Letters: Mar. 1, 1968

POWER PLAYS

Sir: Your Essay on “Limits of U.S. Power” [Feb. 16] is commendable for urging discretion in the use of force. It failed to mention, however, that reliance on force requires superior force, and that in the test of battle no nation is apt to choose defeat without resorting to its maximum weapons. Therefore, deterrence appears plausible during peace, but once conflict begins, reliance on force ultimately provides no outcome other than ignominious defeat, unrelenting stalemate, or nuclear immolation. The nature of war has changed, and futility of the method rather than discretion in its use would have been a truer message.

CHANDLER SMITH, M.D. Washington, D.C.

Sir: The Essay helps all readers to extricate themselves from a bog of frustration into a more healthy understanding of the power play. Our spines can stiffen a little as we realize that our leaders can better flash the image of a nation prepared to take care of itself with the vast majority of patriotic Americans making themselves seen and heard behind our leaders. May they guess right much of the time, stand acknowledged all of the time.

CHARLES C. CAMPBELL Oklahoma City

Sir: Why do we assume so much, worry so much, react so violently so far from our shores, when other nations play it cool? We must remain strong and be prepared to defend and help the peoples of this hemisphere. We will find this and our own internal problems sufficient to mark the limits of our power.

Louis L. MAST Dayton

Sir: TIME’S characterization of those who urged support for the Spanish Republic or for Israel while opposing our involvement in Viet Nam as “capricious” is capricious. Only absolute pacifism—or absolute idiocy—would insist that opposition to one war logically requires opposition to all wars, regardless of political or moral considerations. The Spanish Republic was elected by the Spanish people and was defending its right to exist. The Israelis are in a similar situation. We do not know what the Vietnamese think except that those most willing to die for their beliefs seem to be on the other side.

MORTON CLURMAN Croton-on-Hudson, N.Y.

The Prophet

Sir: Mr. John Kenneth Galbraith [Feb. 16] is like all intellectuals: he cannot appreciate the idea that the average human being can manage his own life successfully. He has no faith in the people. Men’s lives have to be regulated and controlled by the likes of Galbraith. History records that every demagogue had a plan of social improvement, and then the “ball and chain.”

WILLIAM FAYLos Angeles

Sir: TIME is wise to attribute “all-purpose bore” as descriptive of Galbraith to an intangible some. It is not likely to have come from anyone who has heard or read the man. To one who disagrees with him, Galbraith may seem platitudinous, or wrong, or oppressively clever, but not, in the interest of fact, a bore.

STEPHEN D. SMITH Cambridge, Mass.

Sir: Simply great is Gerald Scarfe’s papier-mâché bust of Galbraith. TIME’S cover was passed from student to student, studied, discussed and analyzed—an excellent example of contemporary art and an inspiration to eager art students.

MARY ELLEN EMIG Art Teacher Rex Mundi High School Evansville, Ind.

Sir: My five-year-old son looked at the cover picture and said: “Well, I guess they did the best they could.”

MRS. F. R. DAVIS Walnut Creek, Calif.

Sir: Although one cannot yet be sure of Galbraith’s role as a critic, he seems to have proved himself as a prophet: “A picture on the cover of TIME magazine, as any perceptive recipient of the honor must know, is taken by a large number of people to mean that the individual is henceforth much more in need of expert criticism than applause.” (From his book The Liberal Hour.)

W. EDWARD MASSEY JR. Lausanne, Switzerland

From the Locker Room

Sir: It is appalling to read of Mrs. Evelyn Lincoln’s latest memoirs [Feb. 23]. I am ashamed that President Johnson must suffer another unwarranted assault at the hands of those who avow devotion to Kennedy; it seems nothing less than a betrayal of a man who would never have hit another publicly with “locker room” gossip. He gave Khrushchev more dignity than that. It is a pity that President Kennedy’s grace and respectful demeanor didn’t communicate itself to Mrs. Lincoln.

MRS. LEONARD STREICH Catonsville, Md.

Americans All

Sir: TIME’S article regarding the National Educational Television program on the plight of migrant farm workers [Feb. 16] contains a serious error. Huelga! is not a film about Mexicans working in California. It is a film that depicts a struggle to improve the wages and working conditions of U.S. citizens of Mexican descent. They are among the more than 6,000,000 Mexican American citizens who pay taxes, fight and die in Viet Nam and send their children to U.S. schools.

VICENTE T. XIMENES Chairman Inter-Agency Committee on Mexican American Affairs Washington, D.C.

God’s Children

Sir: Re your story on Rabbi Richard Rubenstein [Feb. 16]: let us lay the blame of Auschwitz where it belongs: on all of us who let a madman run loose for so long. Please do not blame God. He has had a pretty rough time with His children.

RUTH P. LEWIS Hollywood, Md.

Sir: A word about the painting that appears in the photograph accompanying the article: Henry Koerner’s picture showing me standing next to a bullfighter who is also a pagan priest is entitled The Sacrifice. I am depicted in the crimson robes of a Harvard doctor holding the Torah. Next to me stands the bullfighter with drawn sword. There is a woman dressed in white in front of a bird bath in which there is a severed human head. The meaning is that the archaic and the contemporary coexist in religious ritual, as do the conscious and the unconscious. Thus the bullfighter has slain a human victim. This is Koerner’s way of saying that the bullfight is really a surrogate for a much more primitive sacrifice. The woman in white is both a modern Pittsburgh housewife and the old cannibal mother goddess of the ancient Mediterranean. The amazing thing about this painting, which Freud, Jung and Eliade would understand, is that Koerner had no conscious plan when he began to create it.

(RABBI) RICHARD L. RUBENSTEINPittsburgh

MYAZA TNOH

Sir: The cryptogram in “How to Solve a Cipher” [Feb. 16] actually reads in part: “. . . oerseverance, careful methods of analysis . . . dut not essential. Such is tne . . . solution of militari ciphers.” Careful methods, indeed.

F. BARRY MULLIGANBethlehem, Pa.

Sir: There are four misprints in your cryptogram. Here are corrections: ZBNFG not ZANFG; NVJHT not NZJHT; OGHYN not OGHTN; UFQXO not UFOXO.

RONALD W. WOOD Napa, Calif.

> HYNNF FAFMU GTAHH OINGV JHHYN VAAKG