Ending the Great Giveaway

Sir: So the Senate has killed foreign aid [Nov. 8], for the time being at least. Bureaucrats and dictatorships around the world can howl and mourn. The great "support America or else" giveaway has ended.

It is too bad, however, for the Bengalis and other innocent victims of disaster and turmoil. But they should not fear. Americans are a compassionate and benevolent people. Think of how much they could give to charity, food programs and disaster relief if they were not taxed to support the Viet Nam War, Selective Service, incompetent big business and go-carts on the moon.

Foreign aid will rise again, probably in altered form. The Senate will think twice about America's role as global cop and sugar daddy.

JURIS KAZA Newton, Mass.

Sir: The Senate action in halting foreign aid is too good to be true--and probably won't last, as sanity in Congress is as ephemeral as the rainbow--but it was long, long past due.

The pocketbooks of American taxpayers have been drained, and the blood of their youth sacrificed, for the welfare of other nations, who at every opportunity treat us with the special kind of contempt reserved for suckers.

HERMAN S. KING Newport News, Va.

Sir: The reasons given for the Senate's action in cutting off foreign aid can only be disconcerting to those who expect competence in their elected officials.

Neither childish retribution, misread signs, weekend anxiety nor the absence of 32 Senators can justify such a colossal blunder.

Are these the men who shape the nation's future?

CHARLES H. CHRISTIANSEN

Lieutenant, U.S.A.F.

Scott A.F.B., III.

Forgiven If Not Forgotten

Sir: From the noise made about our so-called defeat in the U.N. [Nov. 8], it seems like we are supposed to be suffering from a mass sense of men culpa. But whose fault was it that Red China vas branded an aggressor by the U.N.?

We have forgiven if not forgotten the Japanese and Germans since W.W. II. We live with them because we cannot live without them. We now join Red China for the same reason.

MALCOLM ROSHOLT Rosholt, Wis.

Sir: An able historian should now start the first volume on the decline and fall of the United States of America.

DARIUS D. BUELL Elmira, Mich.

Sir: Since when does a small group of cutthroats represent 750 million people? Have they ever held a democratic, free election in Communist China?

LARRY BURTON Rockford, Ill.

Sir: By what stretch of your imagination could possible Chinese leadership of "an anticolonialist drive on the white minority regime in South Africa" be termed "real trouble"? Trouble for whom? Certainly it would not be trouble for the majority population of millions of suppressed black people in South Africa.

CAROLYN B. HUFF Atlanta

Idiotic History

Sir: It is amazing that anyone would buy L.B.J.'s memoirs [Nov. 8] and thereby eat the same old sanctimonious bunk and lies that have already been fed us once during the past several years. Paying for this claptrap is like paying for the Viet Nam War, which is one long, idiotic history of throwing good money after bad.

PAUL KAPLAN Coral Gables, Fla.

Sir: Hugh Sidey's assessment of Lyndon B. Johnson should be preserved in the National Archives as the best assessment to date of the vainest, most temperamental, blundering egotist to serve in the White House.

STEVE J. VEKICH Marietta, Ohio

How Much on the Left Bank?

Sir: Picasso [Nov. 1], artist of the century? Well, maybe. Who am I to argue with the millions of better qualified art experts who say so?

But if one of these experts had spent his life on a desert island, unconditioned by any knowledge of modern art--or, to be fair, by any knowledge of traditional great masters either--and suddenly came back to normal society as a reasonably intelligent man with a well-developed appreciation of beauty, I wonder how many of these paintings he would buy from a Left Bank stall for a dollar apiece.

CARL H. PETERSON Ibiza, Spain

Sir: Why does Pablo Diego Jose Francisco de Paula Juan Nepomuceno Crispin Crispiniano de la Santisima Trinidad Ruiz Picasso choose to call himself Picasso? In traditional Spanish, the last name is the mother's maiden name. It should always be used in connection with the father's surname, which in this case is Ruiz.

CARLOS R. WEISSENBERG Guatemala City, Guatemala

^ Around the turn of the century, the young artist decided to use Picasso alone because it was less common than Ruiz and to show his affection for his mother.

Misplaced

Sir: In your story discussing the cyclical machine-tool business [Nov. 1], you included the following: "Carl L. Sadler, president of Cincinnati's Sundstrand Corp."

I wish to point out that Sundstrand Corp. is a multidivisional firm headquartered in Rockford, 111.

CARL L. SADLER

President

Sundstrand Corp.

Rockford, 111.

Russian Catastrophe

Sir: For the Russians to lose the race to the moon, it was a disappointment, but to lose the World Chess Championship will be a catastrophe, especially if the winner is American Bobby Fischer [Nov. 8]. It is akin to the Russians sending us football, basketball and baseball teams and then beating the Colts, the Celtics and the Orioles, all on the same day!

J.C. DE LA TORRE, M.D. Chicago

Sir: I have studied all nine games between Fischer and Petrosian and came to the conclusion that your Grand Master Bobby Fischer, so far, was just lucky.

ALEX HAZARIAN Teheran

Credit to a Partner

Sir: Your article on the destruction of the Chicago Stock Exchange Building [Nov. 1] was appreciated by all of us who worked so hard to save this landmark.

The Stock Exchange, however, and all of the "39 Sullivan buildings," with the exception of the Carson Pirie store, were the work of the partnership of Dankmar Adler and Louis Sullivan. It was Adler who designed the floating caisson foundations that supported one wall of the Stock Exchange, thereby ending the problem of uneven settlement of buildings. Many of the firm's building designs were due to Adler's engineering expertise. Although I speak with a certain prejudice as Adler's granddaughter, architectural historians agree that much credit given to Sullivan alone belongs to his partner as well. JOAN W. SALTZSTEIN Milwaukee

The Greater Bias

Sir: We wonder why Gloria Steinem [Nov. 8] fails to carry her drive for feminine equality to its logical end. While the title "Ms." may well help destroy prejudicial distinctions between married and unmarried women, it still invites the greater bias applied to all women.

Why not, we posit, simply address everyone as "Mr.," thereby reducing the chance for the printed word to contribute to Ms. Steinem's dilemma? Thus, if we were to receive a letter from a Mr. G. Steinem, no prejudgment could be made on the premise that the writer is good-looking, famous and a woman.

(MR.) WILLIAM E. GREFFIN

(MR.) ROBERT IVANISZEK

Mather A.F.B., Calif.

Due Credit

Sir: In your article "Occupational Hazard" [Nov. 1] you referred to the story The Emperor's New Clothes and claimed it was first described by Hans Christian Andersen in 1837. This is entirely incorrect. From our current study of Spanish literature, we know that the idea for The Emperor's New Clothes was first conceived by Don Juan Manuel, who lived from 1282 to 1348.

We believe credit should be given where credit is due.

SPANISH IV CLASS Marquette High School

Michigan City, Ind.

>To give credit where it is due: Hans Christian Andersen noted, "We are indebted to the Spanish author, Prince Don [Juan] Manuel, for this amusing idea."

Two Types?

Sir: Saying there are only two types of Texans is like saying there are only two types of writers: pornographic and comic book. That article on the Texas State Fair [Nov. 1] was an insult--to Texas, yes; but mostly to you and your writer.

(MRS.) PAMELA S. STRANGE Kilgore, Texas

Sir: Re your article on the Texas State Fair: I have never known a Texan who drank rye whisky, unless he had just moved here from "Fun City." I have heard very few who speak with the accent indicated in the article, but then I live in South Texas, where we speak with a Spanish accent. New York's various boroughs speak a strange English too.

I think poor Mark Goodman has lost contact with reality, or at least the real world west of the Hudson. Would you really believe that some of us like it out here even better than we liked New York? LAWRENCE HENRI WHITMIRF. Houston

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