Neither Cow nor Goat

Sir: You write that Nixon's first aim in making the speech at the Air Force Academy [June 13] was to quiet criticism of the military. I think you've missed the point. Mr. Nixon said very plainly that the military should not be a "sacred cow," but neither should it be a "scapegoat."

He simply asks that people use objective reasoning in criticizing the defense system, and not criticize the military on the emotional basis of reactionary discontent with the deplorable Viet Nam situation. The Defense Department surely needs much reform. But the reform must be in line with our responsibilities, which, I believe, was the major emphasis of Mr. Nixon's speech.

PHILIP WOLD

West St. Paul, Minn.

Sir: According to the President, an isolationist is against the war in Viet Nam; an isolationist is foolishly alarmed at the billions of dollars being wasted by the Pentagon; an isolationist suggests that perhaps it is better to feed the starving thousands in America than to kill the starving millions elsewhere in the world; an isolationist believes that not everyone in the free world wants the U.S. to play mother hen, a role that we have played miserably since World War II. I guess I'm an isolationist, and proud of it!

MICHAEL D. SCOTT

Torrance, Calif.

Sir: Before President Nixon becomes too upset over the trends toward neo-isolationism that he perceives in this country, maybe he should give cognizance to the fact that the Russians have won their most significant victories by encouraging their foes to overextend themselves.

TONY BUTLER JR.

Houston

Ire Over Eire

Sir: Irishmen have always had cause to be wary of Englishmen who "observe the Irish fondly." Wilfrid Sheed's Essay [June 20] typifies the paternalistic view of Ireland that Englishmen have expressed in varying degrees for more than 800 years.

If one had known nothing about Ireland before reading the article, he would no doubt conclude that Ireland is a land without history, its inhabitants a race of buffoons, redeemed only in part by the efforts of transplanted Englishmen.

In reality, Ireland has a glorious history and its people possess a fighting spir it that centuries of unrelenting persecution by Britain could not suppress.

I thought the Essay was slightly less penetrating than the mouse that attempted to fertilize the elephant.

ROBERT B. LYDON

East Norriton, Pa.

Sir: A superficial and burdensomely clever piece. "Ireland's history, or rather the lack of it"--with seven prehistoric cyclopean Duns in its Aran Islands and tumuli in the Boyne and the Blackwater valleys that can be compared with only the pyramids of the Pharaohs! Your man is daft. May God have mercy on his soul.

RUTH WILLS SHAW

West Nyack, N.Y.

Pipedream of the Future

Sir: With your superb article on Communism [June 13] came a box dealing with Marx and Marxism that leaves something to be desired.

Marx was not a "sensitive man" but rather arrogant, overbearing, irascible and utterly self-centered. He responded not to change in his time but rather to Hegel's message of worldly redemption, according to which everything eventually would be wholly rational, which he translated into a gospel of revolution.

He did not perceive a "fundamental transformation in the human condition"--for none such has ever occurred--but rather made such a transformation his Promethean goal.

His "observations about psychological 'alienation' " were meant to apply, not to "a changing society" but to man's existence as far back as the historical record goes: according to him, man had never been at home in the world of human history.

If "the anarchist thrust," as you put it, "leads nowhere," so does Marx's thrust, for his predicted future society, classless and stateless, without law and economic scarcity, free from disharmony and all evil, is no goal but a pipedream.

GERHART NIEMEYER

Professor of Government University of Notre Dame Notre Dame, Ind.

Reason to Rap

Sir: We at Harvard New College have to take issue with some of your comments, especially those about the "intellectual hierarchy that is basic to learning" [June 6]. We don't reject that intellectual hierarchy "in effect," as you said--we reject it explicitly. The intellectual hierarchy stifles creativity; it is hostile to the fresh insights of minds that have not yet been processed in America's academic distilleries. In an environment changing so quickly that textbooks become obsolescent before they are printed, the whole idea of teachers pontificating about what they "know" to passive, uncritical students is dangerously archaic.

You later lament that "self-indulgence could turn free universities into a travesty of education in which 'rapping' replaces research, and reason gives way to sensuality." That's not what we want and we doubt that it will happen. But we would like to include some rapping in all research, and we would like to see reason tempered a bit by humanism, if not sensuality. After all, rapping had almost nothing to do with the creation of hydrogen bombs and nerve gas--while reason had absolutely nothing to do with the creation (and procreation) of human beings.

SANIEL BONDER, '72

Harvard New College Cambridge, Mass.

No Way Back

Sir: The holders of masters degrees in business administration who start at a minimum of $12,500 [June 13] may be glad to work for half of that 20 years from now, if the experience of their elders is any criterion. The crime of American business is that it pays more for a 25-year-old than for a 45-year-old. In fact, not one blue-chip company will even hire anyone over the age of 35.

When we advertise in Los Angeles for a "mature M.B.A.," we get over 200 replies, even though we offer less than $8,000. These men are not incompetents--they merely missed a connection on the flying trapeze. It doesn't matter how one loses a job after age 35, there is no way back.

A. C. SMITH President

Architectural Specialties, Inc.

San Francisco

A Certain Smile

Sir: To judge from the article dealing with the activities of the British "ethologists" Christopher Brannigan and Dr. David Humphries [June 13], their work is charmingly pointless and absurdly pseudoscientific. They can, of course, make a lifetime out of cataloguing human facial expressions and bodily gestures, even in England. If they run out of material there, they can always shift their attention to Italy, where they could find enough to last through several lifetimes. I perhaps should not say that their work is pointless, for when they have completed the catalogue, a lover who finds his beloved smiling at him mysteriously can look up the smile in the Brannigan-Humphries Ethological Index and know at once that it is smile No. 723 classified as "Elusive Loving Smile."

STANLEY V. LONGMAN

Athens, Ga.

Concentric Circles

Sir: I found the article on violence in the BEHAVIOR section [June 6] thoughtprovoking. I wonder if the size of a man's "circle of protection" will change as the person who is approaching is changed. To find out, we could start with Psychiatrist Kinzel and then bring on Raquel Welch. This is a fertile field for experimentation.

WARREN N. BAXTER

Orange, Texas

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