The U.S. Navy

To the Editors:

Re your story "Attack on the Navy" [May 8]: keeping the sea lanes open is vital to the future of Western Europe and the U.S. The more significant the disparity between U.S. and Soviet naval power, the more serious the threat to the security of the free world. It is imperative that the U.S. increase naval expenditures to meet the Soviet challenge.

Robert Frisby

Rockville, Md.

In evaluating our Navy, we should recall some of its famous mottoes: "Don't give up the dollars," "I have not yet begun to spend," and "Damn the budget cuts, full shipbuilding ahead." Then there is that service's great battle hymn: "Billions away, my boy, billions away..."

Roddy Donoghue

Holyoke, Mass.

Economics dictates strategy. Period. If the Navy doesn't understand this, they'll surely sink our economy through unwise overspending.

Dan Taylor

Parthenon, Ark.

As a Marine I served aboard a five-ship convoy stationed in the Mediterranean during 1976. Our ships were rusty, overworked and in general need of a good overhaul. The Russian ships we encountered were sleek, efficient and menacing looking compared with ours. I was impressed by the Russians, and at the same time I feared for the navy that had to tangle with them. Let's get our Navy back in shape so there will be no question as to who is No. 1 in seapower!

Arthur M. Hays

Tallahassee, Fla.

The story left me frustrated in the realization that the American public must determine the Navy's role in our overall defense program. If the pros can't decide, how can an average landlubber who isn't even sure of the difference between radar and sonar be expected to come up with answers to profound technological questions?

John C. Rose

La Jolla, Calif.

America's Cheops

Robert Hughes' generosity in praising the National Gallery's new East Building [May 8] is far too restrained. It's an achievement in land use, light play and mass as visceral as the pyramids. Thank God this country has a Cheops like Paul Mellon to allow us the esthetic bravado of the likes of I.M. Pei.

Rice Hershey

Cleveland

As every visitor to the museum will notice, there is a small label next to the art object telling who the donor is, Mellon, Kress and so on.

How about changing the wording of the label to "Donated by the labor force of the U.S."? They are the ones who help the donors amass a fortune so they can pursue their hobbies.

Paul Greenhood

Silver Spring, Md.

How idyllic Paul Mellon's English summers must have been, that years later millions of dollars should have been used for what you call systematic collecting and I call pillage of much of Britain's artistic soul.

Do not be fooled. It is 300 years of British culture and artistic patronage that have endowed the Yale Center.

John Essame

Mound, Minn.

The National Gallery of Art is sheer delight. Thanks to Mr. Mellon for such a magnificent gift, and thanks to TIME for telling others about it.

Barbara Whitlock

Mount Holly, N.J.

Burgess on Terrorism

Thank you for Anthony Burgess' Essay on terrorism, "The Freedom We Have Lost" [May 8]. Our demands for law-and-order at the government level will not be met without a commitment at the personal level to fight complacency, to be outraged at any "compromise with justice," and to reject intimidation by those with destructive principles.

Joanne Devere

Long Beach, Calif.

In the 1960s, when the mob burned city blocks, the press said: Take it; do not overreact. When the war in Viet Nam turned into disaster, the press said: Take it; do not overreact. Now the TIME Essay about terrorism says: Take it; do not over react. Shall we retreat into our shell and die? It takes more than "tolerating the intolerable" to preserve this nation for our children.

James Scott, M.D.

Streator, Ill.

Anthony Burgess' Essay is easily the most articulate, lucid and compelling estimate of the failing state of the art of democracy yet published in the news media. But it is a blinkered point of view. Mr. Burgess laments the passage of a sense of individual responsibility for perpetuating integrity, without considering its source. When this country was being settled, and later when it was founded, nearly everyone in it believed in God. And enough of those believed strongly enough to live accordingly and train their children to do likewise.

But once the psychologists and educators were able to convince enough people that God was passe, our democracy became a shell. Long after the life had withered, the shell survived. But now it has begun to crumble, and brilliant, agnostic writers like Mr. Burgess are wondering why.

David Manuel

Hyannis, Mass.

Women and Pension Payments

I applaud the recent Supreme Court ruling that employers must deduct equal contributions from men and women for their pension funds [May 8]. It is curious that we still seek to divide human groups by sex when there are other ways to do it. For instance, nonsmokers have a longer life expectancy than smokers; therefore nonsmokers might be asked to make larger contributions. Or, to use the tired old division of race, since whites as a group live longer than blacks, they might be expected to graciously accept lower pension benefits.

Margaret T. Scott

Fresno, Calif.

Homeowners' Revolt

The Jarvis-Gann initiative to be voted upon in California [May 8] involves an issue that appeals to the voters' emotions and pocketbooks but seems to evade rational thought. The disease is increasing government spending. The symptoms are rising taxes. Giving a painkiller to the voters in the form of a drastic cut in property tax just allows the disease to spread undetected. It will only resurface in a more virulent form.

Michael A. Vanesian

Northridge, Calif.

You buy a lot, build a house, pay off the mortgage, and you're still not home free. For the rest of your life you must rent your own home from the Government, at an ever increasing rate. You have created property for the Government. If you don't believe it, stop paying your property taxes. You will soon find out who the real owner is.

Robert Luce

North Muskegon, Mich.

The Sweet Time

Merely reading your account of I Wanna Hold Your Hand [May 8] brings tears to my eyes and memories of the excitement in the air when the Beatles first came here. Oh, to go back to that sweet, sweet time ...

Marilynn Andrews

Philadelphia

The Plane Package

You describe Saudi Arabia as "needing" 60 F-15s, the most advanced planes, for defense [May 8]. Come on! F-5Es (the ones Carter proposes to sell to Egypt) would be adequate for defense against Iraq and South Yemen; even 160 F-15s would not be enough to protect Saudi Arabia from a highly improbable attack by Iran. Saudi F-15s would be of no use except in an Arab war against Israel.

David L. Weiss

Nutley, N.J.

I cannot help finding it inconsistent, if not hypocritical, for the government of Israel to lobby so aggressively against the sale of F-15s to Saudi Arabia, while Israel has exported arms to a Marxist regime supported by the Russians and Cubans in Ethiopia.

If Israel can ship arms to our adversaries which are directly across the Red Sea from a nation that provides 10% of America's oil supply, why should there be any question about our selling F-15s, an essentially defensive weapon, to a more reliable ally, which is surrounded by radical leftist regimes in South Yemen, Ethiopia and Iraq?

Guy P. Beach

Wallingford, Conn.

Jimmy Carter has got to deal realistically when it comes to pleasing two selfishly motivated countries. He knows he cannot please one without hurting the other. The simple solution is to stop selling planes and weapons to either side and play the part of a neutral mediator if he really wants peace.

Robert L. Clinkscales Jr.

Racine, Wis.

Not So Small

Your article "Adieu Montreal" [May 8] concludes that the future state of Quebec, with its 6 million citizens, will be only a "small nation," and therefore some business managers will prefer to follow the departing Sun Life Assurance Co. to Toronto, the center of anglophone Canada. Once internationally recognized as a full-fledged nation, we will still be as large as Austria or Switzerland, and twice the size of Israel. Like those countries, all we ask for is your respect and noninterference.

Heinz D. Chiba

Montreal

Nixon Memoirs

What a pity Richard Nixon [May 8] wasn't given the opportunity to write his story in prison, as Lenin and Gandhi did.

Harry H. Hoffenberg

Baltimore

Monet Gardens

I would like to congratulate Robert Hughes for his article on the Monet exhibition [May 1]. My husband, Gerald Van der Kemp, has been working on the task of restoration of the Monet Gardens, a project made possible through a starting grant by Mrs. DeWitt Wallace.

We have been distressed that no mention has been made that the Monet Gardens, if they are to be open to the public, will need at least $100,000 a year for three years before they will become selfsupporting. Donations to the Versailles Foundation will serve this purpose.

Florence Van der Kemp, President The Versailles Foundation, Inc.

Versailles, France

Proxmire Prizes

I was particularly amused at the "Fleeced Again" article under Americana [May 1] dealing with wasteful undertakings by academic researchers. Colorful Senator William Proxmire has delightfully poked fun at those endeavors, considered purposeless and a waste of the taxpayers' money. Ironically, the American taxpayer is paying for those trifling doings of Proxmire's staff researchers.

Kip Randall

Whitefish Bay, Wis.

I am surprised that TIME should still opt for the same brand of cheap sensationalism as Senator Proxmire. Of the $97,000 of the NIMH grant in question, a maximum of $50 was spent on the brothel study. This minute aspect of the total project resulted in a single paragraph of 14 lines in a book of 324 pages where George Primov and I reported the results of our study, approximately the one-thousandth part of the total project. The book is entitled Inequality in the Peruvian Andes; Class and Ethnicity in Cuzco. That sounds sexy, doesn't it? If my study was about prostitution, then TIME is a pornographic magazine. It too occasionally mentions prostitution.

Pierre L. van den Berghe

University of Washington

Seattle

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