Man of Steel

Sir:

Regarding the steel crisis [April 20], it has taken a crafty captain of industry to prove beyond all doubt what we Democrats have known for some time: what this country has in the White House is a man of steel. JEFFERSON FRAZIER

Harvard College Cambridge, Mass.

Sir:

If Big Steel can absorb the increased costs and make a fair profit, we can be gratified. But, looking beyond the industry's bungling, if there is not public revulsion at the Administration's tirades and intimidation (confused with leadership), we no longer are basically concerned with free enterprise, and the planners indeed have their victory.

BERNAL E. DOBELL

Orinda, Calif.

Sir:

Before Kennedy completely ruins our system of free enterprise, someone should tell him that the dough that sent him to Harvard didn't come from the bakery shop.

DIANA C. GLEASNER Kenmore, N.Y.

Sir: Imagine the nerve of U.S. Steel--actually wanting to make a fair profit. What will these capitalists think of next!

JAMES DUIGNAN Astoria, N.Y.

Sir:

Who does he think he is telling U.S. Steel, or any other business for that matter, when they should and should not raise prices? I am a workingman, but am very much in favor of free businesses of all sizes.

JOHN F. MAC!VER JR. Oakland, Calif.

Sir:

President Kennedy would have been much more in character had he emphasized his points, at his press conference on steel, with his shoe rather than his fist.

BENJAMIN PROCTOR Canisteo, N.Y.

Sir:

So, "in staging its curious predawn raids ... on orders from President John F. Kennedy himself," the FBI first telephoned its victims.

Ah, those exquisite Harvard manners; under Hitler, I understand, the maximum courtesy was a knock on the door.

CLEMENT F. TRAINER San Francisco

Sir:

The temper tantrums by Jack and Bobby only underline the fact that they are truly spoiled little rich boys who have yet to learn the economic facts of life.

Too bad Papa Joe hasn't the dough to buy up control of the steel industry and fire those greedy, power-hungry executives who displeased his boys.

EDWARD CAMPBELL Melrose, Mass.

Sir:

In George Orwell's 1984, Big Brother watches you. In 1962, Little Brother investigates you.

WILLIAM A. BONEY Pittsburgh

The Ascetic

Sir:

I feel we all owe a debt of gratitude to the saintly Sister Nazarena [April 13], who is dedicating her life in prayer for all of us.

Who can say that without all the good to humanity she is doing by her devotion, our world would not indeed be having more serious troubles than it already has?

DANIEL TOTIRE North Olmsted, Ohio

Sir:

True, Sister Nazarena is a religious and devout person, but when it comes to sainthood, I'll nominate the nuns who teach elementary school any time.

MARGARET A. GIBSON Wilmington, Del.

Sir:

Sister Nazarena with her asceticism is doing a great service for the whole human race. She puts me in mind of Simeon Stylites the Elder (A.D. 388-459), who sat on top of a soft, pillar for 36 years. The church made a saint out of him.

This proves that some people can be up the pole and still have both feet on the ground.

RICHARD I. BRIGGS

East Cleveland, Ohio Simeon of Syria (see cut) was the first and most famous of the stylites, or pillar saints, a form of asceticism practiced in the Middle East for six centuries. He started out on a pillar o ft. tall and progressively worked his way up to the soft. column where he lived, on a tiny open platform, for the rest of his life.--ED.

Sir: I wonder what Sigmund Freud would say about the tiny whip.

MRS. MARIANNE MAURO Pittsburgh

Sir:

Every time I read about a religious recluse, I wonder what our world would have been like today had Christ chosen to cloister himself rather than give his great love and knowledge to the world.

MRS. BOB F. CRAFT Salt Lake City

Sir: Indeed Sister Nazarena may be "the most serene person" one could meet. However, is this not easy when one isolates himself from all social responsibility? Sister Nazarena's solution is rather too simple in any age--particularly in a nuclear one!

KARL PAUL DONFRIED Harvard Divinity School Cambridge, Mass.

Sir:

Give her six children, a husband and $350 per month to make ends meet, and I doubt she'd be so serene.

MRS. L. M. BAGLEY

Oceanside, Calif.

Books & Books

Sir:

An article in the April 20 issue implies that the Great Books Foundation was started by Encyclopaedia Britannica and that there is some connection between the two organizations through Britannica's publication The Great Books of the Western World. The Great Books Foundation was organized as an independent, nonprofit educational corporation in 1947, many years before Britannica's Great Books set was even published. We have no affiliation with Britannica except historically through association with Messrs. Hutchins and Adler, who did the pioneer work in starting Great Books seminars for adults when they were at the University of Chicago.

RICHARD P. DENNIS President

The Great Books Foundation Chicago

Sir:

While everyone interested in liberal education would wish the great ideas to be the main "toptics" of conversation across the land, grammarians would be happier if TIME had not misspelled the word last week. The key to the great ideas is the Syntopicon, not the Syntopticon.

MORTIMER J. ADLER

San Francisco TIME goofted.--ED.

Wives at Issue? Sir: Re your article on "The Families They Left Behind" [April 13]--hogwash.

I spent 20 years as a career soldier, and nothing was more disgusting to me than the control the military wife managed to gain over the military by her demands for herself and her family. She has done more to damage our foreign relations than a hundred "Little Rocks." If the President has any sense, he'll keep these vessels of virtue out of our overseas bases. Let the men serve their country, not the country serve its soldiers' wives.

ADAM BARKER Phoenix, Ariz.

Sir:

My husband has been sent to France with the Air National Guard. He works an eight-hour day, takes weekend trips, is part owner of a car, has all his meals served to him, laundry done, etc. I am home with three little ones, trying to keep my sanity, my patriotic feelings and our house.

The men with my husband are not complaining (why should they?), but I am.

MRS. E. JANIK Levittown, Pa.

Sir: While Jackie imports from Paris, And movie stars go to Rome, The serviceman's wife saves the U.S. gold By raising her family at home--alone.

KAREN KRUSE

Lutheran Hospital School of Nursing Baltimore

Sir:

There is a saying, ''If the Marine Corps wanted you to have a wife, they would have issued you one."

Marine wives have never tagged along on overseas duty; that is partly the reason that the Marine Corps has a reputation for getting the job done.

We sit home and pray, not whine.

ROSALIE WARNER Newport Beach, Calif.

What the Poet Can Read

Sir:

Your article on Evgeny Evtushenko and Russia [April 13] brings to mind Fyodor Dostoevsky's Notes from the Underground, which was published in 1864.

Dostoevsky's hero comes to believe that human behavior is motivated by the craving for absolute freedom and self-assertion in defiance of all dictates of reason.

NEIL J. NELSON

San Francisco

Sir:

May I say that you have outdone yourselves in the great article on Russia's new generation.

It remains only to notice that this same trend of "profound skepticism" is also on the move in this country, and to realize that the two nations are closer than ever.

JOSEPH M. LEONARD Lima, Ohio

Sir:

Congratulations on your excellent cover story on Russian Poet Evtushenko.

The Russian passion and struggle to realize what truth is go back to Russia's conversion to Christianity in the 10th century. Thinking Russians, like Evtushenko and his contemporaries, consciously and even unconsciously are groping their way to this true Russian heritage, which, in spite of Communism, is brought to their attention dramatically in Russian Orthodox churches every Easter.

(THE REV.) C. SAMUEL CALIAN University of Basel Basel, Switzerland

Sir:

The man at the helm still is dedicated to "burying us." Please, TIME, I beg of you, don't hand him a shovel.

FRANK H. JESSE JR. Hopkinsville, Ky.

Sir:

What an encouraging story. Will Evtushenko be able to see your article on him? And what kind of circulation has TIME behind the Iron Curtain?

RON WREN San Francisco > In addition to the hundreds of copies sent each week in diplomatic pouches, TIME has 87 subscribers (but no newsstand sale) in the U.S.S.R. Surely one of the lucky 87 will show a copy to Evtushenko.--ED.

Family Tree

Sir:

Your art story, "The Prussian Francophile" [April 20], calls Louis XV the son of Louis XIV. Louis XV was the Sun King's great-grandson, not his son.

Whatever happened to those nice Vassar and Smith girls who used to check your facts?

WILLIAM C. ESTY

New York City They're still here.--ED.

And Science? Sir:

You put your article on Matador Juan Belmonte's death in the Sport section [April 20]. Bullfighting is not a sport, but an art. JOSE MONTESTUZ Santander, Spain

Sir:

Every aficionado knows that stories about bullfighting, especially in connection with Belmonte, should appear in the section given to religion.

LOUIS E. BUMGARTNER Birmingham-Southern College Birmingham, Ala.

Planned Plan

Sir:

I must object to the statement in your April 13 article that the Bow medical care bill was "casually conceived . . . and tossed into the hopper without any expectation that much would come out of it."

I spent four months developing my idea on this subject, and the bill was carefully prepared and introduced with the hope that it would become law.

FRANK T. Bow U.S. House of Representatives Washington, B.C.

Transplanting

Sir:

Probably the simplest solution to the farm problem in the U.S. and Russia [April 6] is to trade farmers!

MRS. DONALD GLYN

Harrisburg, Ill.

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