To What Purpose?

Sir: Two cheers for President Nixon for not being "active enough" and for not pretending to "define" a "purpose" (in the words of Schlesinger, the pseudoauthoritative seer) [March 28]. Why should he? It seems to me that we've all had a clear enough look at Nixon's charismatic or forceful predecessors whose administrations were full of purpose and the monumental boo-boos that resulted from their purposeful activities. Regarding the complex and high decisions now facing any President, perhaps it is time simply to do what seems best at the moment and in the given situation. No human being knows enough to do otherwise, if truth be known.

RALPH E. WEST JR. Philadelphia

Sir: It appears that Nixon doesn't know which are the best roads to a peaceful solution of our problem. So he turns toward Europe, fritters away time making peace with Truman instead of our Asian "foes," and toys with the idea of what kind of an ABM system we should have.

During the two months that he has been President, nearly 2,400 Americans have been killed in Viet Nam and countless others maimed for life. Nearly 10,000 have been killed since peace talks began. Yet more concern is voiced over the oil company in Peru and the fishing boats off the coast. Our nation should decide which is more important--things or lives.

MARGARET SEEDSORG Lakewood, Calif.

Sir: When John Kennedy took office as President in 1961, he inherited few critical problems. Within his three years of tenure we were to experience the Bay of Pigs, the Berlin Wall and the assignment of the first fighting troops and the first American deaths in Viet Nam. The reply his detractors receive is that three years was not time enough for him to have accomplished anything constructive.

After two months, Nixon is berated by the right, the left and the Democrats for not solving instantly the war, crime, poverty, inflation and all the rest of the mess his predecessors left unanswered after eight long years. Ridiculous!

H. L. GRACE Arlington, Va.

Historical Extrapolation

Sir: The TIME Essay "The Danger of Playing at Revolution" [March 28] was thoughtful and incisive but irrelevant. It is, of course, absurd to believe that the U.S. Government can be actively overthrown by any combination of New Leftists, Yippies or Black Panthers. But your Essay considers only the classical type of revolution of the French or Russian variety. Certainly other kinds are possible--not only possible but apparently inevitable.

Anyone with a little talent at historical extrapolation can see that the U.S. Government is on a collision course not only with the Third World but also with its own young, black and disenchanted. True, there appears to be at the moment no Lenin or Robespierre prepared to precipitate the revolution, but then there may be no need for one. U.S. society will simply begin to collapse under the weight of its own complexity (a foretaste of which we periodically see in New York City), and would-be revolutionaries will have only to step into a ready-made state of anarchy.

It seems that we are about to witness the first revolution in history caused not by deprivation but by excess.

DANIEL K. CONNER Urbana, III.

Sir: You are so put of touch that you miss the point. With few exceptions, the blacks and the young are playing at revolt --noninstitutional methods of gaining reform--not revolution, the destruction of the entire system.

Revolt has a grand American heritage, including the violence of the trade-union movement and the mass demonstrations of the women's suffrage campaign. With this tradition of revolt, the young hardly find it shocking that the present movement demands receptive institutions that are willing to make relevant change rather than maintain the racism, militarism, and exploitation of the poor that have marked 20th century American life.

SUE SPOHN Madison, Wis.

Calling All Cops

Sir: In your article "Britain's Bay of Piglets" [March 28] you conclude with the phrase, "It could also signal a new role for the British--as the world's Keystone cops." I think both the title and the remarks were rather invidious.

First, at least the invasion of Anguilla achieved its objectives--did the Bay of Pigs? Second, 300 troops to subdue a population of 6,000 with no bloodshed is not bad. In contrast, consider the riots of Washington and Chicago last year; and of course let us not forget Viet

Nam: how many years, how many men, and how many millions? Did someone mention Keystone cops?

BRIAN W. BAILEY Albany, N.Y.

Score One for Satan

Sir: How Satan must be chuckling at the one he put over on the "righteous" folk of Madison Heights, Mich.! It's quite a victory for him when both the police and the courts obey the letter of the law and not the spirit and ignore the users of obscenity to arrest a teacher who was only trying to show the children why not to use it [March 28]. How about arresting the guy who called Mrs. Nancy Timbrook a whore, for both public obscenity and libel? Are teachers and parents supposed to tell their children, "There are certain words I don't want you ever to use. But I won't tell you what they are, you'll have to find that out for yourselves"?

(MRS.) HANSI MATERN Valparaiso, Ind.

Passe Pioneers

Sir: It was with a sigh of relief that I read of the treatment Simon and Gagnon are giving to psychosexuality [March 28]. I have long dreaded taking upon myself the responsibility of debunking Freud, for despite--or perhaps because of--its scientific dubiety, Freudian theory is eagerly gobbled up by too many of my fellow psychology majors. It is not surprising that they are sociologists who are properly classifying Freud among his Victorian contemporaries--pioneers, albeit passe.

M. ELIZABETH CLIFFORD, '70 Brooklyn College Brooklyn

Sir: Sociologists Simon and Gagnon have stretched behaviorism to its absurd limits with the assertion that sexuality in man is a learned behavior pattern. It is a sad comment on the limiting influences of specialization in any field when a sociologist tries to refute such a basic biological tenet as evolution and natural selection. For behavior patterns and their modification possibilities through learning are fixed in the genes of species, consequently modified but not eradicated in individual development. Just as ethologists are beginning to find that man has more instinct-caused behavior than we thought, Simon and Gagnon rush in the opposite direction with their absurd conclusions.

Man continues to evolve, but until some new species is formed, his behavior and physiology will remain basically the same as it was when the species emerged from its primordial ancestors. Man is more than a clever ape, but learning is not the only influence upon his way of behaving.

CHRISTOPHER OLANDER Baltimore

Scaling the Heights

Sir: The toga into which you place Gore Vidal [March 28] is, of course, that of Gaius Petronius, the blase arbiter of tastes under Nero who finally incurred the emperor's wrath and calmly severed his veins. The analogy could be extended: Petronius authored another "bad-tasting" book, the Satyricon, which, like Myra Breckinridge, is a dazzlingly unique contribution to the world's comic literature. Only those whose discrimination is flawless can achieve what Brigid Brophy calls "the dizzying, the rococo heights of true bad taste."

WILLIAM C. MACVICAR Toronto

Give 'Em the Axe

Sir: It is slanderous to state that "because of federal limitations on logging operations and poor forest-management techniques, the Government's holdings yield only a quarter as much timber per acre as private timberland" [March 28]. The Forest Service has led the way in forest management. The national forests lend the only stability that exists in the timber industry, and on the poorest sites for timber production. The private timberlands, thanks to the generous land giveaways of the 1800s, are of deep, rich soils in the lowlands, while the national forests embrace the rugged mountain ranges that have thin delicate soils on jagged rocks and snowcapped peaks interspersed. The growing season is short and the winters harsh. How do you compare them?

In spite of the tremendously greater growing potential on private timberland, most have been freely exploited and are now damaged and underproductive. Doesn't it seem reasonable that there should be "federal limitations on logging operations" on national forests so that the forests can add stability and a sustained yield of water, wildlife, recreation and forage, as well as wood, for people now and in future generations? Why not put the blame for high lumber and plywood prices where it belongs-- on the market-managing lumber and plywood industries?

RAYMOND C. SCHAAF Forester Reedsport, Ore.

Laughing on the Outside

Sir: Re "Where Auto Defects Come From" [March 28]: And all this time we have been blaming poor old General Motors for the year-old junkheap parked in our drive. Blaming them for the stuck accelerator, which has given us such a hair-raising ride at least a dozen times (and which, of course, was "fixed" each time by their mechanic). Blaming them for the water that pours in each time it rains. (After the mechanic "fixed" the leak with at least a gallon of tar.) Even blaming them for the backfiring, running hot, the gear lever falling off, emergency brake handle working improperly, leaking oil, and I could go on and on. When all the time it was our own fault for "insisting on speed and styling at the lowest possible price." We did have one laugh; after the accelerator was finally fixed, we received a letter telling us to take our auto in to have the accelerator checked.

MRS. A. C. JALLEY Ringgold, Ga.

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