On the Bandstand

Sir: Several of my friends and I agree: The Band [Jan. 12] is playing our song.

JOHN HENDERSON '73 Yale University New Haven, Conn.

Sir: The Band--just another string and percussion group with the usual funny hats, wearing quite uncomfortably the somber scrape of civilization's salvation. What they need is a couple of horns--some professional cats who can speak with a horn a language we all can understand.

P. B. Gibble

Mt. Gretna, Pa.

Sir: Of course, The Band's music isn't country rock or any other kind of rock subject to ready, hyphenated labeling. The Band makes excellent popular music, highly personalized and beautifully performed, distilled from years of dues paying, craft learning and eclectic playing and listening. It takes a great deal of sophistication, consciously or otherwise applied, to make music so perfectly simple. Detached from hype and trend, almost entirely dependent upon their fine heads and solid musicianship, there are a few groups and a few individual performers in the new music who endure and grow, whatever else is going down. They'll never rush the stage while The Band is on, but The Band's music will be fine to hear long after today's teenypop and supergroups are yesterday's news.

BEN HUNTER Gates Mills, Ohio

Sir: It was refreshing to see the terms "rock music" and "intelligent listeners" used in the same article. I bought their new album after hearing a 15-second excerpt on the radio and thinking I had found something--only to discover that I had remembered it.

PETER ASHMAN Washingtonville, N.Y.

Sir: Your cover (ugh!) story reads like the liner notes of an extravagant two-record album. Their music is not unique. They are merely coasting on their former attachment with Dylan. Another example of today's "it's-who-you-know" aspect of rock-world success--both musically and promotionally.

STANLEY F. GRABOWSKI Intercourse, Pa.

Sir: The beauty of The Band lies not in what they say, but in their ability to communicate all they don't.

TOM Ross Lansing, Ill.

Harris Poll

Sir: I cannot buy your tentative explanations of the opinion expressed ("incidents such as this are bound to happen in a war") by 65% of those interviewed in the Harris poll re My Lai [Jan. 12]. If this is a patriotic reflex, as you suggest, then it is the unthinking sort of patriotism displayed by many Germans under Hitler in World War II. Nor can it be explained away by a certain "battle wisdom" of the American people. I venture that no more than 1 out of 10 Americans is a combat veteran. This group is, more likely, that Great Silent Majority, of which we have heard so much lately. Its response on this matter convinces me more than ever that I want to be identified with that dissident vocal minority that is sickened beyond words by this atrocity.

DENNIS R. RYEN San Jose, Calif.

Sir: Instead of blaming the decidedly mild reaction of the majority of Americans contacted in your Harris poll on patriotism, battle wisdom, callousness or barbarism, why not consider realism?

Perhaps many of us are finally realizing that Americans are ordinary human beings, and that we have in our society many who are capable of committing acts as brutal as those committed by human beings in Germany, Russia, Japan, etc., etc. After all, haven't we had ourselves on a pedestal long enough?

MRS. RALPH B. HESTER JR. Oklahoma City

No Support

Sir: TIME completely misrepresents my position on the connection between the union election and the Yablonski murders [Jan. 19]. What I actually stated was that I was "convinced that the top leaders of the U.M.W.A. did not direct the brutal murders, but the sordid record of the union, the venom they spread during the campaign, and the possible fear of some lower union officials that Mr. Yablonski might report illegal activities, all contributed to this pattern which led to this heinous crime."

You wrongfully state that Tony Boyle "received some support" from me in his frenzied claims that the union election had nothing to do with the murders. That is sheer distortion of my position. Mr. Boyle and his cronies don't get any support from me as long as they fraudulently misuse the dues of the coal miners for their own benefit and run their union on tyranny. The people of this nation are so shocked by the fraud and strong-armed bully tactics that culminated in the Yablonski murders that I am convinced Congress itself will take some action to clean up this union.

KEN HECHLER Representative 4th District, W. Va. House of Representatives Washington, D.C.

Man of the 70s?

Sir: Capitalism, personal involvement and humanism, as exemplified by H. Ross Perot [Jan. 12], are essential to the solution of such vexing problems as urban decay, air and water pollution, and social injustices. Certainly the '60s taught us that big government, the Silent Majority, and the don't-give-a-damners won't cut it.

LARRY L. MCDOWELL Manhattan

So Sue Her

Sir: The supersleuths have been on the trail of Mrs. Nixon, and of course they have found her out. Does she smoke pot? Is she a secret drinker? Could she be the secret backer of a string of bordellos?

Hell no, folks, it's worse than that --she's a conservative dresser [Jan. 12]. She has chosen not to shill for the clothing industry, so sue her. I am a miniskirt wearer, but I shall uphold to the death of fashion Mrs. Nixon's right to wear a maxi or ignore the whole business, if that's her bag.

(MRS.) SHIRLEY WILSON Sevenoaks, England

Sir: I am twelve years old, and I'm only giving you my opinion. The lady who picks Mrs. Nixon's wardrobe is a square. That article should have been headed "Reliving the Past."

ANN DULBERG Manhattan

Who Said It

Sir: In your PEOPLE section, the Hon. Mr. John Lindsay is quoted as saying, "Bedfellows make strange politics" [Jan. 12]. I'm afraid that quote belongs to my uncle, the Hon. Mr. Dean J. Acheson, who made it years ago in reference to Schine and Cohn during the McCarthy hearings. I believe you quoted him at the time.

DEBORAH P. BARBOUR Bronxville, N.Y.

High Marx for Billy

Sir: Billy Graham's remark that you can get high on Jesus [Jan. 12] supports Karl Marx's statement: "Religion is the opiate of the people."

D.SPANER Ilesha, Nigeria

Context of Conspiracy

Sir: Under the heading "Police and Panthers: Growing Paranoia" [Dec. 19], I was quoted as follows: "I'm changing my mind and they (the Panthers) will have my support." Since my comments were taken entirely out of context and considerably abridged, this "quotation" is erroneous and extremely misleading.

I have never advocated violence either as a way of life or as a program of action to accomplish desired objectives, whether practiced by the Black Panthers, the Ku Klux Klan, the Armed Forces of the United States of America, or "duly constituted" law enforcement officers of the nation, the states or municipalities therein. Nor do I now. But the fact that I have been unwilling to accept, personally, the violent program of action allegedly being promulgated by some of the leaders of the Black Panthers does not, for one moment, blind me to the injustice, indeed the savagery, which has been dealt them by so-called law enforcement officers. As a responsible citizen who takes his citizenship seriously, I cannot sit impassively by while the law enforcement officers of no matter what city, town or hamlet in this nation declare open season on them and unlawfully shoot them down in cold blood, as if for trophy.

It was in this context, i.e., the conspiracy which so many of us feel exists unlawfully and systematically to murder the leadership of the Black Panthers and thus eliminate them as a "threat," that my comments to your representative were uttered. If and when there are contraventions of law by Black Panthers, or others, there are legal provisions for their prosecution and punishment. Certainly, my argument is not against the application of legal procedure. But justice cannot exist unless it is both dispensed and administered evenhandedly.

EDWARD F. BOYD Manhattan

Neither Revelation nor Expose

Sir: In the interests of truth and accuracy, may I point out to your readers and you that the story titled "A Freudian Affair" [Jan. 12] is neither a "revelation" nor an "expose." The statements of Mr. Billinsky referred to are unsubstantiated hearsay. All the data from unfriendly as well as friendly biographers of my uncle, Sigmund Freud, are counter to Mr. Billinsky's statements about him.

You say in the last sentence of the piece that "Martha, Minna and the man they shared are silent in the grave." This is factually true, as to their deaths, but the use of the word "shared" is a false conclusion drawn from false premises. For your information, my maiden aunt, Minna Bernays, lived with the family of her sister--my married aunt, Martha Freud--as was the custom when maiden ladies had no careers.

EDWARD L. BERNAYS Cambridge, Mass.

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