Rocks in the Wind

Sir: Anyone who can interpret Ray Charles's Let's Go Get Stoned as "a call to take part in a freedom march" [July 1] has scrambled eggs in the head. Are double-entendres in music new? Old songs like All or Nothing at All, All the Way and Come Fly with Me couldn't pass a purity test. Was Kern a dirty old man when he wrote Easy to Love! Was Hammerstein thinking lewd thoughts as he penned I'm Just a Girl Who Can't Say No?

CAROL COVIELLO New York City

Sir: Cleans and Dirties be damned. The Rolling Stones didn't invent the bawdy song: it's been around for some time. As for LSD and pot, they are what's happening, and it would be surprising if pop songs didn't take account of them. Rock 'n' roll didn't write the script, it only made the scene. But the main thing is that rock 'n' roll is the first original development in popular music since jazz. Groups like The Beatles and The Stones display a phenomenal melodic inventiveness and a harmonic and contrapuntal imagination that even us squares can dig.

(PROF.) Louis H. MACKEY Rice University Houston

Sir: Just because you ole hags can't appreciate good music or play gutiar worth a jellybean dosen't mean you have to go protesting about the Beatles. We think you're jealous because your stupid magazine isn't selling as well as the Beatle Albems. For petes sake, why go knocking the Beatles around? There doing better then you. By the way, both of us agree that Norwegian Wood and Day Tripper are not undecent. Where did you get that idea? Take our advice: state the right facts or flake out!

PATTY HUTCHESON, 14 SUSAN HUTCHESON, 12 Fairview, Mass.

Having a Matzoth Ball

Sir: There is an interesting comparison between a Russian who promised to bury us, then was graciously hosted by New York, and a man who merely said Jews who support Israel are enemies of his country, then was snubbed by the same city. King Feisal's statement [July 1] was a matter of his country's policy; Khrushchev's was a threat.

DAVID B. PERRY Tuckahoe, N.Y.

Sir: I am concerned at the Final Solution to the Feisal Banquet Problem decided on by Mayor Lindsay. It is unfortunate that the State Department, New York and the Jewish community faltered so badly in this moment of international crisis. The obvious solution was to proceed with the banquet at some notable Jewish restaurant, such as Gluckstern's or Poliacoff's. After feasting on chicken soup with matzoth balls, gefilte fish, and boiled beef with horseradish, it is inconceivable that one drop of animosity toward Israel could remain in Feisal's kingly body. To consolidate this initial victory, I would have suggested a Matzoth Balls for Feisal Fund, by means of which periodic shipments of matzoth balls and chicken soup would be sent to Feisal whenever the effects of the New York meal seemed to be wearing off.

BENJAMIN T. BERNSTEIN Metuchen, N.J.

Valuable Time

Sir: Letter Writer Horvitz [June 17] wonders what an academically minded person can bring to the military. It's simple: his time.

When I graduated in '62 I doubted that the Air Force had much use for a future professor of English literature, but I decided to find out. Besides, I wanted something from the Air Force: firsthand information. I figured I had no business trying to teach anybody anything until I knew what was going on beyond the well-tilled fields of Wordsworth. The experience was something like selling one's soul. But it has not been wasted time.

After four years, two of them as a navigator in SAC B-52s, I'm ready to hang it up. I haven't enjoyed much of it, but then nobody guaranteed me that I would. I have seen England, Hawaii, Okinawa, Bermuda, Guam, South Dakota. I've pulled Alert away from my family an average of three days a week. I've climbed over, banged on, shined flashlights into, and learned to love "The Bomb." I've seen Viet Nam from the air 21 times, and I've had my teeth worked on by an Air Force dentist. I don't have all the answers now. But I know a damned sight more than I did when I was in Mr. Horvitz's shoes.

Now if Mr. Horvitz doesn't come into the service, it's no skin off my nose. I don't care what he thinks he can get out of the military. What concerns me is what he thinks he can take into the classroom.

JON C. SUGGS First Lieutenant, U.S.A.F. A.P.O. San Francisco

Mon Dieu

Sir: From his brilliant suggestions for motorized militarism in World War I to his criticisms on the weakness of the Maginot Line in the years preceding World War II, Charles de Gaulle has appeared to be a prophet before his time. Far too few people take this man seriously. I nominate him to fill the third position in the 20th century "trinity of greatness" with Churchill and Roosevelt.

MICHAEL S. MCCAULEY Des Moines, Iowa

Sir: Who was that pompou, Roman senator on your cover [July 1]? It certainly bore no resemblance to the Frenchman with the long nose and the short memory.

T. C. RAETHER Neenah, Wis.

Matter of Understanding

Sir: A B-- for TIME'S Essay "On Understanding Asia" [July 1]. The Asia that "had produced strikingly little written history" must not include China, which has the longest continuous historiographical tradition in the world, and probably the most voluminous. Scientists rely on precise Chinese records of supernovae, sunspots, etc., for the nearly two millennia that Europeans did not believe in such phenomena and thus did not see them. That the Chinese have no word for "no" is a statement about syntax, not diction--there are common words for "not," "don't," "never," etc.--and even so, TIME'S statement is true only of classical Chinese, not of the spoken language. The Chinese word for freedom means freedom and nothing else. Its origin is indeed from two characters that by themselves mean "spontaneous" and "uncontrol," but then, my dictionary tells me the word free is from "to be fond of," equally irrelevant. And finally, no one who has read a translation of Cliuang tzii or of the poetry of T'ao Yuan-ming is ignorant of the fact that for nearly 2500 years there has been a strong Chinese ideal of "the integrity of the lone individual against the group."

N. SIVIN M.I.T. Cambridge, Mass.

Sir: I have worked in Thailand most of the past 28 years, and I consider the statement "Asians relate personally to others, or not at all" a luminous insight. Asians do not want first either Western money or Western technology. Yet Asia needs both, and Asians are aware of the need. Asians want first their brothers, and until they find their fellow human beings--until we overcome the alienation that has developed as the result of inadequate Western understanding of and appreciation for Asian culture and Asians as people--there will be suspicion, resentment, and even violence. If the Asian can find his brother, the two will find the capital and master the technology together. Equality in dignity is Asia's rightful demand.

HORACE W. RYBURN The United Presbyterian Church New York City

With Measured Tread

Sir: I was astonished to read in your report [July 8] on the Dominican Republic inauguration that Vice President Humphrey "arrived on the run, flushed and hurried over an overlong chat with Peace Corps workers." As a member of the U.S. delegation in Santo Domingo, I accompanied the Vice President to the ceremony in the Congress building. Our party was one of the first to arrive. The arrival was calm, unflushed and unhurried.

LINCOLN GORDON Assistant Secretary of State Washington, D.C.

>TIME is pleased to have Diplomat Gordon set the record straight.

No Shrinking Violette

Sir: TIME says Maine Democrats have fielded against Senator Smith "a little-known opponent" [July 1]. Democratic State Senator Elmer H. Violette--as chairman of the Special Legislative Power Study Committee, Interim Study Committee on Allagash, Citizens for Quoddy-Dickey Committee, and author or sponsor of the Fair Housing Act Criminal Procedure Reform Bill. Allagash Wilderness Waterway Act--is very well known indeed to Maine citizens as their most prominent and respected state legislator. The incumbent knows that Violette is a young and scrappy ex-athlete who for 25 years has been coming out of the Maine political ball park a winner. As brother of the candidate, I should be disappointed come November 8 to find you short of copy on Contender Violette.

P. EUGENE VIOLETTE Edwardsville, Ill.

Before the Fact

Sir: Your article on the Venice Biennale [June 24] stated: "When all Americans lost, Geldzahler petulantly handed out a statement denouncing prizes as meaningless." TIME got the sequence and tone of the events wrong. I announced that "prizes reflect quality only in the most haphazard way" on June 14, the day the judges began their work. I had previously taken this stand in a talk at the Italian Embassy in Washington on May 16.

HENRY GELDZAHLER U.S. Commissioner 1966 Venice Biennale New York City

Say It with Numbers

Sir: The piece about Chicago Daily News Columnist Royko [July 1] recalls the fact that in Cleveland, we have a street named Kosciuszko. There is a story that a policeman stopped in the station, told his superior there was a dead horse on Kosciuszko. The officer said, "Well, make out your report." The policeman, a poor speller, disappeared. After an hour, he came back disheveled and out of breath. His officer demanded to know where he had been. Replied he: "I moved the horse to 79th Street."

H. D. LASCH Cleveland

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