Nixon's Choice

Sir / Remember when it became public knowledge about Thomas Eagleton's past problems and everyone was down on Senator McGovern for selecting a running mate without knowing the man's past?

Look what we have now with President Nixon's choice!

LYNETTE LAPPIN

Pasadena, Calif.

Sir / Watergate, Agnew--who comes next in the hate parade of the networks and the press?

(MRS.) LILLIAN P. DAVIS

Knoxville, Tenn.

Sir / I cannot understand why Vice President Spiro Agnew thinks he needs to hire a team of lawyers to keep the Baltimore grand jury from proving him innocent, as he has continuously professed his innocence since the investigation into his political activities began.

HAROLD TIRSCHWELL

Forest Hills, N.Y.

Sir / Anybody can find something dishonest about any person's life. Why don't you do research on Sam Ervin's life and find out about the time he accepted candy from his aunt. Who is to distinguish between a bribe and a gift?

Even if the accusations you report turn out to be true, that happened a long time ago and people do change.

SPENCER MCBRIDE

North Manchester, Ind.

Sextuplets and Ethics

Sir / In regard to the Stanek sextuplets [Oct. 1], I see nothing commendable in the fact that medical science now makes it possible for a couple that wants another child to have six instead.

We constantly hear about the population explosion, and yet this seemingly casual experimentation with fertility drugs goes on. And the Staneks already had one natural child. Why not adopt?

MAUREEN COLE

Miamisburg, Ohio

Prisons and Bleeding Hearts

Sir / After reading the review of Kind and Usual Punishment [Sept. 24], I am more thoroughly convinced than ever that the startling rise in the crime rate is due, to a great extent, to the misplaced sympathy of bleeding hearts such as Author Jessica Mitford and organizations such as the American Civil Liberties Union.

Mitford uses the fact that only 1 l/2% 1/2% of our criminals are imprisoned as an argument in favor of abolishing prisons and turning all thugs, rapists and murderers loose on society. The threat of a prison sentence doesn't deter criminals, she says. Why should it, with all the odds stacked in their favor?

If we are getting too soft and too "civilized" to defend ourselves against the criminal element in our society, then we deserve just what we are getting.

WILBUR J. DOWD

Madison, Conn.

Sir / I have been in prison as a draft dodger, felt the utter despair it breeds, and live with the alienation, fear and more violent attitude it left with me. I cannot say whether Jessica Mitford exaggerates, as I have read nothing by her. Perhaps she is sensitive to the paralyzing, terrible hopelessness a perceptive convict endures and must fight in order to survive with any pride and belief in himself, as he tries to achieve personal rehabilitation. Some help and a few decent people are found, but the prisoner is on his own in a world subtly the inverse of life outside, to which he must ultimately readjust while dealing simultaneously with his own fears of inferiority, society's possible disapproval, unemployment and the lack of friends.

I know I am not alone in believing that a basic change in society's outlook is the sole way prison reform can be achieved.

LLOYD DENNIS

Lodi, Calif.

The Cuban Four

Sir / I sincerely wonder if Judge Sirica fully realizes the implications of his decisions regarding the "Forgotten Cubans" [Sept. 24]. Their fates, not those of the high-ranking officials implicated in Watergate, will have the most far-reaching effects on the personal lives of Americans. Are we to be programmed and made to perform like Pavlovian dogs and then condemned for what we do at someone else's whim and fancy? If so, we can only choose to balk, question and refuse to obey whenever we perceive the slightest lack of confidence or doubt in the wisdom of those rightfully ordained to be our superiors.

NANCY A. VOGT

Commack, N.Y.

Sir / I was very interested in your piece about the forgotten Cubans. The way it was written makes me think we may have another Sacco-Vanzetti or Dreyfus Case on our hands.

Paul Muni and Burgess Meredith, where are you?

CHRISTOPHER BLAKE

Atlanta

Women's Colleges Are Best

Sir / It was with delight, not distress, that I read "Women: Still Unequal" [Oct. 1]. Clark Kerr reports, the Carnegie Commission endorses and TIME has published a fact that women's colleges have known for much more than a decade. In single-sex institutions young women enjoy the special advantages they cannot obtain elsewhere, namely leadership positions, full participation in all academic activities and an abundance of role models.

Moreover, the data from the 1972 American Council on Education Freshman Survey suggest that women in single-sex institutions tend to expect more of themselves in terms of leadership, personal achievement, social and political responsibility, and service to society.

HELEN THOMPSON, B.V.M.

Academic Dean Clarke College Dubuque, Iowa

Votes for Jackson

Sir / To surrender by compromise on the Jackson amendment [Oct. 1] would be to betray and seal the fate of the many Sakharovs, the countless brave men and women of the U.S.S.R. who have put their necks out for the freedom that we always shout about and supposedly fight wars for. Shame on you for suggesting compromise.

We have both the right and the duty to our ideals to deny our highly valued most-favored-nation status to any government that denies the basic right of emigration to its people. We are, after all, a nation of emigrants.

JOSEPH D. KRAMER

Skokie, 111.

Sir / You give too much credence to Brezhnev's belief in "noninterference in internal affairs" of other countries. After all, who raves and rants more than Russia in the U.N. about the internal affairs of Rhodesia and South Africa?

Also, if we cannot take even the mild step of the Jackson amendment, how can we continue to engage in any sanctions against Rhodesia?

ROBERT BOSTWICK

Somerset, N.J.

Scientists to the Helm

Sir / There was nothing arcane about the approaching energy crisis [Oct. 8]. The present situation could be predicted (and was) at least a decade ago. Remember how Lyndon Johnson was laughed at for turning off the lights in the White House? Instead of going to the moon, we should have gone to the earth. The energy is there, and it will be produced-but not before we have had to pay a handsome tribute to our Arab energy masters.

How could we avoid similar technological traps in the future? Scientists and engineers must get into powerful positions in the Government of the country; a Department of Science and Technology must be formed promptly.

The rank and file of the technological societies must take more interest in the business of politics, and more technically trained individuals must offer themselves as candidates for public office.

ALAN C. NIXON

President American Chemical Society Berkeley, Calif.

Allende the Undemocrat

Sir / To put what happened in Chile in a different perspective, just suppose that Nixon: seized control of the big companies (from which people like Stewart Mott derive their million-plus, nontaxed incomes so that they can donate $200,000 plus to the McGovern campaign); parceled out the Kennedy properties in Massachusetts and Florida to the indigent of those states, while turning his back as people less well off than you seized your (yes, your) property; politicized the military by placing members of that group in his Cabinet; and concluded by tear gassing women protesting meat shortages (while keeping his cupboard and freezer well stocked with fine wines and steaks).

Also, suppose he got into office in the first place with two-thirds of the votes against him! Undemocratic, you say? You bet! Allende did all those things.

(MRS.) LORETTA J. WILLITS

Centre Hall, Pa.

Sir / Your article is a curious mixture of facts, hearsay and insinuations. To what purpose? Take this, for instance: "Despite his Marxist beliefs, Allende savored the good life." A paradox for you, obviously. What about this one: "He drank Scotch ..." What was he supposed to drink? Vodka? The next one gives you much credit: "In addition to his family home, he reportedly had a hideaway to which he would take cronies --and women--and barbecue steaks for them." Really! Well, at least it won't happen again.

VICTOR FERNANDEZ

Stockholm

A Picture of a Mouth

Sir / Bobby Riggs mouths off and gets his picture on the cover of TIME. Billie Jean King shuts him up and gets only a sport story [Oct. 1].

ASHLEY HARRIS BROOME

New Orleans

Sir / Is it too much to hope that Bobby Riggs will now retire into the desert and found a one-man, enclosed, silent order of nuns?

WILLIAM MARTINDALE

Dun Laoghaire, Ireland

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