Point of Honor

To the Editors: Cheating is not new at West Point [June 7], or in any school, despite codes of honor. But to have it reach the proportions suggested in the recent investigations strikes deep at a moral core. Are the lines between right and wrong, the lines between power and impotence, between success and failure so blurred that any means justifies the end? The specter of T.S. Eliot's "hollow men" looms over our Bicentennial.

Rebecca Peterson Los Altos Hills, Calif.

Your pictures told the story: the shaved heads, "beast barracks," the cruel faces of the plebes in formation, and the frightened clods being hazed or braced. Militarism, be it American or Prussian, is a stupid, vicious anachronism. Honor code? What honor is there in Balaclava, the Somme, Belsen, Dresden, Hiroshima and My Lai?

Alex T. Merrick Agoura, Calif.

When I taught there in the '50s, the instructors at West Point had a joke about the honor system: the Academy had the honor, but the cadets had the system!

Pierre C. Haber New York City

West Point provides a transition from Main Street, U.S.A., to the battlefield. Would you rather trust your son to the command of an officer who you know is honorable and whose integrity is of the highest order or to an officer who lies, cheats, steals and tolerates his peers who do?

Is it less dishonorable to lie about shining shoes than it is about an order under battle conditions? Can a woman be a little bit pregnant? I have just returned from my 40th reunion at West Point with the consoling conviction that the corps today, the current crisis notwithstanding, embraces the same sense of honor that has sustained it for 174 years. The corps will rid itself of the very few who don't measure up to its standards.

L.E. Laurion, USMA '36 Wichita, Kans.

The prime difference between the way things are done at the Point and the way they are done on the Severn is that the Naval Academy system is somewhat more realistic in terms of human behavior. You are expected to conform to the Naval Academy's standards for behavior and its regulations. If you are caught committing a breach of conduct or an "offense," you are punished and pay the price. At West Point, the system, in addition to having the built-in potential for abuse also has the built-in mechanism for self-destruction pointed out in your article. It is somewhat analogous to the zealous Red Guard self-destruction syndrome which became a part of the Cultural Revolution in Red China. Systems like these are born in fear and inadequacy and ultimately lead to abuses, temptations and recriminations.

Harold E. Collins, USNA '52 Commander, U.S. Navy (ret.) Rockvilie, Md.

Sex on the Hill

Let's not blame a working girl like Elizabeth Ray for making Hays while the sun shines [June 7]. The Ohio Representative pays for his fun with our money -a clear case of taxation without representation.

Harold Willens Los Angeles

So the hideaway where Elizabeth Ray and other women worked on Representative Wayne Hays' projects was known as the "Board of Education." This Board of Education never complained about "bussing," did it?

Arthur H. Prince Memphis

In view of the many programs that Congress funds with our money, it is refreshing to find out that at least one American is being paid for what Congress has been doing to the country for years.

Darrell Kerrnoade Denver

Listening to Paul

Your cover story [May 31] was the first in-depth study that didn't criticize Paul McCartney's capriciousness, sentimentality, pop dabbling at the expense of classicism and, most ungodly, his flaunting of marital bliss.

It's about time. Enough critical pedantry. This true musical genius has given us a range of tunes and lyrics that has encompassed variable moods from the foot-tapping youthful memories of Listen to What the Man Said to the bourbon-sipping lost-love pining of Yesterday. Keep the silly love songs coming, Paul.

Gary Tambrin Jamaica, N. Y.

To est Or Not To est

John Leo's article on est [June 7] moves me to write. I am a real estate broker in Los Angeles and since I took the est training a year and a half ago my income has nearly doubled, my relationship with my wife, which was O.K., has flowered into a beautiful thing and, most dramatically, my father and I, after 43 years of not communicating, have become fast friends.

Derek Roberts Los Angeles

est can be compared to parachuting from an airplane at 4,000 feet in that it is something that must be experienced. The est experience can be achieved only by attending the entire training and keeping the basic agreements. The first agreement is to keep our souls in the room at all times during the training. The second agreement is not to reveal contents of the training except through our experience.

Your writer failed to keep these agreements. I severely question the degree to which Mr. Leo's life works. It seems he has chosen to be the effect rather than the cause of his life.

Greg Powers Indianapolis

You can get the feeling of an est weekend by pounding your finger with a hammer. It feels so good when you stop.

L. V. Beck Stamford, Conn.

No Pure Ideas

The charge of plagiarism against my book Passages [May 10] is wholly false. There are no precise facts when one is examining the human personality. And there are almost no pure ideas: everyone has been influenced by someone who has gone before. We are all students of Freud. In this instance, the original theory came from Erik Erikson. Most of the current research, I discovered, was being done by men who were studying other men. I focused on-the life stages of women, and once it became apparent that the development rhythms of the two sexes are strikingly unsynchronized, I went on to examine the predictable crises for couples.

My book makes no claim to be the definitive work on adult development. Readers will take from it whatever clicks of recognition apply to them, or to their friends and loved ones. Indeed, some of the sharpest insights into the human personality have come not from psychologists but from writers, many of whom are also cited in the 50 pages of footnotes, bibliography and index that accompany my book.

Gail Sheehy New York City

Ire in Eire

As a consequence of suffering the tensions of the Irish doublespeak [May 24], the Irish insensibility to romantic love, their ridicule of tragic feeling, the refusal, repression and escapism of a defensive people who fear their private thoughts and desires, I have now reached the critical level of ambiguity that is helping to produce schizophrenia and, regretfully, yet another emigrant.

Bernard O'Sullivan Cork, Ireland

That Quiet Concorde

My auditory feathers sure get ruffled when I read of the hypocrites who condemn the Concorde because for a few minutes upon takeoff the noise level reaches 129 decibels [June 7]. These same hypocrites sit for hours and listen to a rock group playing (or rather making noise) at anywhere between 120 and 130 decibels.

I suggest that these so-called environmentalists keep listening to their music and before long they will not even hear the Concorde take off.

Al Guerrini Modesto, Calif.

Bad Company

Your review of John Ehrlichman's novel, The Company [May 31], instigated the following speculation. If other historical miscreants had written novels based on their experiences, American literature would have been enriched by the following: a psychological study of treason by Benedict Arnold, detailing how a simple soldier was pressured by society to become a turncoat: a thriller by John Wilkes Booth showing how he was really a misunderstood hero who had been seduced into crime by evil Yankee villainy; a political novel by Jefferson Davis, describing the daily life and irritations of a fictional President.

John F. Kusske St. Paul, Minn.

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