Nixon, Chamberlain and China

Sir: Your cover story's enthusiasm over Mr. Nixon's forthcoming trip [July 26] hasn't been equaled since a certain day in late 1938. Tell me, when he returns will he be carrying an umbrella? And will he exuberantly wave a piece of paper at us from the steps of his plane?

OLIVER PACINI Portland, Ore.

Sir: I cannot help approving of President Nixon's proposed trip to Red China. Knee-jerk anti-Communists will quote the history of broken treaties by Communist countries as an excuse for isolating this political dogma, but the wise man uses history to his advantage and does not make himself a prisoner of it. The past should make us wary, but it should not paralyze our will to seek a better world through constant reappraisal of our own policies as well as those we oppose.

JOHN H. THOMAS Charlotte, N.C.

Sir: I submit that if the U.S. can tolerate a Communist dictatorship 90 miles from its shores, Chairman Mao and his countrymen can coexist with a non-Communist Taiwan, which, although it doesn't meet our standards of democracy, is a veritable bastion of freedom and individual opportunity compared with mainland China.

ROBERT BOLIN Hillsboro, Ore.

Sir: Nixon's planned visit to Peking is more significant in sounding the death knell of the Chiang regime than in opening the door to the U.N. for Communist China. Let the world not forget that the responsibility for the loss of China to the Communists must be laid squarely on the shoulders of Chiang and his in-laws. No amount of whitewash could cleanse them of their guilt of misrule, corruption and greed. Shed no tears for their demise.

GLORIA LIEU Detroit

Sir: For sheer cynicism, President Nixon's new Ostpolitik is not without historical precedent.

"The political art in foreign affairs is to reduce the number of enemies of one's country and to turn yesterday's enemies into good neighbors."--Molotov, Aug. 31, 1939, explaining the Soviet-German Pact.

PETER SIMMEL Culver City, Calif.

Sir: It's comic opera. Were Gilbert and Sullivan still around, they might set it to music. If world peace is really the issue, wouldn't open talk be more fruitful and more "disarming" than all this pussyfooting, this you-tell-them-for-us-but-keep-it-secret diplomacy?

How can TIME and other once sensible voices hail this rapprochement with mainland China as a coup for Nixon? It is the long-overdue attempt to correct an absurd situation of our own making. Other heads of state have recognized the reality of the People's Republic of China, but none has been credited with a diplomatic victory.

BONNIE BORTLE Cambridge, Mass.

Aunt Ruth?

Sir: Ruth Brine is an Uncle Tom of the female s"x [Essay, July 26]. It is easy to find fault with any movement. In criticizing a handful of already "liberated" authors for too much "consciousness raising," she missed the whole point: until men and women in all strata of American society, not just the elite leadership, learn that human potential extends beyond sexual roles, then precious little will be accomplished.

JOAN I. SAMUELSON Poway, Calif.

Sir: Congratulations to Ruth Brine for her levelheaded Essay on Women's Lib. I, for one, am tired of having to re-explain reasonable goals to family and friends accustomed to ridiculing what they believe to be a movement of monomaniacal sexual freaks. Restricting a woman's right to be her most complete self is a barbarism most people of both sexes denounce. It is a shame to lose respect and support through irresponsible extremism.

JANET L. HAWK Woodbridge, N.J.

Sir: Your Essay on Women's Lib was right on, although too close for comfort. I have just resigned my position as the only female school business administrator in the state of New Hampshire--a position I grew into after serving an apprenticeship of eight years as an executive assistant. After working night and day plus weekends for over one year, losing my month's leave in the process, and being refused an assistant to help with the mounting paper work, I quit in disgust to return to college full time. Would you believe that they are replacing me with a male at $5,000 more per year, and to top it off, giving him an assistant? But to get back to Women's Lib: help!

RITA B. GEORGE Rochester, N.H.

Early Bell

Sir: Your report on Superintendent Wilson Riles' plan [July 26] to cope with preschool learning and the problems of boredom and teacher obsolescence was interesting and frightening at the same time. Has Riles considered the possible effects of his plan upon the family particularly? Possibly educational acceleration at the earlier age levels only serves to increase parental obsolescence.

And again, if "readiness" for first grade is to be five years of age, simple calculations indicate that prenursery training will necessarily be at two years of age. It would seem that new changes in education are not only eliminating the problems of education, but will in the future serve to eliminate family care as well.

CHARLES S. PALAZZOLO

Department of Sociology

Villanova University

Villanova, Pa.

Hell and Back

Sir: I was amused by your article on Frank Behrens' Dante's Infernal Guide to Your School [July 26]. The first two illustrations are actually from the Purgatorio. This may reveal an unconscious faith in the school system after all. The torments in purgatory, says Dante, "at worst cannot go beyond the great Judgment."

PATRICIA BREITZER Lexington, Ky.

Safety in Cans

Sir: The advice of health authorities to boil canned foods in order to destroy the botulinum toxin [July 19] is misdirected caution. Of the 70 billion cans of commercial food products consumed in the U.S. each year, more than 70%, by their nature, will not support the growth of Clostridium botulinum. Such products are beer, soft drinks, frozen citrus concentrate, ade, citrus sections and a host of other fruits, vegetables and other food items.

Boiling the 25% to 30% of the remaining food products seems to be somewhat redundant. Based on your report, the odds of dying by botulism poisoning from commercially canned foods are on the order of one in one billion.

JOHN DICKINSON

Continental Can Co., Inc.

Houston

P: The story failed to make clear that boiling is a recommended safety measure only for non-acidic foods canned at home, not for commercially canned products.

Dedication's Bread

Sir: Father Victor Salandini's symbolic act in offering Mass with a tortilla [July 26] was a beautiful expression of a priest's dedication and identification with the culture and struggle of Chicano farm workers.

To those who look upon this action as irregular or defiant of church authority, I have this to ask: How many priests have ever been disciplined for their racist and condemning attitudes toward Mexicans and blacks? How many priests and bishops would feel as much at ease sharing the bread of la raza as they would eating steak and drinking Scotch with the growers and their allies?

(THE REV.) MARK DAY, O.F.M. Los Angeles

Art at Any Price

Sir: How absurd to say, as TIME does in the Essay "Who Needs Masterpieces at Those Prices?" [July 19], that "in America today, nobody needs another Titian --not at those prices." America does need masterpieces, and the high cost is created not by the "rapacity" of museums but by the extreme rarity of these masterpieces (the Velazquez and the Titian are probably the last great masterpieces ever to go on sale) and by inflation.

The Metropolitan Museum, in purchasing the Velazquez, was simply performing one of the principal functions of a museum, acquiring a great work of art. The painting was purchased with funds restricted solely to art purchases; we could not have used the money otherwise.

We sought to create among other U.S. museums a "purchase syndicate" whereby the picture would be jointly owned by the participating museums, and the painting would have been regularly on view in these museums on a rotating basis. This plan, unfortunately, did not succeed. I hope that in the future closer cooperation among museums will reverse the trend toward ever-increasing prices for works of art. In the meantime, I like to think that most Americans feel a sense of joy and enrichment in having this great Velazquez come to this country and realize that its price tag will eventually disappear.

THOMAS HOVING Director

The Metropolitan Museum of Art New York City

The Quality of Hookers

Sir: You say, "New Yorkers were treated to the rare sight of a virtually hookerless Times Square" [July 26]. As one who often strolls through Times Square without encountering any insurmountable difficulty, may I suggest it would be much more of a treat to see empty prisons than empty streets. Prisons have a bad enough effect on real criminals without our adding to the problem with all sorts of unnecessary "crimes." If the Manhattan hooker is, as you recently said, "feral," it is only because the rest of us have made her that way. A nation gets the kind of whores it deserves.

JOHN CLARK New Hyde Park, N.Y.

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