Casual Acceptance

Sir: My initial feelings of horror and repulsion at the sight of the grinning soldier displaying his trophies of war [Feb. 1] were soon overcome by acceptance; is there really a difference between head counts and body counts? The casual presentation of such carnage cannot help but breed casual acceptance of such atrocities.

(MRS.) SUSAN H. HYDE Great Neck, N.Y.

Sir: Do we need any more proof that the world is indeed mad?

ROBERT E. FERGUSON JEFFREY S. NINTZEL Hanover, N.H.

Sir: The insipid grin of degenerate pride in achievement on the face of the Cambodian soldier further illustrates the mindless futility of our involvement in Indochina.

Copies of the picture should be placed on the desk of every Government official with a mind and voice regarding the war.

JANET P. SOENEN Woodridge, Ill.

Sir: As shocking and grisly as the pictures are, you've performed a service by showing them if they inspire a few comfortable patriots to second thoughts about the nobility of war and about the values of a nation that cannot even play the national anthem at the end of a day's television without showing uniformed soldiers marching and bombs bursting in air. Maybe some day patriotism will no longer be synonymous with militarism, and young men won't have to prove their love of their own country by taking over someone else's homeland.

PATRICIA JOHNSON San Diego

Sir: Your taste and good sense are up for scrutiny; in fact, TIME, I think you blew it.

MRS. GORDON V. TOLLEFSON Seattle

Sir: You will receive many letters scolding you for publishing the picture of the happy Cambodian soldier. Don't change. We are all too ready to forget the most gruesome details of war. They should be held up to us as reminders, high as severed heads.

HOWARD C. WOLFE Los Angeles

Sir: Is it not ironic that Robert van Leer's description of the Viet Cong torture of an American soldier is precisely the same as the mode of torture (a cage of starving rats placed over a person's head) described in Orwell's 1984?

JAMES MCDOWALL Charleston, Ill.

No More Heroes

Sir: In recent memory, no article has angered me more than "J.F.K. Revised" [Feb. 1].

The epic displays of Monday-morning quarterbacking are, unfortunately, barometers of our current paranoid scene. Why blame the Kennedy myth on Kennedy? The American people created the myth. It was the last thing we did as a whole.

I have ceased to have heroes. They're hard to find, especially in government. However, I remember those few years when my generation and the nation in general allowed itself to feel more hopeful than hopeless, the violent minority was a minority, and we believed that this nation could be on its way to better things.

NORMAN GERSHON Kansas City, Mo.

Sir: Jack Kennedy may have been daring, but foolhardy he was not. He may have been pragmatic, but he was never a cynic. He did not make a totem pole of his mistakes. The trouble with Jack Kennedy's inaugural address is that he had so little time to attempt to put it into practice and that we Americans have so little personal interest in picking up and carrying out his challenge of excellence, humanity and peace.

JAMES E. SULLIVAN Barre, Mass.

Sir: The fact that a student editor wept when Kennedy was killed and now calls him a pig indicates only that deeply felt convictions change as easily as skirt lengths, lapel widths, etc., . . . and are about as significant.

JOHN D. HARCOURT JR. Tempe, Ariz.

Price of Sincerity

Sir: After reading your splendid article on the Berrigan brothers and their inner circle [Jan. 25]. I am convinced that they are serious and sincere about what they are doing. It is the way they are doing it that is frightening.

Going back in history, one finds that sincerity expressed in violence has almost always been costly in human lives. The Crusaders, the Inquisitors, the Jacobins and the Bolsheviks were all sincere about their respective causes. They all claimed to obey "higher laws" to the utter disregard of existing "earthly" morality and disrespect for human life, which they had set out to improve. The method by which a cause is advanced is the more important factor. Indeed, in a democratic system "the method is the message."

Unfortunately, the number of violent prophets a society can absorb with impunity is limited.

J. FLEDEL BECK Newton, Mass.

Sir: I am mistakenly reported as having quoted Father Daniel Berrigan speculating that "bombing wasn't necessarily violent if you didn't hurt anybody." Although the article continues to express certain reservations on Father Berrigan's part. I fear that the quote may be grossly misinterpreted.

May I categorically state that I recall no discussion on this topic with Father Berrigan and consequently could never have reported such a conclusion to anyone. Father Berrigan's long commitment to nonviolence, as well as that of the movement that he represents, is reflected in his recent message to the Weathermen.

PAUL MAYER East Orange, N.J.

Sir: TIME'S cover picture completely distorts the image of the Berrigan brothers. They are determined men, but they are not grim.

The brothers have the same gay gallantry that characterized the early Jesuit martyrs in the days of England's Queen Elizabeth I. They quicken the lives of today's tired Christians with a straightforward Christianity expressed with courage.

HAROLD BUTCHER Santa Fe

Sir: It seems Father Daniel Berrigan has added to St. Ignatius' mission for the Society of Jesus to "preach, teach and raise hell."

J.A. CONSEDINE Fort Buckner, Okinawa

Sir: The legal guilt or innocence of the brothers Berrigan is academic when viewed in the light of their actions, past and allegedly planned. They and their ilk conveniently overlook an unarguable fact: a war requires at least two belligerents. They would overcome the American belligerent in the instant case with bellicose benediction. What about the other side? Will the radical peace warriors in their holy hell-raising bomb and bloody the conscription records of Hanoi, Moscow, Pyongyang and Peking?

ROBERT M. CARR JR. Fort McPherson, Ga.

To Whose Glory?

Sir: Cardinal Villot's lax concern about the population explosion [Feb. 1] is the reflection of the most serious shortcoming of the Judeo-Christian belief, namely that it is legitimate for humans to ruthlessly exploit the animal and plant kingdoms presumably to increase the glory of the Lord. What makes Cardinal Villot and his followers think that a cheetah or a dolphin or a sequoia is less of a glory of God than the products of overpopulation: wars, crimes, drug addiction? Of what avail is freedom if there is no clear water, clean air, forests and no wildlife? Where then can future generations be free, and whose glory will they sing?

BJ. SOLAK Secane, Pa.

Sir: Such difficult decisions we are facing these days. Cardinal Villot accuses birth control advocates of pressuring people by offering transistor radios and other gifts. But his offer is much more difficult to refuse--eternal life.

So we must choose--hell now and heaven later? Or vice versa?

ELLEN ALCOCK Copenhagen

Sir: Bravo Pope Paul! Pope John only contemplated papal fallibility. Pope Paul is proving it.

PHILIP A. HOUCK Fairfield, Conn.

Money's Worth

Sir: The entire revenue-sharing issue [Feb. 1] is nothing but politics. President Nixon is fully aware that the Congress will not go for it; Wilbur Mills self-righteously feels that if he raises the money, he ought to spend it.

The solution to the problem is so simple that it is obvious that no one in Washington is serious about the whole thing. All that need be done is for the Congress to lower federal taxes by the $16 billion recommended and permit the states to raise that amount for themselves. And the man who is paying for all this, the lowly taxpayer, might in at least one instance get his money's worth.

GLORIA COLEMAN Lafayette, Calif.

Gentleman Detective

Sir: Along with TIME Book Reviewer Martha Duffy, I deplore the apparent demise of the English gentleman-detective [Feb. 1]. But I must rebut her dismissal of Dame Agatha's prose as more "careless" than Miss Allingham's. Christie people are somehow believable people whom one has met before--for good or ill.

Now it is true that Miss Marple and M. Poirot are getting very old. We face the fact courageously that they may die. But a lot of us will take heart in knowing that Agatha Christie's people, plots and somewhat "careless" prose will remain.

CHARLES I. SHADE Manager, Investigation Division Pendleton Detectives of Mississippi, Inc. Jackson, Miss.

Muddy Blouse Victory

Sir: I have spent over ten years trying to unravel the mystery of muddy-bloused Ulysses Grant's victory over the impeccable Robert E. Lee. Thanks for providing the answer: it was the Sukhomlinov Effect [Feb. 1], of course.

VINCENT J. COPPOLA Houston

Sir: In connection with your short, charming little article on "the Sukhomlinov Effect," I would like to suggest that all military dress uniforms be eliminated. Not only would we enhance our chance of winning wars in the future, but think of all the tax money that would not be wasted. And perhaps if we eliminate some of the glittering glories and unnecessary pageantry of the full-dress parade, more people might be able to see through to what war really is. For the sake of humanity, let us at least consider such a proposal.

RONALD P. STAUFFER Roaring Spring, Pa.

Play of Six-Year-Olds

Sir: Re "New Congress v. Nixon" [Feb. 1]: Good grief! If TIME is telling us the truth, my worst fears have been confirmed. Your article paints the U.S. Congress as nothing but a squabbling group of selfish six-year-olds playing king-of-the-hill and to hell with the public interest.

Has our supposedly democratic "government of the people, by the people, for the people" really degenerated to this disgusting level? Can we survive despite it?

(MRS.) KATHY NEWMAN Milwaukee

Too Many Points

Sir: Of the two Swedish match labels pictured as offensive to the Libyan government [Feb. 1], only one has six-pointed symbols similar to the Israeli star, while the other has seven-pointed symbols similar to the star of the Jordanian flag.

OLOF WIJK Lerum, Sweden

> The seven-pointed three-star emblem that mistakenly crept into the layout was actually designed by the Swedish Match Company especially for the A rab world.

Black Africa

Sir: Your article "Black Africa a Decade Later" [Feb. 1] is nothing but one of those attempts to undermine and ridicule a people whose wisdom, resources and manpower have been savagely exploited by the empires of the Western world.

Granted, Black Africa has not become in ten years of independence what Western Europe and America have become after centuries of transition. Black Africa has progressed despite intricate problems, irresponsive and irresponsible "neighbors" and exogenously calculated attempts to undermine and cripple her.

LAWSON ALOZIE AKPULONU Chicago

Sir: It was heartwarming to read the account of Black Africa. For those of us who love Africa, even the small successes are "to be cheered. And the large ones will come. They will come.

DALE L. SODERBERG Hamilton, N.Y.

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