Bleeding the Sick

Sir: "The Ideology of Fed-Upness" [June 27] should sound a warning to our political leaders, especially those who can influence U.S. policy on taxation. Continuing the surtax and increasing sales taxes is very like the medical practice of bleeding the sick in George Washington's day. When our body politic is sick from war and urban blight, we bleed the middle-class that is its life force, while privilege and "the caissons go rolling along."

MRS. W. CORWIN CHASE Vaughn, Wash.

Sir: You describe Senator John Marchi as a political nobody. Doesn't TIME know that in 1969 nobody is a nobody? Would you describe someone as a black nobody, or a Vietnamese nobody, or a Pentagon nobody? How about a journalistic nobody?

I know John Marchi, and he is somebody. John Lindsay is somebody else. And Procaccino is something else.

ROBERT H. NUTT Staten Island, N.Y.

Sir: In response to his clear rejection by the members of his own party, John Lindsay chastized New Yorkers for allowing their city to be "captured by the forces of reaction and fear." Reaction? We're reacting, all right--to streets that are dirtier, to air that is fouler, to a public-school system breaking down at almost every level, to a three-year 100% increase in the number of persons on welfare and to skyrocketing taxes levied in order to keep the whole mess of an incompetent administration "moving". Afraid? Who us? Every ten hours in our "fun" city, there is one murder, two rapes, 32 assaults, 62 robberies, 88 car thefts, 198 burglaries and 170 thefts. Three years of Lindsay and there are almost 300 more murders annually than in 1965, 45,000 more robberies and 120,000 more burglaries. We're not afraid--we're terrified. CHARLES J. MYSAK Brooklyn

Enjoyable Retreat

Sir: The British monarchy may well be a contemporary "retreat to Camelot" [June 27], but it is a far more enjoyable adventure than that provided by the droll leadership of most Western republics. At least the monarchy, for all of its faults, gives us some relief from the total lack of style of most of today's politicians.

ANTHONY J. SHORT, S.J. Chantilly, France

Sir: You write: "By any standard of rational judgment, the monarchy, of course, is no longer necessary. However, there is a difference between a nation's rational and emotional needs." Presumably, the emotional needs of the U.S. are satisfied by having Princess Kay of the Milky Way, the Cherry Blossom Queen, the Queen of the Snows, the Raspberry Queen, the Rose Bowl Queen and thousands of other pseudo-royalty.

GWEN KINGMAN Wayzata, Minn.

Sir: I believe the day is not too far distant when the English people will, in effect, paraphrase Kipling by saying: The tumult and the shouting rise Let captains and the kings depart.

R. M. TREE Port Huron, Mich,

Sir: Political graft, corruption in your judiciary, race riots, the burning of your own country's flag in public, the murder of prominent citizens including your own President, drug addiction--you name it and you've got it. No thanks; we'll keep our Royal Family and all the decadence that goes with it. You keep your Black Panthers and the almighty dollar.

JAMES E. S. RUSBRIDGER London

My Brother, My Friend, My Neighbor

Sir: Three cheers to you for printing "One Man's Battle" [June 20]. Arthur Jaramillo is the universal soldier; he is my brother, my best friend, my next door neighbor and a victim of circumstance. His frustration is more than warranted; his courage is more than remarkable; his loneliness is more than any of us can imagine. The pathos of his words only further substantiates the verity that war creates rather than solves problems. That "some day it will all be over" is indeed a reflection belonging to the ages.

NEVILLE STRUMPF Selkirk, N.Y.

Germs in Space

Sir: How comforting to know that at last we may be able to stop worrying about the population explosion--if an organism from the moon returns to infect our earth's people [June 13] and takes care of this problem for us. I know planning ahead is not one of the U.S.'s virtues; but in this case, America should get with it.

CELIA S. SCHRADER Miami

Sir: So--what about the other side of the coin? Even as an uninformed layman, I am willing to bet that our germs will make theirs look sick. Are we going to do to the moon what we did to the American Indians, decimating with our decadent germs whatever forms of life it has? (I write this while wiping the tears from my eyes from the newest variety of our L.A. smog.)

What about picking the mote out of our own eye and making sure our hero astronauts do not go around contaminating the moon and/or the rest of outer space?

VIVIAN D. CARROLL Los Angeles

Child of Versailles

Sir: Your review of Richard Watt's The Kings Depart [lune 27] helps to perpetuate, as does Watt himself, the folk myth that the Versailles Treaty "burdened" and otherwise victimized the postwar Germany of the twenties.

Franklin D. Roosevelt, who was on the treaty-making scene as an official observer, lamented the fact that Versailles was too soft, and would teach Germany nothing about war. The failure was compounded when the Allied governments neglected to enforce the disarmament and other important treaty provisions.

Militaristic Germany was never in her history more sternly dealt with than in 1945-46 (and subsequently), when her war criminals were hanged, her generals divorced from their war sports, her industry dismantled for reparations and her country split and occupied. Yet today Western Germany is fat and happily prosperous beyond the dreams of her victim nations. In 1919 we spared the rod and spoiled the child--and a vicious child it turned out to be.

CHARLES DELACY Chicago

Don't Be Squeamish

Sir: I too have seen Oh! Calcutta! [June 27]. If your critic found it to be a "rousing celebration of the body beautiful," why did your picture editor use an air brush on the photograph of nudes accompanying the story? And if "quadri-literals beginning with the letters f, c and s" are here considered to be more "festive than aggressive," why not spell out the festive words? When you open a can of worms, you should not be squeamish.

E. WARREN SMITH Manhattan

Sir: It is indeed paradoxical that in a society that places such a premium on all sorts of privacy--private swimming pool, private entrance, private patio, private terrace, etc.--one nevertheless would turn one's bosom into a community chest. Could all this nudity be overcompensation for all the other privacy with its resulting isolation which affluence provides?

NEERA BARVE Silver Spring, Md.

Sir: That play where everyone cavorts around with their clothes off is supposed to "liberate" our minds or something? Most of our critics and intellectuals have been going around with their minds unbuttoned for some time. These naive pundits should take Dr. Freud's advice to Lorelei Lee (Gentlemen Prefer Blondes, by Anita Loos). He told her to cultivate a few inhibitions and get some sleep.

DAVID B. SAXTON Cottage Grove, Ore.

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