A True Happening

Sir / The Democratic Convention, as reported and illustrated in TIME [July 24], appeared to be nothing less than a true happening. All advance signs of the forthcoming Republican Convention indicate it will probably be one long dental appointment.

SID SKOLNIK

Encino, Calif.

Sir / At least George McGovern wouldn't think he had been elected President of the whole world.

Spending our resources to make this country what it should be will export more democracy, if that is our goal, than continuous foreign intervention and involvement.

DANIEL EAST

Peoria, Ill.

Sir / As a first-time voter and a McGovern volunteer, I am really becoming fed up with political analysts telling the world that I am going to become disillusioned with Senator McGovern for modifying his position on some issues between now and November.

I am not trying to elect some self-righteous dictator who scorns any change or ideas different from his own. That is what we are trying to replace!

I would merely like to see a good and decent man become President of this country, and I trust McGovern's judgment in any necessary compromise with different factions of our nation.

ELIZABETH DALY

Hartford, Conn.

Sir / TIME describes George McGovern's triumph in Miami Beach as a miracle.

In a way, it is as much so as the miracle of the volcanic eruption on Krakatoa, or the miracle of Hurricane Agnes, or the miracles of the many other disasters that have devastated numerous areas of the world at various times throughout history.

ROBERT E. WALTERS

Columbus

Sir / George McGovern must be stupidly naive if he honestly expects Hanoi to give us back our P.O.W.s. No amount of begging will do it. Two reasons: first. North Viet Nam's wish to humiliate the U.S.; and second, its desire to obtain reparations, which I'd call ransom. The price will come high.

If McGovern wins, our nation will have turned full circle. It will be "millions for tribute, but not one cent for defense."

N.B. DISMUKES

Dallas

Sir / Someone should tell Senator "Share the Wealth and Emasculate the Commonwealth" McGovern that we no longer live in Sherwood Forest.

MRS. M.L. BILSBOROUGH

West Lafayette, Ind.

Sir / Your coverage of the Democratic Convention suggests that history is once more repeating itself, this time after 760 years.

The McGovern campaign is another Children's Crusade, as foolish as the first and equally destined to fail.

HERMAN W. LIEBERT

New Haven, Conn.

Sir / In reading your account of the sources of several of the phrases in Candidate McGovern's acceptance speech, I was curious about the inspiration for the "Come home. America" theme. As a Methodist P.K. (preacher's kid) of McGovern's generation, I recall singing many times the gospel-hymn chorus that goes:

Come home, come home,

Ye who are weary, come home;

Earnestly, tenderly, Jesus is calling,

Calling, O sinner, come home.

JOANNAS. BURRIS

Pemberton, N.J.

Nobel for Nixon?

Sir / In nominating Richard Nixon for the Nobel Peace Prize [July 24], I guess Senator Hugh Scott expects us to ignore the thousands of massacred and napalmed Vietnamese, as well as their destroyed farms and villages--victims of this Administration's Vietnamization policy. Or isn't this of consequence?

PHIL HALL

Milwaukee

Sir / Joke of the Year: Richard M. Nixon being nominated for the Nobel Peace Prize.

R.A. RUSSO

Lackawanna, N.Y.

The Unknown Soldier

Sir / The lack of a single unknown soldier from the Viet Nam War [July 24] seems to indicate that a monument would be better dedicated to another cause. As the wife of an American serviceman missing in action in Viet Nam, may I suggest that it be erected to our prisoners of war and missing men?

With some of our men enduring their seventh year of captivity, and the possibility of a complete accounting of the missing becoming more remote each day, the sacrifices of these brave men certainly deserve special recognition.

SUSAN D. PARSONS

Palo Alto, Calif.

Sir / It makes some kind of sense: a useless tomb to represent our useless involvement in the war.

LAURA INVEEN

Gig Harbor, Wash.

Sir / The Defense Department, which says there have been no unknown soldiers killed in Viet Nam, is as usual less efficient than it would lead you to believe. While serving as an Army pathologist in Viet Nam in 1969-70, I visited the Tan Son Nhut mortuary near Saigon and had the unfortunate experience of viewing a collection of unidentified remains of U.S. soldiers. Some of these remains had defied the most "expert" means of identification for many, many months.

I would suspect that these unidentified are presently buried in the pool of the "missing" and that some will be found "in a final sweep of the battlefield."

JAMES M. O'HARA, M.D.

Miami Lakes, Fla.

Magnetic Bestiality

Sir / Thank God for people like Robert Hughes [July 17] who can penetrate the mist of emotional appeal, see it exactly for what it is, how it originated and what it is doing. I went to the Stones' concert unprepared and was overwhelmed by a force that left me stunned and thoroughly confused. I did not know if what I had experienced was evil or beautiful, but I felt at the moment that it was enormously cryptic and mystical. It seemed to me that the human mind was powerless to comprehend this phenomenon. The next day, however, I read TIME'S Essay, and I then realized I had only witnessed the pent-up bitterness of an English adolescent-man transformed into incomparable magnetic bestiality.

ANN LOVGREN

Indianapolis

Smart Aleck?

Sir / Noting your attempt to portray Dick Cavett as a "literate" person [June 17], I am writing to say that he strikes me as an almost psychotic smart aleck who makes a defiant attempt to cover his inadequacies with a contemptuous, snotty front.

There are so many other individuals so much better suited to hosting a talk show that it is to be hoped that ABC will find one, maybe this time a female.

RUDY VALLEE

Hollywood

Problems for Monogamists

Sir / Re Germaine Greer's falling in love [July 17]: After reading her brilliant and incisive dissertations against the male and specifically against marriage, I cannot help feeling concerned over the conflicts that this high priestess has brought to untold thousands of monogamists all over the world. Where does she leave them now? She cannot blame female weakness because she has convinced all of us that this is a non-thing.

FRANK CAUCHI

London, Ont.

Cup of Hemlock

Sir / Dr. John H. Knowles has said needful, pithy things [July 17], but the ease with which he discards the efforts of other men and the cynicism of his looks at contemporary American medicine have taught us --the new generation of physicians--to listen to the Great Voices of academic and institutional authority with skepticism and distrust.

Now Knowles must be prepared to accept the same questioning and criticism from those he taught so well. Maybe like the earlier "corrupter of youth," he will ultimately be offered the cup of hemlock.

PETER C. BLACK, M.D.

Chief Medical Resident

Veterans Administration Hospital

Martinez, Calif.

Sir / Dr. John Knowles, the much-needed Ralph Nader of the medical scene.

MRS. J.D. PHILLIPS

Woods Hole, Mass.

Sir / I admire John Knowles for his ability as a medical organizer, but his knowledge of furniture in 1964 was somewhat less than professional. Those old wooden benches he had thrown out of Massachusetts General Hospital are known in the antiques trade as deacon's benches, made about 1840, and are now collector's items. I managed to save one from going to the dump when I was a medical art student at Massachusetts General. After removal of seven coats of paint and loving restoration, it now graces my living room.

JUDITH E. HARRINGTON

Brookfield, Mass.

Sympathetic Strangulation

Sir / Although Biblical Scholar Kenneth Taylor [July 24] says he does not want to emulate William Tyndale in his manner of death by strangulation and burning, Taylor is evidently experiencing, through his sudden hoarseness, a sort of sympathetic strangulation--self-imposed in the absence of an authentic executioner.

(MRS.) DOROTHY G. WATKINS

Columbus

A Fine Final at Wimbledon

Sir / What motivates your sportswriter to produce such balderdash as he does in his story about the tennis at Wimbledon [July 17]? While deferring to nobody in my joy and appreciation of the wonderful semifinal between Chrissie Evert and Evonne Goo-lagong, it was my opinion and that of everyone to whom I talked that the men's singles final between Stan Smith and Illie Nastase was a tremendous climax to Wimbledon. It was one of the finest and most exciting finals ever played.

PHILIP M. BLOOM

London

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