War in Viet Nam

Sir: Your fine cover story on Viet Nam [Oct. 22], vividly portraying once again American competence at waging war, just as vividly brings into focus what may be the ultimate issue: Will the American people have the patience to see this conflict through to a meaningful victory? The Communists say we won't. I hope we do. World War II and Korea may not have conditioned us to think in terms of a ten-year fight, but neither have they conditioned us to expect much from the conference table.

PETER W. HUTTON

Syracuse, N.Y.

Sir: I was pleased to note your reference to the Marines' Civic Action Program in Viet Nam. You mention the donation of soap by the Sheraton and Hilton hotels. I would like to call to your attention the generous contribution of Manhattan's Soap and Detergent Association, with which I worked on this project.

CHARLES E. CHAMBERLAIN Congressman from Michigan

House of Representatives Washington, D.C.

> For a view of the SDA's contribution at work, see cut.

Sir: As a graduate student in political science, I wish I could award TIME a medal for its evaluation of the change in the course of the war. Your emphasis on the humanitarian services being performed by the U.S. Marines was like a breath of fresh air after a weekend of denunciations of American "atrocities."

CHARLES R. YOUNGBLOOD JR.

Decatur, Ga.

Sir: My heartfelt thanks for your excellent story. I have always supported our involvement in Viet Nam; I have never been able to see how anybody can do otherwise. Your report strengthened my beliefs and brought out a neglected aspect of our presence there: our people are, through instruction and encouragement, bettering that country immensely.

PAUL K. MUELLER

State College, Pa.

Dissent in the U.S.

Sir: I do not necessarily agree with the thinking of the anti-war demonstrators [Oct. 22], but I believe they have a right to express their views. Need a patriot agree with everything his government does, and is his government always right? Are all conscientious objectors, all Quakers, chicken? Why aren't dissenters free to demonstrate as long as they are peaceable and refrain from burning draft cards?

Eau Claire, Wis.

Sir: There are American university faculty members who do not condemn the actions of the U.S. in Viet Nam. There are two main arguments for the U.S. presence in Viet Nam: we are pledged to protect the people of South Viet Nam from a terrible fate, and even if we were willing to abandon them, we would be repeating the mistakes of the early 1930s, committing the folly of retreat before aggression. We admit that these claims are arguable. But we think them more likely true than false. The American position, far from being immoral, is an honorable and courageous one; it is time that more voices were raised in its defense.

JOSEPH L. HUNTER

Professor of Physics

FRANK A. GUTOWSKI, S.J.

Chairman, Department of Physics

and

85 full-time faculty members John Carroll University Cleveland

Sir: About Negro Demonstrator Al Harrison's statement, "You all got me and my kind in chains. We got no business fighting a yellow man's war to save the white man": I am a Negro civilian serving in Viet Nam, not in chains, but of my own free will; I am proud to serve here.

LEMUEL D. COLES American Embassy Saigon

Sir: Sitting here in my shelter near my fighting hole, I can only say shame on those students who have burned their draft cards. They are afraid to stand up to their responsibilities as men.

(CPL.) JERRY D. PEEK 3rd Marine Division Viet Nam

Presidential Aide Moyers

Sir: Bill Moyers [Oct. 29] is proof for the pessimistic youth of today that the Horatio Alger concept of success can be lived.

JOSEPH ORBAN

Willimansett, Mass.

Sir: To refer disparagingly to Henry Moyers as "a onetime cotton chopper, candy salesman and truck driver," and to say he was "never much of a moneymaker," is to bemean the virtues that built this great country. Unprivileged by today's standards, Henry worked hard at the jobs available to him, saved when he could, guided his sons masterfully, and today looks at every man with a level gaze. As an employee of Thiokol Chemical Corporation, he makes us proud of him and proud of his sons.

MAX S. LALE Thiokol Chemical Corp.

Marshall, Texas

The Presidential Incision

Sir: Has our Great Society made dignity and good taste oldfashioned? The nation has been cheered by news of the President's speedy recovery from his operation, but is it necessary to subject us to a picture of the presidential incision along with our morning coffee? I hope L.BJ. will keep his shirt on in the future.

MRS. RONALD SUBECK

Chicago

Is God Dead?

Sir: What is being testified to by the God-is-dead group [Oct. 22] is the difficulty of faith today, rather than the death of God. The difficulty of having faith means that the doubter's resources are so meager that he can conceive only of a God whose existence can be denied.

(THE REV.) C. E. STOLLINGS First Methodist Church

Derry, Pa.

Sir: To a dead man, everything is dead, even God. Clearly, these modern theologians have been choked to death by their own philosophy.

(THE REV.) STEFAN GULYAS Torrington, Conn.

Sir: The God-is-dead theologians are the reductio ad absurdum of American Protestant theology. When they have not fallen into the perennial heresy of gnostic mysticism, like Altizer, they are conscious or unconscious followers of Durkheim, in that the real object of their worship is 20th century culture, particularly 20th century intellectual culture. They put themselves in the ridiculous position of saying to God, "Either come up to us 20th century intellectuals or get out." It would be a mistake to take them too seriously.

If there is anything more absurd than attacking God, I guess it would be defending him.

WILLIS B. GLOVER Professor of History Mercer University

Macon, Ga.

Sir: The cult of a dying God, although rooted in error, is a good sign. It is the first indication that man is at last willing to recognize and become accountable for his secular responsibilities. The problems of man on earth are within human powers to solve. Reliance upon the tenuous assistance of a celestial company can only dilute man's efforts and impede progress. It has been said, however, that God must be invented. If this is true, as it probably is, let's stop trying to invent the wrong kind. Above all, let's understand that we are part of the God-making process. A God may emerge a billion years from now, and if he does, some of his genes will certainly be the creation of man's intelligence today.

RAY M. PITTS

Arlington, Va.

Sir: Thank you for your story on the work of my colleague, Professor Altizer. It is an accurate introduction. But no brief statement can convey the scope of reading, reflection and real involvement in our world that have provided the substance of Professor Altizer's views. His work is, of course, still in progress. But his perceptive judgments and forthright claims have helped to distinguish what is weak and pointless in theology, and to discern a new form of the Christian heritage adequate for the present. His work has already been of the very greatest importance to many of us at this university and elsewhere.

WILLIAM MALLARD Associate Professor of Church History Emory University

Atlanta

The Council & the Jews

Sir: As a Jew I do not need or want the Catholic Church's absolution [Oct. 22]. If it's forgiving that the Ecumenical Council is concerned with, then every Catholic clergyman in the world should beg the Jews to forgive them for the pogroms that were perpetrated by and in the name of "the Holy Mother Church" and those that by their silence they condoned. Their forgiveness comes more than 1,900 years too late.

ZILETA LOLLY BENNETT

Santa Monica, Calif.

Sir: How can Jewish leaders speak of "an act of justice long overdue"? Today's Jews are the children of those same Jews who cried out, "Let His blood be on us and on our children," and Christ's death is their jurisdiction even today. The council declaration is pure and simple Christian charity.

MARIETTA K. MESZAROS

New York City

Minnesota's Taconite Amendment

Sir: Many of us Minnesotans are upset over a sentence in your article [Oct. 22] about taconite mining. Whether your reporter made an error, or whether Governor Rolvaag gave your reporter misleading information, the facts are that the Democratic-Farmer-Labor Party did not persuade Minnesota to approve a taconite amendment. On the contrary, the people persuaded the D.F.L. Party to reverse its earlier stand against the amendment. In the gubernatorial campaign in 1962, Mr. Rolvaag spoke against the amendment. In the meantime, from the early stages of the discussion of the need of a constitutional amendment, the Minnesota Poll, run by the Minneapolis Tribune, has invariably shown a substantial majority of the people of Minnesota in favor of such an amendment. This poll, plus persuasive engineering and economic logic and, eventually, a favorable stand by the Steelworkers Union, and a plea by the majority of the mayors of the Iron Range towns, caused Rolvaag and the D.F.L. Party to reverse their stand.

ROBERT D. LONGYEAR Chairman of the Board E. J. Longyear Co.

Minneapolis

Randall Jarrell

Sir: May I recount the circumstances of the death of my husband, Randall Jarrell [Oct. 22]? The road he was walking beside is a narrow, one-lane cutoff, not well lighted. My husband, who was dark-haired, wore dark clothes, including his gloves, and it was nighttime when the car brushed past him at about 45 m.p.h., bruising his shoulder and glancing the side of his head, causing instant death. The driver seems not to have been aware of my husband's presence at the roadside until he had hit him. His statement that my husband apparently "lunged into the path" of his car has a sinister ambiguity. It has added senselessly to the grief of my husband's family, his friends and his wife. When no written evidence exists that a deceased person intended to take his life, it would seem more reliable and humane to assume that death is accidental.

(MRS.) MARY VON SCHRADER JARRELL

Greensboro, N.C.

Semyonov & His Americans

Sir: I was pleased that you reviewed my novel Petrovka 38 [Sept. 3]. But you erred in speaking of my latest novel, No Password Needed. You say that the "bad guys" in my book are chiefly American and Englishmen. Yet there isn't a single British hero in my book, good or bad. (I of course have in mind literary heroes, not the historical characters from the introduction.) My two American heroes, a journalist and a diplomat, are not "bad guys" in the exact meaning of that word. They are enemies of the revolution, but I did not paint them in black colors; an enemy is one thing, a "bad guy" quite another. This may seem just a trifle, but I believe that in literature, as well as in literary criticism, nothing is really a trifle.

JULIAN SEMYONOV

Moscow

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