Quite Right

Sir: As both a native Southerner and a Republican, I deeply resent the President's implication that Judges Haynsworth and Carswell were the best our area could offer. In fact, they were simply second-rate candidates and were quite rightly rejected by the Senate.

(MRS.) MARY K. GUNN East Chatham. N.Y.

Sir: Well, I'll be damned! The system does work!

DAVID R. GINSBURG North Hollywood, Calif.

Sir: There was a death on Capitol Hill. The name of the deceased was Political Expediency. The only survivor was Hope.

JUDITH LIPP Fredericksburg, Va.

Sir: So Carswell has been defeated and the Honorable Birch Bayh emerges victorious in his fight against mediocrity and racism.

Never mind the fact that Senator Bayh was one of less than a dozen who failed the state bar exam in 1960. Ignore the fact that Bayh was chosen National Alpha Tau Omega of the Year while at Purdue, for upholding the high standards of a segregated fraternity.

Who can better judge mediocrity and racism than one who has had firsthand experience?

(MRS.) JULIANNE FLETCHER Alexandria, Ind.

Sir: I have just learned that Martha Mitchell has been given a p.r. assistant. Come, now. How can they do this? May we never forget that Rome was saved by the cackling of its geese.

SLOAN NIBLEY North Hollywood, Calif.

A Matter of Definition

Sir: In your piece on the Burger court [April 13], you say that "strict constructionist" is an "ill-defined term," and then proceed to define it as referring to judges who "would prefer to have the court take a less active role . . . and keep hands off more decisions of other branches of Government."

Actually, "strict constructionist" has been a clearly defined term throughout American history, at least until President Nixon, who evidently has no idea what the term means, began misusing it in the past two years.

In his comment on Chief Justice Burger's appointment, The President defined strict constructionist as meaning a judge who would give Congress "great leeway" in writing laws and be "very conservative in overthrowing a law passed by the elected representatives." This, of course, is exactly the opposite of what strict constructionist means.

As the term has been invariably used, a strict constructionist is precisely someone who, because he construes the Constitution strictly and would confine the powers of Government to specifically enumerated items, feels justified in overthrowing laws passed by elected representatives and in putting his hands on decisions of other branches of Government. To offer Congress "great leeway," to enlarge the scope of permissible Legislative and Executive action, one must obviously favor a broad construction of the Constitution.

ARTHUR SCHLESINGER JR. Manhattan

In the Midst of It

Sir: As a black student, I am so confused about this situation that many in my region call a "school crisis." I see blacks being gassed, jailed and beaten. Protesters taking black-painted dummies, hanging them, and artistically following the procedures for burial. I find our governor interrupting normal television broadcasting to denounce the present situation and "crisis." I see policemen pacing the school sidewalks with arms. I pass public buildings and churches crudely converted into schools as though the original schools were overrun by an invading army. Is this a national emergency? And, America, tell me why I am in the midst of it all!

Thank you for that special issue on "Black America" [April 6]. It made me feel that I may be an American.

LIONEL MURPHY JR. Port Allen, La.

Sir: Re LeRoi Jones' "We want . . . dagger poems in the slimy bellies of the owner-Jews . . . We want 'poems that kill' ": More to the point would be ". . . dagger poems in the slimy bellies of our black tribal chiefs back in Africa . . . who owned and sold our ancestors at a good profit . . . as slaves to the traders who brought them to America."

Anyway, maybe because of this event and the fact that some hard-working scientist-Jews invented some vaccinations (among others against polio), LeRoi Jones, Stokely Carmichael, Rap Brown, Jesse Jackson, Bobby Scale and hundreds of thousands of black adults and children have survived. So after all, instead of so much fury, a little gratitude would be more to the point.

GINA DE PABLO Barcelona

Sir: Your typical ghetto, Brooks Extension, lis's 3,000 children for 452 families (better than six children per family), and your typical Watkins family has nine. Yet nowhere do you emphasize, or even state, that one of the prime reasons for the poverty level, black and white, is overproduction of children.

Childbearing is a voluntary privilege to be enjoyed by those who can afford to raise children. It is no longer a necessary function to be supported by the state.

DAVID A. PIERCE Inglewood, Calif.

Different Perspective

Sir: As the commander of all Marine Corps forces and of free world forces in I Corps in Viet Nam for two years, I would like to comment on those portions of "The Next Marine Battle" article [March 30] addressed to the September 1967-March 1968 actions along the DMZ.

Specifically, I question the negative context in which TIME first referred to the Marine Corps' loss of 200 men at Khe Sanh and the follow-on assertion that we "fared no better at Con Thien." The implication seems to be that the Marines were both an unsuccessful and more or less unwilling party to these operations.

The facts are that from mid-1966 on, the North Vietnamese elected to take the direct route into South Viet Nam by pushing their regular forces straight across the DMZ. This invasion could not be halted by international observers or South Vietnamese provincial forces in Quang Tri province. If it had not been stopped, the key northern provinces of 1 Corps would have fallen.

The Marines were called upon to block this invasion. For two years a grueling battle was fought intermittently along the 50-mile DMZ in some of the toughest terrain in Viet Nam. The results:

P: The enemy never was able to establish himself in Northern I Corps. ^ The enemy suffered enormous casualties in this, his most direct and serious challenge of the war.

P: The area has recently been turned over to the 1st Vietnamese Army Division, virtually free of enemy, in one of the great success stories of the war.

That is the perspective in which Khe Sanh and Con Thien must be viewed.

L.W. WALT

General, U.S.M.C. Assistant Commandant Headquarters, Marine Corps Washington, D.C.

Erratum

Sir: In your Gunter Grass cover story [April 13], you refer to former West German Defense Minister Franz-Josef Strauss as having once been a member of the Nazi party. Strauss was never a member of the Nazi party. On the contrary, Strauss's father, a butcher, was an outspoken anti-Nazi. As for Strauss himself, he was drafted into the army, and his repeated criticism of Hitler's war caused him no end of trouble. At war's end, having been cleared of any Nazi connections by the American occupation forces, he was made a civilian administrative official for a district in Bavaria. A year later he founded the Christian Social Union

(C.S.U.) Party, of which he is still chairman.

BENJAMIN W. GATE TIME Bureau Chief Bonn, Germany -- TIME deeply regrets the error.

Take Heed

Sir: Your article on drug laws abroad [April 13] is of great aid to all of us working to alert travelers to the dangers of violations of these statutes. In Spain, which enforces its strict drug ordinances evenhandedly against Spaniards and visitors alike, 14 Americans are now in prison for long terms after conviction on drug counts. 40 more are in jail awaiting trial. I hope that readers will take warning and not react casually to your timely article.

ROBERT C. HILL U.S. Ambassador to Spain Madrid

Scrutable Scribe

Sir: In February you ran a story about me in the PEOPLE section--recounting a Terrifically Ironic conversation about money between myself and a humble Saratoga Springs haberdasher--that was wrong in every detail, right down to the price paid for the movie rights to Portnoy's Complaint, which you reported this time to be twice as much as you did last time you were discussing my income.

Now I find a wholly apocryphal story about me once again--this time I am at the boxing matches in Bangkok, where I am reported as "declining to take a bow" in the ring [March 30]. Oh yes? And just who asked me to? Though I am now a person of such magnitude as to have appeared two consecutive months in your PEOPLE section, you should know that Thai fight fans aren't all that au coumnt about who is "in" this year, particularly among American-Jewish novelists, whom T believe they find inscrutable.

Nor did I make that callow and ridiculous statement that you have the audacity to put between quotation marks. " 'Now if I were Norman Mailer,' said the author of Portnoy's Complaint, 'I'd be up in the ring after the first bout, kicking away at the boxers in golf shoes.' " Whatever tin-eared fantast fed you that one should at least have told you to include in your story the fact that in Thailand the boxers fight principally with theii feet. As it stands, the quotation is not only predictably without any relation to fact, but somewhat lacking in point.

PHILIP ROTH

Woodstock, N.Y.

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