End of a Gimmick?

Sir: Pessimistic over the sex explosion [July 11]? Not me. Perhaps at last people will get so accustomed to the sight of the human body undraped that they will no longer spend their time and money just to see it. Soon movies, magazines, plays, etc., will have to come up with some other gimmick to attain the attention of the public and the dollar. Who knows? Maybe someone will even rediscover the use of thought and talent.

The end of morality, some say. How about the end of a gimmick and the beginning of art?

ROBERT E. CANNON Pasadena, Calif.

Sir: "Cancer" has long been regarded as the dirtiest word in the English language. Until the late 1950s, many newspapers and magazines carefully avoided using it and it was whispered about as a dreaded family secret. But banning the word did not eliminate the disease or lessen its effect. It is possible, however, that our semantical escapism did actually thwart medical research into the disease to a high degree.

This same kind of delicacy and shame has forced an almost awesomely destructive set of sexual attitudes upon us. Whole generations of Americans were taught that their natural processes were unspeakably vulgar and, as everyone from Freud to Spock discovered and proved, these repressions forced all kinds of personal and social disorders upon us. Europeans have always laughed at us as "those people who only make love in the dark."

So we divided into three camps: the "normals," who fumbled their way through adulthood, clawing at flannel nightgowns in the dark; the "abnormals," who found some release from their secret agonies by paying incredibly high prices for incredibly inept pornographic trash sold under the counter by amoral "businessmen"; and the pathetically small group of well-adjusted human beings who answered their children's early, innocent questions honestly and didn't paddle their behinds every time they fondled themselves.

Despite the efforts of those of us over 30, the present young generation is learning what sex is really all about. The naked body and its natural functions are being openly displayed and discussed. The next generation will be healthier for it, and if Freud and all the others were right, then perversion and pornography will decline as honesty and understanding increase. A time will come when all of the "shocking" literature, plays and movies of this epoch will seem archaic and naive--and terribly boring. This is not "liberation" at all. It is the development of a true normalcy. A development long overdue in this country.

JOHN A. KEEL Manhattan

Sir: Your cover story was interesting but inconclusive. You failed to point out the chief casualties of the current smut cycle: style, class and grace, which continue to be indispensable qualities of enduring art. Today's vendors of sexual kitsch have kept the dirty bath water (in some cases literally) and thrown out the baby, and with it their chances of eventual survival. Boredom will rescue us from their brand of entertainment.

FRED SAIDY Douglaston, N.Y.

Sir: I expect that soon you will be publishing smoke-room stories; but if and when you do, please check with me. I believe there are only 18 basic ones--so don't overdo it.

LIONEL STEVENSON Wayne, Pa.

Sir: Some time ago I thought it would be interesting to know if historians would refer to this decade as the "sicksties" or the "sexties."

Now I know. It will certainly be the "sick sexties."

C. M. WILLIAMS Jacksonville

The Real Causa

Sir: I congratulate you on your excellent article on la causa [July 4]. As volunteer workers in La Joya of the Rio Grande Valley, Texas, my wife and I discovered a very simple and beautiful people. It hurt to see them work so hard and receive and have so little. It hurt to see the ignorant prejudice against which they must struggle and the very poor living conditions of so many. As a nurse, my wife saw health problems we believed no longer existed in the U.S.

I think that we should realize that Cesar Chavez's boycott is not against grapes. It is a boycott against hate, poverty and fear. This is the real causa.

TIM SCHROEDER

Manitowoc, Wis.

Sir: You say in your cover article, "Unlike the blacks, who were brought to the U.S. involuntarily, the Chicanos have flocked to the U.S. . ." It seems to me you are rather ignoring a shameful episode in Mexican-American relations--namely, the Mexican War.

The war and the resulting treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo not only deprived Mexico of over 40% of its land but also made many thousands of Mexicans involuntarily Americans overnight. In many areas of the Southwest, the Mexican American may date his family's residency over a century, if not longer.

LEE OLIN Santa Cruz, Calif.

Sir: Your story on Chavez makes a strong case for his sincerity but not for his intelligence. He opposes birth control for his people because "smaller families would diminish the numerical power of the poor." The more poor people the better?

ROBERT S. GREENBERG N. Hollywood

Sir: The heat of the San Joaquin Valley during grape-picking time must surely rival hell in its intensity. I lasted less than one day picking, or more accurately "cutting" grapes; and I can testify that picking cotton is fun compared to that.

However, did you give a fair picture of the grower in your article? I think not. When I went to pick up my pay, I found the grower's house to be a shack; and his wife, shabbily attired, could scarcely speak English. From what I've seen of other farm owners, this most likely may be the rule rather than the exception.

The great difference between the two is that the picker will subsist on welfare the rest of the year, the grower will not.

JO ANN MOORE Orange Cove, Calif.

Sir: When I say that some of my best friends are "Chicanos" I include my dentist, my accountant, numerous attorney buddies, a fair number of local politicians, a couple of really good auto mechanics, a lady who runs an outstanding Mexican restaurant in Los Angeles, the former sheriff of Los Angeles county, five judges, numerous cops and my mother-in-law.

The real story is the extent to which Americans of Latin descent are in the mainstream of Western life. Come out and see for yourself.

RON SWEARINGER

Hollywood

Backward into Peace

Sir: Thank you for your Essay on the frightful potential of chemical-biological weaponry [June 27] and the curious twists of logic used to justify its proliferation. Technology in ay fields races toward the day when man, wishing to zap his fellow man, can choose from an infinite arsenal of macabre techniques. While we are waiting for a weapons scientist somewhere out there to stumble upon a peaceful use for his gases and bacteria we can take heart in the words of Ogden Nash:

When geniuses in every nation Hasten us toward obliteration Perhaps it'll take the dolts and geese To drag us backward into peace.

MICHAEL DUBOIS

Corvallis, Ore.

Voyage of Expediency

Sir: Your note pertaining to Russia and the American Civil War states, "The Russians actually dispatched warships to the U.S. to demonstrate their support" [July 4]. This was not the case. The Russian fleet had been ordered to sea as a precaution against easy destruction in the Baltic Sea in case of war. Russian treatment of the Polish people in rebellion had led to representations by the French and British governments. This caused concern in Russia that war might result. Of course, when the fleets arrived in New York and San Francisco, the Russians were glad to be hailed as supporters of the Union cause and did nothing to dispel the misunderstanding. This view prevailed until F. A. Golder, working in the Russian archives, located the Russian plans. His article "The Russian Fleet and the Civil War" was published in the American Historical Review in July 1915.

GEORGE F. EMERY Gettysburg, Pa.

Eau de Cologne

Sir: Writer Samuel Coleridge seems to have been wondering about the polluted Rhine [July 4] in 1807 when he wrote: In Koeln, a town of monks and bones, And pavements fang'd with murderous

stones, And rags, and hags, and hideous

wenches;

I counted two and seventy stenches, All well defined, and several stinks! Ye Nymphs that reign o'er sewers and sinks, The river Rhine, it is well known, Doth wash your city of Cologne; But tell me, Nymphs! what power divine Shall henceforth wash the river Rhine?

RICHARD OHRN Indianapolis

No Contest

Sir: Your commendable "peaceful revolutionary" from Brown, Ira Magaziner [July 4], may have some difficulty if he plans to "joust with the authorities at Oxford's Balliol College." He had better be prepared for a group of dons whose social, economic and academic perspectives easily match the boldness of his own ideas. The doctoral program Magaziner will follow, supposedly so traditional, can be a study of almost anything, so long as he finds a supervisor who takes him seriously. He may discover that there is no shock value at all in a "sweeping cross-disciplinary plan of his own design." Unfortunately or fortunately for him, Oxford has an amazing ability to absorb the most outspoken of the outspoken. Balliol especially has an insidious way of inculcating the quality that is for Magaziner's (and my) generation the least understood and least valued of virtues--humility.

BRIAN PATRICK McGUIRE Graduate Student Balliol College Oxford, England

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