Veep Javits

Sir: The Midwestern Republican who "sniffed" at the idea of Jacob Javits as a 1968 presidential or vice-presidential possibility [June 24] is quite likely one who was supporting Barry Goldwater at this time four years ago. While Goldwater "went down well" with the Kansas delegates to the Republican Convention, he did not go down at all with the state's voters. How desperately the entire world needs and longs for an intelligent, articulate, honest candidate for U.S. leadership. I believe that Sen. Jacob Javits is one strong answer.

HELEN D. FRANCIS

Hays, Kans.

Sir: Jake Javits as Republican for Vice President? The idea is not only preposterous, it is asinine.

O. W. HABEL

Ann Arbor, Mich.

The Meaning of Patriotism

Sir: We are Hospital Corpsmen in the Navy, serving with the 3rd Marine Division. We sympathize with students facing the draft [June 3]. But what they do not seem to realize is that we, too, have plans for the future. Some of us plan to get married, to finish our education, to try to live our lives in peace. Some of us have died to keep our nation free, and many more will give their lives in the future. It is not our wish that there be a war in Viet Nam, but there is.

A student describes Viet Nam as "foreign and remote." To those of us who are here, it is very near and a great threat to our loved ones at home. We are witnesses to things we would not want to happen in our country. As far as personal freedoms are concerned, we all believe in them. But what freedoms would we have if we let the "not-so-big," Communist-inspired wars go unchallenged?

JACK E. HASTY

EDWARD SAVAGE

WILLIAM D. PICKETT

THOMAS L. BOGGS

RALPH M. SMITH

Viet Nam

Sir: I wonder if these servicemen who are so quick to accuse the class of '66 of cowardice are being viewed objectively. Unfurling these soldier-patriots from the flag for a minute, I wonder how many enlisted to find adventure, to wear a uniform, to get away from Mom and Dad, to see the world, to become a man, etc., and then were caught when Viet Nam exploded into a major action. So knock off the chauvinism, servicemen. You're not fighting in Viet Nam "so college kids can go to school." You're fighting either because you have to, or because fighting means danger, excitement and medals.

J. R. BUCKNER

Los Angeles

Sir: There is something honorable and worthwhile in giving up one's career for service to one's country. To use one's superior intellect, position in life or possible future contributions to society as collateral against such service smacks of something other than democracy. To relieve a fellow of national service merely because he possesses a Ph.D. (or may, or could) or because he doesn't really want to serve does him and his country a severe disservice. He should be precisely the person called upon to perform the meanest of services, for he is supposedly the most resourceful.

MARCUS B. MOREHEAD

Assistant Professor of Geology

Appalachian State Teachers College

Boone, N.C.

An Amherst Education

Sir: Those at Amherst and New York University who walked out on Secretary McNamara [June 17] displayed a grievous lack of good taste, good manners and good breeding. Of course, all of us who have lived through college know that college students are slightly crazy. But one would think the professors would have prevented this display of provincialism.

ROBERT H. JAMISON

Miami

Sir: An error of omission in an otherwise fair report on the protest against Secretary McNamara's honorary degree from Amherst: although the guests stood to applaud him after the students walked out, roughly half the faculty on the platform remained seated. The same was true after he received the degree. We speak for those seated who admire his personal qualities but deplore his part in Viet Nam policies.

HOWELL D. CHICKERING JR.

Assistant Professor of English

N. GORDON LEVIN JR.

Instructor in American Studies

Amherst College

Amherst, Mass.

Command Decision

Sir: Reading of Captain Carpenter's heroism [June 17], I rummaged through old sports programs for the one of the 1959 Army-Navy game. Under the cadet's portrait is the statement, "Bill seems destined for leadership." Never has such an accurate prophecy been made.

JONATHAN R. SHEINER

Oceanside, N.Y.

Sir: It surprises me that you praise Carpenter. You have overlooked his moral obligation to his troops. Human lives should be handled with more care than pawns in a careless chess game. To fight and die would have been better than to die by decision of the commanding officer.

R. J. CROSSED

Washington, D.C.

Heroism

Sir: "On the Difficulty of Being a Contemporary Hero" [June 24]: let us not forget to ascribe to heroism the secondary place that, Albert Camus says, rightly falls to it, "just after, never before, the noble claim of happiness."

DAVID MILLER

San Francisco

Sir: I recoil at the inclusion of Dr. Michael DeBakey among latter-day hero physicians. He may be a hero to the medically unsophisticated press and public, but he is no hero to the medical community from which he has isolated himself. The medical profession has displayed its opprobrium with dignity by remaining silent about a man who thrives on noise.

ARMANDO R. FAVAZZA, M.D.

Brooklyn

Pursuing the Mirage

Sir: Having taken LSD [June 17], I conclude that the distinction between its valid use for therapeutic purposes and its quasi-perversion for "spiritual" purposes is important. As Avatar Meher Baba, an Eastern master of consciousness, said, "The experiences that drugs induce are as far removed from reality as is a mirage from water. No matter how much you pursue the mirage, you will never quench your thirst, and the search for truth through drugs must end in disillusionment."

ALLAN Y. COHEN

Teaching Fellow in Social Relations

Harvard University

Cambridge, Mass.

Sir: In The Varieties of Religious Experience, William James had this to say about his experience with nitrous oxide: "Our normal waking consciousness is but one special type of consciousness, whilst all about it, parted from it by the filmiest of screens, there lie potential forms of consciousness entirely different. No account of the universe in its totality can be final which leaves these other forms of consciousness quite disregarded. They may determine attitudes though they cannot furnish formulas, and open a region though they fail to give a map."

TOMAS STERLING

Wildwood, Ill.

Bata

Sir: In "They Want Computers" [June 10], TIME says that "Bata Shoe" technicians showed up at the International Computer Exhibition in Prague. The context is such that readers might infer that Bata is a Communist operation headquartered in Czechoslovakia. But for more than 25 years there have been no contacts between Bata Ltd. and the Communists in any country; no members of our organization went to the Prague exhibition. Probably those technicians who appeared came from the nationalized Czechoslovakian footwear industry, which in the main comprises the factories belonging to the Bata organization that were expropriated some 20 years ago.

PHILIP E. COWELL

Bata Ltd. Ontario

Imperial, Still Separate

Sir: Contrary to what TIME writes [June 17], Chrysler will not discontinue Imperial as a separate line in 1967.

JOHN A. FORD

Vice President Chrysler Corp. Detroit

Sneezing

Sir: The treatment used for June Clark's sneezing [June 17] might be considered a sort of punitive reeducation. It recalls the advice of the Duchess in Lewis Carroll's Alice in Wonderland: "Speak roughly to your little boy,/And beat him when he sneezes:/He only does it to annoy,/ Because he knows it teases."

JOEL A. MOSKOWITZ, M.D.

BRUCE BALLARD, M.D.

The Presbyterian Hospital New York City

Bumper Crop

Sir: Add to your bumper sticker collection [June 17]: TROUBLE PARKING? SUPPORT PLANNED PARENTHOOD.

WALTER N. FORGER White Plains, N.Y.

Sir: The most profound sticker I have seen reads: MAKE LOVE, NOT WAR.

DIANE McCuRDY

Santa Rosa, Calif.

Hair Today

Sir: You say of Conductor Pierre Boulez [June 24]: "A slightly puffy, balding man, Boulez looks more like a librarian than a revolutionary." We are all professional librarians in the employ of Time Inc. Not one of us is even "slightly puffy," much less "balding."

PETER DRAZ

LESTER ANNENBERG

HOWARD BENTLEY

VICTOR BLITZER

ROBERT COLEMAN

MILTON IMBERMAN

HAROLD LATEINER

ARTHUR LIEN

BENJAMIN LIGHTMAN

New York City

> The writer was slightly myopic.

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