Letters: Oct. 1, 1965

Pope Paul

Sir: Berks’s sculpture of Pope Paul: magnificent! Your cover [Sept. 24]: great! Viva Pope Paul!

GABRIELLA LINDO New York City

Sir: The cover was a great shock and disappointment to me. It seems a pity that such a great person as the Pope should be pictured as a cracked piece of clay.

(MRS.) JOSEPHINE RAIMONDI Philadelphia

Sir: Your story is a masterful attempt to unconfuse the confused.

EDWARD L. OWEN JR. Valhalla, N.Y.

Sir: I am puzzled by your cover story. It is incompetent, disrespectful, and may harm the ecumenical movement and the papal peace plea at the U.N.

DAVID F. REA New York City

Sir: You ask: “Will the Pope’s words of peace have any more impact than those he has littered in Rome during the past two years?” No! Nothing the Pope utters will have any impact as long as he refuses to expiate his church’s complicity in the slaughter of Jews and other “accursed” people during the almost two millennia of the church’s existence.

THOMAS KIERNAN Editor Philosophical Library New York City

Sir: Pope Paul might contribute to peace by staying in Rome and working to get the Vatican Council to pass a meaningful statement on religious liberty. He might liberalize his church’s birth-control laws. The population explosion contributes to unrest, and the Pope can slow it down. His trip will do about as much good as the trips of those do-gooders who invaded the South in clerical garb instead of working at home for these worthy causes.

(THE REV.) F. RICHARD BENKEN The Lutheran Church Madison, Conn.

On War

Sir: While I salute your Essays as an attack on anti-intellectualism, “On War as a Permanent Condition” [Sept. 24] made me rueful. You apologize for our Viet Nam presence by arguing that our interests, political, economic and moral, are served by this engagement. Eventually, we shall see that “freedom” was a cloud under which we concealed a Machiavellian dominance of the economic-political over the moral.

WILLIS E. ELLIOTT United Church Board for Homeland Ministries New York City

Sir: You write: “No man of dignity can shrink from war if he is to preserve his freedom.” Quite a few men have done just that: Jesus, Buddha, Francis of Assisi, William Penn, Gandhi and Schweitzer, to name the more illustrious.

ALBERT C. SCHREINER Ossining, N.Y.

Sir: I laud your Essay. At last somebody has defended war as the expedient it can sometimes be in solving international problems. Too many pacifists and bleeding hearts have vilified war in favor of negotiations, when in some cases water, not words, is needed to extinguish fire.

ERIC O. BERGLAND Rockford, Mich.

India v. Pakistan

Sir: Your cover story on the war in Asia [Sept. 17] is the most factual piece I have read. Not only have you dug up the background, but you have interpreted the Pakistani way of thinking. In April, I returned from Pakistan. We all knew then that this fight was coming: the Paks were painting their ground equipment battle-grey over the original yellow, were building revetment for their aircraft, etc. Thank you for your article. It will be saved for my son’s children.

BERNARD E. ANDERSON Lieutenant Colonel, U.S.A.F. Battle Creek, Mich.

Sir: Please accept our heartiest congratulations on a reporting job well done and on putting the Kashmir problem in much clearer perspective.

PARVEZ A. WAKIL Kashmir Plebiscite Committee Saskatoon, Canada

Sir: Your cover story covered everything except suggestions on how to solve the Kashmir problem. One possibility is an arrangement combining the successful coalition government experiences of Lebanon (Moslem-Christian) and Austria (Socialist-Conservative). India and Pakistan would control Kashmir’s external affairs jointly; Kashmir would have autonomy under a Hindu-Moslem coalition.

NORMAN ROTHFELD New York City

Natural Beauty

Sir: Your excellent article [Sept. 17] was indeed unique in details unlimited, informative about locations North to South and East to West, and challenging for everyone graced with regard for the American heritage.

TRENT DOUGLAS ADAMS Washington, D.C.

Sir: Thousands of acres in Northern California bristle with new redwood forests on lands formerly clear-cut and burned. To give the impression, as you did, that coastal redwoods are 2,000 years old and 370 feet high is as misleading as to say Americans are 6 feet 4 and weigh 200. The redwood forest industry of Northern California has been complimented again and again by the respected Save The Redwoods League for its adherence to good forestry practices and its cooperation in preserving superlative redwood groves.

DAVE JAMES Director of Public Affairs Simpson Timber Co. Seattle

> TIME said some redwoods are 2,000 years old, cited the conservationists’ concern for only these exceptional trees, was well aware of and applauds the responsible operations of most of the country’s redwood industry.

Sir: Many thanks for the timely conservation roundup. One correction: the wilderness bill put 9,100,000 acres of federally protected wilderness off limits to developers, not 30,000 acres. We hope to see an additional 40 million to 45 million acres added within the next nine years under the procedures spelled out in the act.

STEWART M. BRANDBORG Executive Director Wilderness Society Washington, D.C.

Sir: Perhaps you should know that the Governor and Council of the State of New Hampshire have appropriated $40,000 to purchase the Robert Frost Homestead in Derry, N.H., as a living memorial to a great American poet.

JOHN W. KING Governor, State of New Hampshire Concord, N.H.

Sir: I enjoyed your story and I agree with much of what you say. Since I was the author of the Canyonlands National Park bill and held the initial field hearings on Cape Cod, Padre Island, Point Reyes and Indiana Dunes Seashore bills and the first field hearing on the Sleeping Bear Lakeshore in Michigan, I know much about the matters you discuss.

FRANK E. Moss U.S. Senator from Utah Washington, D.C.

Union Labor

Sir: Your Essay on unions [Sept. 17] was interesting, but you are wrong about senior auto workers getting 13 weeks’ annual vacation. The maximum is four weeks.

STANLEY STREAKS Utica, Mich.

Sir: Of course men should have a right to perform a job without belonging to a union. Isn’t this only fair? Think how many men belong to a union without performing a job right!

ALBERT SACK Philadelphia

Palindromes & Other Jolks

Sir: I suppose there is a certain madness in seeking patterns in mathematics and language [Sept. 17]. Still, who can deny the beauty of some of it? Witness: Palindromic sentence: A man, a plan, a canal, Panama! Or a short sensible sentence using all 26 letters: Pack my box with five dozen liquor jugs.

DEIGH D. BOYD Newport Beach, Calif.

Sir: How about the beautiful vertical palindrome formed by the title of the monthly publication of the Zoological Society of San Diego: ZOONOOZ?

L. L. BLOOMENSHINE San Diego

Sir: . . . Lewd did I live & evil I did dwel . . .

LYN WILLIAMS New York City

Sir: If you fokes at TIME don’t know the difference between egg yolks and egg yokes [SCIENCE, Sept. 17], you ought to hire some blolks who do.

ROBERT THOMSON Seattle > Olk.

Tangibilation

Sir: Your story on Father Divine’s death [Sept. 17] was delightful. But you did not include his most profound remark: “The trouble with the world is that there are too many metaphysicians who don’t know how to tangibilate.”

JAMES M. STAFFORD JR. Kansas City, Mo.

Sir: To ridicule a great spiritual leader, as you did in your distorted article, is a sad commentary on our enlightened press. Why was no mention made of the millions of dollars he saved welfare departments by redeeming his followers from poverty?

JAMES HOPE Springfield Gardens, N.Y.

The Bishop & the Ladies

Sir: To let Bishop Pike [Sept. 17] speak for a church and lead others in heresy is a travesty. He will have much to answer for to God, if not to the Episcopal hierarchy.

MRS. DON NEWCOMER San Gabriel, Calif.

Sir: Hooray for Bishop Pike! As an Episcopalian, I am happy to learn that one bishop recognizes that the ecclesiastical talents of women are not limited to sitting in a pew. East Glacier, Mont., seems an unlikely place for a thaw in “God’s frozen people,” but Bishop Pike has managed to break the ice.

(MRS.) ANN BROWN Tarzana, Calif.

Folk-Rock Folk

Sir: I protest your allocating more than a page to a discussion of rock ‘n’ roll and its lyrics [Sept. 17]. This stuff is trash and has no place in TIME.

JAMES BANFORD Philadelphia

Sir: Either Peruvian Indians have the folk-rock singer look or Sonny and Cher have the Peruvian-Indian look—there is a strong resemblance in the pictures on pages 59 and 102.

(MRS.) SHEILA SHUMAN Utica, N.Y.

Sir: O.K., what’s buggin’ you guys? Is everyone anti-us? Yea, we dig the Beatles, go ape for causes, and cut out to disco-thèques, but man, weren’t you ever a teenager? Sonny and Chér, Bob Dylan, the Beatles, and the Rolling Stones are like us. They’re part of our era. Everyone used to say we didn’t care. Well, now we do, and what do you do? You make fun of us.

A. T. NAGER New Haven, Conn.

Sir: Thank you for the informative article. It is time adults realized that our music is not just shrieking, but a form of expression. It shows that teen-agers are concerned about many vital issues.

ELLEN SCHUSTER Brooklyn

Sir: That story should have been in Medicine: man, these cats are sick.

STUART WALLACE Mountain View, Calif.

Abortion

Sir: Comfortable references to a fetus rather than to a complete-from-conception person lead to the sort of legally neat justification for abortion propounded by the American Law Institute [Sept. 17], but ignore the real abortion, that of the child’s right to live, no matter what.

RICHARD F. GARNETT London

Sir: There is no greater inhumanity than to allow the birth of a baby that is likely to be deformed. How cruel, how selfish can people be in the name of morality.

BOYE DE MENTE Phoenix, Ariz.