuba has become a Communist arsenal (Bay of Pigs); the U.S. is deep in a 500,000-man shooting war 8,000 miles from home; attorney generals have not stuck to their basic jobs; the Supreme Court has become a manufacturer instead of an interpreter of the law; crime has tripled; strikes and riots are the rule, not the exception; the city of Washington is a thug-infested jungle; and a letter costs twice as much to post and takes twice as long to arrive.

This is the Herculean stable-cleaning job with which Nixon will be faced on Jan. 21. He can only hope that the Democratic majorities in the House and Senate will put country before party and back his programs instead of playing party politics as usual. Otherwise, heaven help us.

JAMES VAN ALEN Newport, R.I.

Sir: It is hard to believe that Richard Nixon and Spiro Agnew will now begin a four-year term in Washington because of the timing of three men. Mayor Richard J. Daley gave up on Hubert Humphrey a little too early, President Johnson sat on his hands a little too long, and Senator Eugene McCarthy did not realize there were other people in this country until it was a little too late--how sad.

(MRS.) NANCY HARRIS Chicago

Sir: Biblical researchers will miss the boat if they do not interrogate Senator Gene McCarthy as to his post-election feelings. I am sure they will discover just how Judas Iscariot felt after the Crucifixion.

VINCENT A. SHEA Minneapolis

Sir: Nixon's won, America is done!

(MRS.) KAY B. POPLIN Lubbock, Texas

Sir: On a hard, realistic, profit-minded basis, any advertising agency that had at its disposal the millions of dollars the Republicans spent, the scads of top echelon organizational brains, and four years of "scientific" advance planning, yet could only bring forth a neck-and-neck race, would be headed for extinction.

SAMUEL WHITMAN Long Beach, Calif.

Sir: Memo to George C. Wallace: Blue collars don't always cause rednecks.

JOSEPH E. KING

Urbana, Ill.

Sir: I am one of the 98% of this world to whom it matters who is elected President of the U.S. I have no sympathy for Humphrey and his party machine. Perhaps they now realize that the tactics used at the Chicago convention led to their doom. We will now suffer quietly.

S. HAMID London

Sir: I was rather surprised at the concluding remark of "The Jeering Section": "The song the students chose was Simon and Garfunkel's The Sounds of Silence, a theme that has hardly marked the 1968 campaign." If the writer had been familiar with the words of the song, I'm sure he would agree that it truly was the theme of the 1968 campaign: And in the naked light I saw, ten thousand people, maybe more,/People talking without speaking, people hearing without listening . . . The sounds of silence.

EDWARD C. SELLNER Fort Wayne, Ind.

Sir: It would be timely and unifying to the Republic if President Nixon's first act would be to initiate a constitutional amendment prescribing the election of the President by popular vote.

ROBERT W. ROWLAND Davis, Calif.

Sir: The constitutional wisdom of the Electoral College has been proved again. The specter of forcing an election into the Congress is mild if compared with the crisis we would face in a close election based on popular vote. Recounts, absentee ballots, and other less legitimate vote juggling in close precincts would keep an election in doubt for months. The Electoral College isn't perfect, but it's usually decisive. And if it fails, I'd rather trust Congress than Cook County.

CARL H. REIDEL St. Paul

Sir: Your tabulation of which candidates were expected to win which states was most accurate. You missed only two of 50 states (Connecticut and Texas went Humphrey). The nine states you listed as tossups split 5 Nixon, 4 Humphrey.

I used your list on Election Night. By midnight, enough states were in to make it apparent that, while the vote was to be close, the states were falling into line just as you had determined. Accordingly, I went to bed, unlike most other bleary-eyed Americans.

Thank you, TIME, for the night's rest.

WESLEY MILLER Columbus, Ohio

Sweet and Sour

Sir: In your very perceptive Essay, "The Difficult Art of Losing," you overlooked perhaps the sweetest sour grape ever uttered: On March 9, 1832, Abraham Lincoln said, "If the good people, in their wisdom, shall see fit to keep me in the background, I have been too familiar with disappointments to be very much chagrined."

WILLIAM F. O'SHAUGHNESSY New Rochelle, N.Y.

A for Artful

Sir: Reading the article about U.S. households without television [Nov. 8] reminded me of my ninth-grade English class. The teacher, who was loud in her disapproval of television and proud that she did not own one, gave my class the assignment of writing an original short story. The world of literature was not shaken by the results. However, a handful of ingenious students, well aware of the fact that Miss Y. did not watch television, proceeded to paraphrase recent Alfred Hitchcock programs. Needless to say, they received A's and flowery praises for their original ideas, organized plots and exciting conclusions. BARBARA J. HERMAN Boston

To All Men at All Times

Sir: How ironic that your article "Universities: Joining the Real World," appears next to "Literature: Mr. Wilson's War" [Nov. 1]. If those who consider themselves literary scholars and critics would focus on the whole literary work and give perspective to students, then the world's literary masterpieces could again perform their unique function, speaking to all men at all times about man's condition. There is nothing "aloof" about Sophocles' Oedipus, and Dante, despite his terza rima, was in there dealing with the nitty-gritty of his day. It's time our scholars met the challenge of a technology that can view the whole earth from the eye of a satellite.

(MRS.) EDITH E. PETERS Cincinnati

The Needle

Sir: Your statement that the HPV-77 rubella vaccine would be the first live-virus vaccine licensed to be given by injection

[Nov. 1] is incorrect. Vaccines against smallpox, yellow fever, measles (rubeola) and mumps contain live attenuated viruses --all are given by injection. In fact, the Sabin oral polio vaccine is the only commonly used live-virus vaccine in the U.S. not given by injection.

MICHAEL C. SINCLAIR, M.D. Miami

Out of the Blue

Sir: Thank heaven for TIME. I no longer need any excuse for my irrational and inexcusable behavior when it comes to flying. I will just pull your story "Flying Scared" [Nov. 8] out of my pocket along with my handkerchief.

WILLIAM F. TRASK West Boylston, Mass.

Sir: As a charter member of "Cowards Anonymous," I wish that the nation's railroads would seriously consider stepping up their efforts to provide faster, more efficient travel service for us groundlings. There must be millions of us! I have taken my last flight! Having won an all-expense vacation in Mexico City recently, I came very close to abandoning husband, children and country because I lost my courage to fly home.

EVELYN A. MOSES Phoenix

Sir: I read my name in the list of train devotees while flying over the Atlantic Ocean. As principal conductor of both the London Symphony Orchestra and the Houston Symphony Orchestra, I make a minimum of four trips a year to Europe and back. By now I fly happily, read, work and even occasionally look at the movie, although that tends to work more as a soporific than a stimulant. My train travel is restricted nowadays to a ten-minute trip around the Houston Zoo on the kids' railroad.

ANDRE PREVIN

Houston

Sir: It's taken me years to get my wife to consent to fly with me--which she was about to do at the end of this month

and then you publish this article about

all the people who won't fly, and why. Thanks.

NELSON BAUM

Larchmont, N.Y.

Identity Problem

Sir: Your story on R. L. Polk & Co. [Nov. 8] provided an unusually concise and clear picture of the many activities of our organization.

We would, however, appreciate it if you would tell your readers that the photograph that accompanied the story was that of the undersigned rather than Polk President Walter J. Gardner.

RALPH L. POLK Chairman, Board of Directors R.L. Polk&Co. Detroit

State of the Art

Sir: I was interested in your "Handwriting on the Wall" article [Nov. 15]. I did some workshops at the University of Cincinnati last summer and with a special camera took over 100 pictures of university graffiti on toilet-room walls.

First of all, I observed that there was much more writing in the men's lavatories than in the women's. Second, I noticed that in the men's lavatories the greatest volume of graffiti was concerned with race relations first, Viet Nam second, and sex third.

In the ladies' lavatories there was much less writing on the walls. The little there was, was nearly always concerned with sex.

DANIEL J. RANSOHOFF Cincinnati

Sir: I agree that the graffito is a "sensitive barometer of change in popular preoccupations" and that for some adults, especially the introverted, it may be the only satisfying creative outlet. The crucial factor in graffiti interpretation is the tone. The flippancy is often mere camouflage for metaphysical anguish.

LLOYD BISHOP Professor of French Wilmington College Wilmington, N.C.

Sir: It is disillusioning, but the men's rest-room in the stacks of Harvard's Widener Library, which is nearly perfectly limited to Harvard students and officers, contains graffiti as exclusively gross as could be found in bathrooms anywhere.

PETER W. SAGE Cambridge, Mass.

Sir: A recent favorite of mine: "Keep the baby, Faith."

WILLIAM WHITE Chairman, American Studies Wayne State University Detroit

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