Gambling with a Hydra

Sir: Getting in deeper to get out quicker [Feb. 15] sounds like the same old game: we continue to fight the Southeast Asian Hydra; we cut off one head and two grow in its place! Now a new one. And no Hercules in these parts to get the Hydra.

We are a "hooked" gambler, swearing we are "pulling out" of a game that past experience indicates cannot be won due to the odd rules of the "house."

How much longer will we back our gamblers with more chips so they can get out of this mad game?

FULTON PACE

Holly Hill, Fla.

Sir: Isn't it bordering upon the realm of incredibility, that a nation that landed an army upon the sands of Normandy before the eyes of one of the finest armies in the world's history would now require the daily bombing of a small and insecure nation to remove its troops from Viet Nam?

FRANK MCGRATH

Gardner, Kans.

Three Years Ago

Sir: Who would have guessed three years ago that the straight and narrow pathway to success and admiration for a man named William Calley [Feb. 15] would be through his connection with the wholesale slaughter of 102 human beings?

And if that doesn't constitute absurdity, just feast your eyes upon the conflict that made him famous.

JAMES R. GELTZ

Bowling Green, Ohio

Sir: Strange that 1 found humor in your article "The Hero Calley," even as I almost choked to death from indignation.

Certainly Calley is innocent until proven guilty. Assuming he was a terribly mixed-up soldier acting in a very irrational manner, or that he was an eager-to-please young officer following the orders of a mad superior--neither of these would qualify him for hero status. To place him on a pedestal and deluge him with fan mail is to me incomprehensible.

LEE SMITHOOVER

Pittsburgh

Sir: It reminds me of the old westerns with the Vietnamese replacing the Indians and Calley the Cavalry.

Next someone will want to make a movie about him!

BETSY BOYCE

Washington

Adjusted Later

Sir: Congratulations are in order for your excellent article on "The Welfare Maze" [Feb. 8]. However, I would like to reply to some of the critics of President Nixon's Family Assistance Program (FAP) who say it is not enough or is insufficient in its incentives to get people off of wel fare. What they overlook is the principle involved in FAP. For the first time in American history, the Government is preparing to offer a federally guaranteed income. Once this principle is established as law, all Americans will be entitled to an ensured basic income (and security). After passage of FAP, the program can be implemented and adjusted to meet the needs of the welfare recipient.

TERRENCE THOMPSON

Whittier, Calif.

Sir: After reading your article on welfare, a social caseworker like myself can offer only one alternative: when a hungry man comes to ask your help, do not give him a fish, rather teach him how to catch a fish.

THOMAS F. PAWLOWSKI

Rahway, N.J.

Sir: Robin Hood robbed the rich to give to the poor. President Nixon's welfare reform legislation would rob the near-poor to give to the poor.

Perhaps the President and the social engineers around him have forgotten that each dollar they dispense from the Treasury to increase the standard of living of one family must first be taken away from another family whose standard of living must be accordingly decreased.

GARVAN F. KUSKEY, D.D.S.

Santa Barbara, Calif.

Above the Elk and the Moose

Sir: It doesn't make me feel very proud to see my state government rate as poorly as it did in that survey of state legislatures [Feb. 15], and I wish I could spend this time writing you on their behalf --but I can't. Unfortunately, they are very insensitive to the opinions of those they supposedly represent. Those with some integrity are naive and seem incapable of differentiating between industry-oriented nonsense and sound thinking. As a group, they are unaware of those resources that make our state great, consistently placing Union Pacific coal interests above trout, elk and moose habitats. The people of the state, even those directly benefiting from "industrial progress," do not agree with their priorities.

PAUL BUJAK

Laramie, Wyo.

Sir: Hats off to the North Carolina legislature for receiving No. 47 in the state legislature ratings. We feel sure that our progressive state legislature will achieve No. 46 by the year 1999, maybe.

We also salute North Carolina's great gubernatorial power, who, despite his veto handicap (North Carolina Governors do not have the power of veto), proclaims such earthshaking events as "North Carolina Possum Pickin' Day," "National Hollerin' Day" and "Frog Jumping Day."

R. BURTON SYDNOR JR.

JOHNNIE L. MIZELL

Greenville, N.C.

Still Dissenting

Sir: I think it is especially interesting that one of the liberal judges mentioned in your article "Speaking Out in Germany" [Feb. 15] is Fabian von Schlabrendorff. Nearly 30 years ago while still a young officer in the Wehrmacht, Von Schlabrendorff was involved in a number of plots to assassinate Hitler.

FORMAN S. JOHNSTON

Detroit

Mellowed Cheese

Sir: Since when is moral cowardice, the violation of sacred pledges and the abdication of a college president's responsibility to his students and their parents labeled as "mellowing"?

Mellowed cheese, such as Limburger, has gastronomical possibilities. Mellowed presidents, however, such as Notre Dame's Father Theodore Hesburgh [Feb. 15], are too soft and ripe for the palates of many Catholic parents.

MRS. ANTHONY R. BLACK

South Bend, Ind.

Another Union

Sir: The reviewer for Ward Just's book Military Men [Feb. 8] ended with the question: "In the complex, chaotic America of today, can a citizen's army really work?" The answer is implicit in Just's book. It is that military men are not citizens of the U.S. They live "on post," a country on the other side of guard gates and cable fences, a land with its own doctrine and traditions, its own norms for dress and grooming, its own schools, its own ideas of the past and future, its own newspapers with their own ideas about the present, its own ideas about management and labor and democracy, its own social circles, its own churches and chaplains, its own hospitals, even its very own five-sided capitol. And to regulate it all, a separate code of justice.

Sometime in the last 20 years, the military men seceded from the union, and Ward Just is one of the rare souls who has noticed.

SP5 PHILIP F. DEAVER

Frankfurt, Germany

A Positive Response

Sir: I read Sergeant Joseph Wambaugh's book The New Centurions [Feb. 15] and was sorry to hear that he was officially admonished by L.A. Police Chief Edward M. Davis. He should have been given a citation for the compassionate insight he renders into the life of a cop. He successfully delineates the humanism of the policeman trying to do an impossible job. Wambaugh does more than "keep out of trouble with the reader," he evokes a positive response toward this clannish group of men who know.

PETER J. TURNER

Portland, Me.

Brilliant Necklace

Sir: Naturally, in our homes we have TV, which we often watch; and when the American astronauts were making their first unprecedented moon trip, we were looking on the screens most eagerly. And now we have learned from the press about Apollo 14 [Feb. 22] and its tremendous success. We are proud of our Soviet motherland's own great achievements in space research, but equally we are delighted by this brilliant necklace of heroic moon trips of the American astronauts. It is my desire that others should join with our two great countries in peaceful cooperation in space research to the good of man!

IGOR MIKHAILUSENKO

Moscow

Later '40s

Sir: In your Business section, you ran pictures of our lovely stewardesses [Feb. 8], who definitely are unisex--all female. However, the young lady with the long skirt is modeling our later '40s attire, not our new 1971 field flowers collection.

This new wardrobe has a long midi-coat, but the skirts are mini and the girls also will have the option of wearing pants. Nowhere in sight are shorts. Just to keep the record straight.

SYLVAN M. BARNET JR.

Vice President, Public Relations

American Airlines

Manhattan

Obvious Lesson

Sir: T.E. Kalem's review of Waiting for Godot [Feb. 15] was extraordinarily cogent, searching and just. Confronted with Beckett's grim, masochistic hopelessness, your reviewer felt impelled to cite history's obvious lesson: man has never stopped, only suffered interruptions, in his advance to a more humane world. This is reality.

The review was not only a brilliant report on a play; it was, it is not too much to say, a tract for our times.

BENJAMIN RUDER

Manhattan

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