To the Editors:

Some day soon, before the century is gone, the first week of June 1979 will go down in history as the beginning of the end of Communism throughout the world. I believe that the mortal blow has been struck by the visit to Poland of this true man of freedom, John Paul II [June 18].

Casimir M. Malik

Elk Grove Village, Ill.

The Second Coming is the only event that could top the homecoming of God's Vicar on earth.

Jerry Sanders

Cincinnati

The tremendous response to the Holy Father proves that a strong-willed people can endure and triumph over those who wish to suppress them.

Martha Prasher

Dubuque, Iowa

This man ennobles not only Poles and Catholics but the human race as well.

Marcia Cavanaugh

Vernon, Conn.

During the Holocaust, the Catholic Church turned its back on the fate of the Jews; now comes a new head of that church to pray for the dead at Auschwitz. Let us hope his act signals a new era of ecumenism and brotherhood.

Mark M. Steele

Arlington, Va.

TIME refers to "the 16th century split-off of Protestantism." Protestants believe that the Reformation was not a "split-off but a restoration.

George E. Sweazey

Princeton, N.J.

I am puzzled and a little disheartened that the Pope, after rejecting social and political activity by the clergy during his visit in Latin America, spoke in very social and political terms when he was in Poland. I have to conclude that his concern is with the fate of the church, rather than the welfare of the people.

Glenn Bush

Lincoln, Neb.

No Place to Hide

With all of the trenches to hide our MX missiles [June 18], where are the trenches, shelters or caves to hide us in the event of nuclear war? Is anyone thinking about that?

David C. Estes

Manchester, Mo.

Today's neo-rightists want more spending on arms, including $30 billion for the MX missile. Yet these same people are calling for a constitutional convention to balance the budget, presumably by cutting social programs. They apparently put more value on the instruments of global death than they do on the instruments of hope for America's needy.

David Moran

Seminole, Okla.

Holiday for Cars and Planes

We were living in Switzerland during the 1973-74 oil crisis. The Swiss government, acting on statistics that showed that 25% of the country's weekly gasoline usage was on Sunday, promptly banned nonessential driving three Sundays during one month.

The law was strictly enforced and obediently adhered to. Gasoline reserves built rapidly, and the populace was only minimally inconvenienced.

Herman O. Thomas

Hudson, Ohio

A number of other European countries, including The Netherlands, West Germany, Italy, also enforced Sunday driving bans.

Why don't the airlines of the world stop flying one day a week? If this were done, there would be a jet fuel surplus, and the price of fuel would come down.

Stanley S. Bourne

Boston

Frontier Myth, German Style

German cowboy and Indian buffs may be more accurately informed about the American West than Americans are, as the young West Berliner claimed [June 18], but the American West lives on today in the form of the frontier myth--a very potent influence, for better or worse, on the American national character. Be our view of the Old West ever so phony, we are living it.

W. Clark Kenyon

Iowa City, Iowa

A much earlier novelist than Karl May sparked the German "love affair" with our American West. He was H.B. Moellhausen, an artist-naturalist who in 1857-58 accompanied Lieut. Joseph C. Ives on the first Colorado River expedition. Moellhausen returned to Germany to become a popular novelist who recaptured the American West from his own experiences. May perhaps resembles Zane Grey, but Moellhausen was actually compared to James Fenimore Cooper.

Imre Sutton

Fullerton, Calif.

A Little Affirmative Action for Vets

You call the Supreme Court's decision in favor of preferential treatment for veterans competing for public jobs "a setback for women's rights" [June 18]. Giving vets job preference is nothing but a little affirmative action by a Government that took away their freedom for a time.

Earl Weagley Jr.

Baltimore

Why Innovate?

The lack of innovation is not the U.S.'s real problem, contrary to the assertions in Marshall Loeb's Executive View [May 14]. I run a lapidary supply business here in Sweden, and I have many letters from American companies that will not supply me with their wares because they don't export. I have had to find new sources in Japan or Germany or, in one case, open my own business in Colorado just to get the things I needed. I have been told that only 8% of American firms export; 80% of Swedish firms export.

Why innovate when no one cares about selling the item in the first place?

David F. Olson

Nora, Sweden

Nanoo, Nanoo at the U.N.?

In his Essay "The Politics of the Box Populi" [June 11], Lance Morrow asks, "What is the political content of Mork & Mindy?"He should realize that even now, Morkese is slipping past the international dubbers into the languages of every tongue and tribe. Today's young viewers may some day meet in the U.N. with a fork-fingered felicitation and a "Nanoo, nanoo to you too."

Donald W. Smeller

Irvine, Calif.

Strictly speaking, Mork & Mindy may not be political, but neither is the show "almost entirely innocent of meaning." Its overall message is not only that alien is acceptable, but that different is endearing.

Catherine P. Ware

Franklin, Ky.

Stormy Memories

I never chased a twister as did Gene Moore in your American Scene article [June 18], but as a small child I spent many hours, often at night, in a cellar keeping out of the way of twisters in Vici, Okla. These childhood memories are not among my fondest.

I usually was awakened and taken from a nice warm bed to the cellar. There we sat listening to winds, thunder and hail. When the door was lifted and somebody announced that all was clear, it usually would still be raining. Nobody bothered to carry me back to our house. I had to walk back barefoot in the mud, get a pan and wash the sticky red stuff off my feet. It was hard to wake me up for school the next morning.

Alta M. Evans

Vici, Okla.

Spotting the Wrong "Leopard"

The armored vehicle pictured in your article on West Germany [June 11] is not a "Leopard," nor is it a tank. It is a Marder mechanized infantry combat vehicle, probably the best vehicle of its kind in the West.

Nelson Mayhew

Jacksonville, Ariz.

Brickbats for the Builders

After the collapse of the Kemper Arena in Kansas City [June 18], architects should worry about their falling reputations. But structural engineering is not their real shortcoming; it's aesthetic engineering. When buildings fail to dignify man's spirit, his potential, architecture fails to excite us. It becomes boring. As proof we have the modern suburb.

David Clahassey

Grand Rapids

It is time to return to respect for the laws of physics and concern for aesthetics in building design and construction.

William T.F. Hooper

Tuskegee Institute

Tuskegee, Ala.

Eulogies for the Duke

The endless lauding of John Wayne [June 25] as an American hero and patriot has now gone too far. Enthusiastic as he was for the glorious wars fought by this nation, he was politically naive and simplistic. He never saw battle except on a movie set. He did not know war as the terrible and tragic thing it is.

To represent him as an example of what American manhood ought to be is rubbish, a disturbing sign of the turn toward reactionary conservatism here.

(The Rev.) John C. Fowler

Tucson, Ariz.

Somehow I just don't feel as safe without the Duke around any more.

Peter Collinson

Mount Pleasant, Mich.

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