Man of the Year

Sir: TIME'S choice for Man of the Year rests between the American fighting man in Viet Nam, fighting in an unknown land and keeping the Communist threat at bay thousands of miles from home, and the black man, who is making his presence felt menacingly in the New World. It is the black man for me.

FINBARR SLATTERY Killarney, Ireland

Sir: If the Man of the Year is he who most influenced the course of history and changed the destiny of the world's nations, then I nominate Field Marshal Mohammed Ayub Khan, President of Pakistan. He has proved that a small nation can live and progress without depending upon big powers and can defeat an enemy five times stronger than itself.

SHUAIB MIRZA Rahimyarkhan, Pakistan

Sir: The average American citizen, eager to help, patriotic, and as nice a guy as ever.

JOE KLOTZ Philadelphia

Sir: J. Edgar Hoover, who stands like the Rock of Gibraltar in advocating respect for established law.

R. E. BASSLER Tampa, Fla.

Sir: The armored knight who rolled back the aluminum price rise and who will roll back the Viet Cong: Defense Secretary Robert Strange McNamara.

L. D. BRAIDA Cambridge, Mass.

Sir: Army General William Childs Westmoreland.

A. T. HURTER Montreal

Sir: Pope Paul VI, sine qua non.

JOSE Luis RODRIGUEZ VILLACANAS Las Palmas, Canary Islands

Sir: Charles (Peanuts) Schulz.

SUSAN BREYER Chicago

Sir: The residents of Madison, N.H., who stamped out the effort of land developers to change the names of Pea Porridge and Middle Pea Porridge ponds to Champagne and Burgundy lakes.

RALPH H. MORSE Concord, N.H.

General Johnson Cover

Sir: Your cover story on General Johnson, Army Chief of Staff [Dec. 10], was very fine. As a retired naval reservist and former member of the Boy Scouts of America, 1919 vintage, I find it inspiring that General Johnson keeps in his office for ready reference his copy of the Boy Scout Handbook. It is a suggested Christmas present for all officers, particularly those who are privileged to be leading troops in the field of action.

ROBERT W. COLLINS Commander, U.S.N.R. (ret.) Yazoo City, Mich.

The Continuing War

Sir: The 25,000 who assembled in Washington to protest our Viet Nam policies

[Dec. 3] are only giving solace to the enemy. They could more wisely have spent the money for the trip to help poor people, either in their own communities or in Latin America.

(MRS.) LILLIAN GAVRON Jacksonville Beach, Fla.

Sir: I was disturbed at your one-sided report on the march in Washington. You kept talking about the protesters, but said nothing about the Government supporters. I was there with 53 fellow students from Cuyahoga Community College in Cleveland. We were present to show support for President Johnson, and we were not the only pro-Government group there either. I wonder why no one took the slightest interest in us, especially since our view happens to be the view of the majority of citizens.

PETER J. MOLAY Cleveland Heights, Ohio

Sir: The war-glorifying verbiage of your Viet Nam reports is both dangerous and sickening. Please fire the writers and editors responsible and use the money to double the wages of those who gave us the superb music coverage of Nicolai Ghiaurov and Alfred Deller, and that splendid Essay on opera.

CALEB R. WOODHOUSE Hellerup, Denmark

Millionaires: Future & Past

Sir: Your cover story on millionaires [Dec. 3] must have been a hard gulp to swallow for those who believe success is achieved by luck. These millionaires prove that success is due to the internal qualities of the individual--perseverance, determination, guts--who finds or creates opportunities in the market. To these men, I say thank you; their example gives me confidence to say that I, now a student, will become one of the "Millionaires Under 40" in the not too distant future.

HOWARD SCOTT University of Massachusetts Amherst, Mass.

Sir: I was interested to see your quotation from Russell H. Conwell. It is true that Conwell saw great power for good in wealth, and it is true that he gave his famous lecture, "Acres of Diamonds," 6,000 times and received $8,000,000 for doing so. The really significant fact is, however, that he gave away the $8,000,000 to educate promising young people. Taking as his life's pattern the three-fold emphasis he found in the life of Christ, "preaching, teaching and healing," he helped found an outstanding church, a great university and three hospitals.

AARON E. GAST Dean

Conwell School of Theology Philadelphia

Sir: Dr. Conwell practiced what he preached. He is well remembered as the founder and first president of Temple University. He died virtually penniless because all his earnings were invested in the lives of young men and women who studied at Yale and Temple universities.

MILLARD E. GLADFELTER President

Temple University Philadelphia

More About the Presidents

Sir: Your Kennedy-Johnson Essay [Nov. 26] sounds like so many sour grapes. I certainly wish you would stop trying to compare peaches and pumpkins.

EDWARD A. DENT III Washington, D.C.

Sir: For crystallizing into words so lucidly my own thoughts, feelings and impressions as an expatriate Briton, I highly commend you.

(MRS.) LEE GAYNOR Sydney, Australia

Sir: I very much appreciate your Essay; it is superb.

ALHADJI KATSINA Kaduna, Northern Nigeria

Sir: The qualities that make for legend and those that make for mere performance are dramatically illustrated by the steel and aluminum crises. Kennedy exhibited his honest anger publicly and had the courage to be his own spokesman. Johnson, devious and cowardly, forced his subordinates to speak for him. I prefer Kennedy's method; the public knew exactly where he stood. If Johnson thinks he has been able to fool the public by staying behind the scenes, he is greatly mistaken; he has only earned himself disrespect.

(MRS.) GLORY A. PENCHOEN Sturgis, Mich.

Civil Rights

Sir: Please accept my thanks for the story on Southern Baptists [Nov. 26]. As a Southern Baptist layman, I am especially eager for Americans to have a factual account of how we stand as a denomination in this important area of our national life. The picture you present is precisely correct. We have come a long way and are still moving miraculously further toward the goal of acting like Christians about integration.

G. VAN GREENE Decatur, Ga.

Sir: You are wrong to say, "not in living memory has a white Mississippian been convicted of raping a Negro" [Nov. 19]. On July 27, 1960, in the Circuit Court of Grenada County, Fifth Judicial District, Mississippi, a white male, L. J. Loden, was charged with raping a Negro female. He was indicted, prosecuted by District Attorney Chatwin M. Jackson Jr. of Kosciusko, Miss., and found guilty by an all-white male jury. He is serving a life sentence in the Mississippi State Penitentiary.

ANN H. JACKSON (MRS. CHATWIN M. JACKSON JR.) Sallis, Miss.

Flogging in Rhodesia

Sir: You say [Nov. 26] that police broke up a schoolboy protest march and flogged all 239 boys. This is not the truth, and I challenge you to a $5,000 bet that you cannot substantiate your statement, my payment to go to African nationalists in Rhodesia and yours to Rhodesian Government information funds.

A. BERNIC

Bulawayo, Southern Rhodesia > In a Nov. 18 story headed 239 GWELO

STUDENTS SENTENCED TO CUTS, the Rhodesia Herald reported: "At a special magistrate's court held in Senka Village yesterday evening, 239 African students from the Fletcher High School, aged between 15 and 21, pleaded guilty. The allegation was that they took part in an unlawful procession . . . The magistrate, Mr. D. K. Utting, imposed sentences ranging from four to six cuts on the juveniles, and on those aged 19 or more, one month imprisonment suspended for three years conditionally, plus six cuts."

Tucson Teen-Agers

Sir: The 30 teens of Tucson who knew of Charles Schmid's ghastly murders [Nov. 26] prove that dry rot has set in, not only in Arizona but in all of America. There is very little conscience in a nation whose teen-agers withhold information about wanton murders.

HAROLD T. WOODE London

Buffy's Kind of Music

Sir: Please accept my warmest thanks! I am thrilled with the story about me [Dec. 10] and greatly encouraged that your kind of treatment of my kind of music is in the hands of the world. This is the first time I have gotten through to a writer who has in turn gotten through to his readers what I had hoped would get through to all.

BUFFY SAINTE-MARIE New York City

The Legion of Decency

Sir: That the "coterie of middle-aging Catholic college alumnae" then dominating "the ranks of Legion reviewers" [Dec. 3] should be "expanded to include knowledgeable lay and clerical film buffs" was first proposed in my "Hollywood in Focus" column during the 1940s. As one of a dwindling minority of "moderates" among the Legion's lay consulters, I am somewhat loosely characterized in your otherwise excellent story. It is my position that, by faulty communications with Hollywood moviemakers and critical bias in favor of morally and ideologically debatable foreign films, the Legion has now reached the point of surrender to forces it was and is supposed to fight.

WILLIAM H. MOORING Playa del Rey, Calif.

Sir: You left out the main goal--and achievement--of the Legion of Decency: to make sure that the Roman Catholic Church and its clergy are presented in an extremely favorable light. The Sandpiper would not, of course, have "passed" had the priest been a Roman Catholic. Maybe the Legion's successor is "sophisticated"-but does it yet believe in freedom of speech where the Roman Catholic Church is concerned?

L. MONTZINGO

Topeka, Kans.

Let the Clips Fall Where They May

Sir: In your story "The Gem of the Gizmos" [Dec. 3], you forgot to mention the use of the paper clip as a surgical tool. Heated in a Bunsen burner, it provides the ideal method of releasing the blood under a smashed fingernail--better than a dentist's drill, a sharp knife, etc. It is painless (the blood cools the clip as soon as it burns through) and fast.

L. E. SKINNER, M.D. The Lakewood Clinic Tacoma, Wash.

Sir: In this area, full of cherry orchards, it is well known that the best tool for hand-pitting fresh sour cherries is a paper clip opened once lengthwise.

(MRS.) SHARLYN TAYLOR Rochester, N.Y.

Sir: Paper clips, twisted to the required shape, are ideal for holding the three drone reeds of a bagpipe open in the correct playing position.

DWAIN W. SMITH Franklin Square, N.Y.

Sir: The clip can be used as a cuff link, as a substitute for a lost eyeglass screw, or as a short-timer's chain (remove one per day till discharge).

G. P. BARBOUR JR. Lieutenant, U.S.N. Mt. Pleasant, S.C.

Sir: 1 know where those West German researchers should begin looking for the 7.000 paper clips that just "plain disappeared." They may have been thrown or dropped down the backs or, preferably, the fronts of the dresses of office girls. In this new and interesting sport, I claim the record: 43 on one girl in one afternoon.

P. E. ANDERSON Brisbane, Australia

This file is automatically generated by a robot program, so reader's discretion is required.