The Leo's Roar

Sir: I found your article on astrology [March 21] merely gently cynical. Why was it not aggressively antagonistic, as any honest investigation should have been? Take the zodiacal list of careers. I observe that they are all professional; is there no place for a few million Indians who are destined to careers as peasants?

I wasted an hour of my time with a dictionary of art and artists. Taking 100 artists at random, I found that only nine of them were born under Gemini, which governs artists; and that another eight were born under Libra--which governs statesmen, managers, judges. I am a Leo: leader, politician, entertainer. I happen to be a retiring, bookish scientist. I have never led anything more potent than a nature hike; never been more political than my vote; and even my best friends admit I am a bore. Why doesn't an airline run a horoscope and cancel a flight if it turns out bad? And then, can you see the headlines next day: "Crash Canceled--Nobody Dead."

S.J.W. PLEETH

Haifa, Israel

Sir: Mankind believes that the phases of the moon affect crops; he knows that various radiations influence plant growth and that radio waves are altered by sunspots, yet he stubbornly refuses to believe that he himself can be influenced by forces outside his immediate environment.

Of course, no one can prove that astrology is true; nor can it be refuted, since, like religion and philosophy, it is based largely on conjecture and metaphysics.

The main obstacle to looking objectively at astrology is, as usual, man's refusal to maintain an open mind toward something that may be beyond his current comprehension. If astrology were presented to the public under the title of "Cosmic Influences on Terrestrial Activity," it would undoubtedly be taken much more seriously.

RITA Ross (Sagittarius)

Somerset, N.J.

Sir: Shakespeare, as usual, offers the final triumphant words of common sense in unshakable terms (though spoken by a villain, Edmund, in King Lear):

"This is the excellent foppery of the world, that, when we are sick in fortune, often the surfeit of our own behavior, we make guilty of our disasters the sun, the moon, and stars; as if we were villains on necessity; fools by heavenly compulsion; knaves, thieves, and treachers by spherical predominance; drunkards, liars, and adulterers by an enforced obedience of planetary influence; and all that we are evil in, by a divine thrusting on. An admirable evasion of whoremaster man, to lay his goatish disposition to the charge of a star! My father compounded with my mother under the Dragon's Tail, and my nativity was under Ursa Major, so that it follows I am rough and lecherous. Tut! I should have been that I am, had the maidenliest star in the firmament twinkled on my bastardizing."

E. BRUCE GLENN

Professor of English

The Academy of the New Church

Bryn Athyn, Pa.

Target for Today

Sir: It would seem that within your midst there is an element that is determined to turn you folks into a nation of patsys.

With monotonous regularity your President makes a decision, based on the best available information and on the counsel of competent advisers, only to have this element throw its arms in the air in shocked horror, giving the impression that the man is either incompetent, an idiot or is deliberately selling the country out.

The latest target of this group is the ABM [March 21]. With gay abandon, they brush aside the lesson of Pearl Harbor, namely that the primary strike force is invariably the primary target of any aggressor and that exploitation of complacency is not considered a low blow but a legitimate tool of aggression. The Greeks did it with a wooden horse, Hitler did it to Chamberlain, the Japanese did it to you at Pearl, and the most recent lesson was given to you just a year ago during the Tet holiday. How many times must you be hit over the head before you put on a hard hat regardless of the cost?

Perhaps the proposed system won't work, but your enemies don't know that and with your technical abilities so ably demonstrated by your space program, who would want to bet against it? It might be well for you to remember that an awful lot of dollars have been stolen at the end of a toy gun.

R. F. IRISH

Picton, Ont.

Sir: I find it disheartening that the majority of the apathetic American public bows to the whims of the military-industrial complex. The military has a unique way of deeming anything that strays from its viewpoint as unpatriotic. The military has its allotted place in our society and should not exceed those limits. I only wish there were more men in Congress like Senator Edward Kennedy, who can see through this costly waste.

LAWRENCE LEWIS

Buffalo, N.Y.

Body or Soul?

Sir: Your article on original sin [March 21] is correct in tracing the emphasis on this doctrine in the Western world to the influence of St. Augustine. He is admittedly the "chief of sinners" in this regard.

However, you say that Augustine believed that "man was . . . woefully evil because imprisoned in an utterly fallen body . . ." This was not his belief. In one of his works he criticizes another church father, Origen, for holding that the body is a prison. On the contrary, he insists that it is the will of man that has become evil through pride and greed. The evil will then uses the good body in seeking its perverted goals, and eventually finds itself being used by that very body which was meant to be its servant.

TIME'S sin is hardly an "original" one, however, since St. Augustine has already been falsely accused of almost everything from being a Greek philosopher in nearly transparent Christian disguise to causing the supposed antiphysical bias of Puritanism and most of the hangups of modern civilization.

DOUGLAS JOHNSON

Orangeburg, S.C.

Sir: I would suggest that the real reason that Father Herbert Haag cannot accept the doctrine of original sin is to be traced to his unmarried state. Like Pelagius (another single theologian), he has not had the advantage of seeing human nature close up in the form of growing children. If he had, he would undoubtedly know that children must be taught to do right, not to do wrong. Delightful as they are, they have an inborn teacher (original sin inherited from Adam) that instructs them most effectively.

C. JOHN MILLER

Westminster Theological Seminary

Chestnut Hill, Pa.

End of the Procession

Sir: Re your translation of Solzhenitsyn's The Easter Procession [March 21]: I have read the piece in the original Russian and you have omitted the final three paragraphs. Omission of these lines for whatever reason deprives the reader of the point of the article and makes Solzhenitsyn appear to be merely a journalist rather than the visionary humanist that he is.

FRANK S. LETCHER,

M.D. Rockville, Md.

-TIME published the translation made available to us and we were unaware that the text was incomplete. Herewith the missing lines as translated by Manya Harari:

"What will then become of these best of the millions we have bred and reared? What has been the point of the enlightened efforts and encouraging predictions of thoughtful minds? What good can we expect of our future?

"Truly: some day they will turn and trample upon us all.

"And those who set them on us--they too will be trampled underfoot."

Great Grandmother Sir: Re "Israel's New Premier" [March 14]: I resent your necessity to refer to the leader of a nation as "the 70-year-old grandmother." Did you ever refer to Johnson by saying "so said the grandfather," or to Konrad Adenauer as "the 90-year-old grandfather"?

Be honest now. Would you have put it this way had she been a man? It is exactly this attitude that keeps other great women in the kitchen 100% of the time cooking their gefilte fish. Hooray for Golda! In this day and age especially, as we see ourselves portrayed on TV as empty-headed sex objects, to read of such a woman is a breath of fresh air.

DOROTHY B. MURPHY

Titusville, N.J.

Sad Commentary

Sir: Why is it that people are choosing to lead more and more insular existences rather than wanting to help people help themselves? When I read your article on Newark [March 21], I realized only too well what Mayor Addonizio meant by his statement, "America is not prepared to save its cities." He, as well as I, and many others, is aware that some of the nation's wealthiest white bedroom communities come very close to touching Newark--physically. I grew up in Short Hills, N.J., one of the most elite. And I found that after the rioting those who "have" reacted by retreating even further--obtaining double locks and guns. They might have directed their energies towards constructive action instead. What a scared, sad commentary!

ELIZABETH PARKMAN

Mound Bayou, Miss.

Block Party

Sir: May one dare hope that for once TIME is wrong? Your report that Baltimore is contemplating demolishing the Block [March 28] fills me with dismay. Is nothing sacred in America any more?

Desecrate the highways with your abominable posters, if that is your fancy. Laugh at our valiant invasion of Anguilla. Sneer at De Gaulle. Even make friends with the Ruskies. All these will I forgive thee, but knock the Block? Never.

On my first visit to the States, I was taken there and, like Little Audrey, I laughed and laughed. I have seen the wonders of the Far East and marveled at the Pyramids. I have champagned at the Folies and, in the days of our Empire, flown in a Vice-Regal plane. But nothing, simply nothing will ever surpass the sheer deliciousness of my first evening down on the Block.

May God forgive you for your proposed vandalism, for I never shall.

JOHN MURPHY

London

This file is automatically generated by a robot program, so reader's discretion is required.