Spreading Out from the Middle
Sir: TIME'S cover story, "The Command Generation," [July 29] is brilliant and penetrating. The writer is knowledgeable and wise . . . and I have a bone to pick with him.
He says, "In his 40's a man has done pretty much what he was capable of doing. Most depressing, he knows that he will have to go on doing it with ever-brighter, ever-younger men nipping at his heels." It is precisely that self-imposed psychological impotence that lies behind T. S. Eliot's middle-age "hoo-ha's." The primary affliction of middle-age is the fear of taking a chance, sloughing off old, stultifying patterns and starting something new in the direction of self-fulfillment.
Nobody says it's easy at this time of life. But I wonder if it isn't easier than living in the kind of tomb that too many lives are. Nobody ever reached a difficult goal by saying, "But what if . . ." Take a look at the chronicles of history and see how many "trapped" men emerged as brilliant contributors to their times after 40 years of killing unfulfillment.
HERBERT HECSH
Philadelphia
Sir: My father recently proved that people are not as old as they look or as old as their birth certificates say. My father is 51, and he received his bachelor's degree from Harvard in June after spending a whole year there as a senior. (He was a dropout during the Depression.) I think this is a good example for all those middle-aged people who use their age as an excuse for not doing the things they'd like to do.
JANE COTTON
North Wilbraham, Mass.
Sir: "A Letter from the Publisher" boasts about mere youngsters of 41, 43, 46 and 48, and timidly ventures to mention those on the verge of 60. All, if you think of it, mere babes in arms!
The author of some 50 published books and hundreds of articles, essays and reviews in some 70 leading newspapers and periodicals in England and America, I am today 85, well into my 86th year, and now doing my best work. For the past seven years, I have risen religiously at about 4 o'clock every morning and, during that time, have written at least seven books of poetry and prose. I am now at work on a book on Human Nature (a big subject), already in its 400th typed page.
JOHN COURNOS
New York City
Sir: "When does middle age begin?" When the phone rings on Saturday night, and you hope it's a wrong number.
DAVE BREGER
S. Nyack, N.Y.
Policy & Prospect
Sir: Now that it is quite apparent that the expanded bombing in Viet Nam [July 8 et seq.) is failing to attain any constructive result, I invite consideration of my "Fourth Alternative," which is for the U.S. to take all feasible measures to quiet down the war, to de-escalate it, to change the priority emphasis to economic, educational, social, and political factors, and to contemplate a decade or more of competition of systems in Viet Nam.
One of the keys to such a policy would be to support the admission of both North Viet Nam and South Viet Nam to the United Nations. Historically, the North, known as Tongking, and the South, known as Annam, were separate. The North and South each have a viable economic base. The North and South each have more resources and larger populations than many of the present members of the United Nations.
The prospect of uniting Viet Nam in this contemporary period under either Communism or democracy is unrealistic.
HAROLD E. STASSEN
Philadelphia
Sir: The faulty logic and incredible naivete of Letter Writer Thome [July 22] is shocking, but illuminates the reasoning of the nonthinking, highly vocal minority.
Of course we would fight to the last man if our oil supplies were to be bombed by the Russians. We would fight as victims of unprovoked aggression, knowing that to surrender would be to submit to the subjugation of our country and our freedom by the Communists.
The North Vietnamese, on the other hand, know full well that they are the aggressors in this conflict. They are not being bombed into unconditional surrender. They are being bombed to make the price of their aggression too high to bear. They are beseeched on all sides to negotiate and are in no danger of losing their government or their lands.
They will not fight to the last man, Mr. Thorne; they will fight until the profit margin is smashed into nonexistence.
NORMAN W. VANAMAN JR.
Alloway, N.J.
Sir: So Ho Chi Minh has switched to Salems from Camels and Philip Morrises.
Is it possible he would rather switch than fight?
DONALD R. SEAL
North Plainfield, NJ.
The Airline Picture
Sir: Except for a few minor factual slips (my poker really hasn't been that good for many years!), I thought that TIME'S cover story [July 22] was a very good one and gave an accurate resume of the airline picture. I was impressed by the amount of time and effort that I observed going into its preparation. While I trust that TIME will be able to hold to higher standards in the future, it was fun to be on your cover.
CHARLES C. TILLINGHAST JR.
Trans World Airlines
New York City
Sir: As an aircraft mechanic I can say authoritatively that the airplane of today is not the airplane of yesteryear; it is a complex piece of electronic machinery that requires skills beyond the comprehension of the engineers who built the DC-3 and DC-6. I must know how to keep in airworthy condition no fewer than seven different airplanes made by four different manufacturers.
A Detroit automobile mechanic makes approximately 460 an hour more than an aircraft mechanic, and he is in the process of asking for 400 an hour more in mid-contract. I am asking for a 530-an-hour increase extended over a three-year period. Remember, it takes a lot more than pilots, manufacturers and executives to operate an airline.
JOHN Y. GRAVES
Aurora, Colo.
American Uplift
Sir: TIME'S Essay, "The Impact of the American Way" [July 22], is superb as far as it goes. But it is lamentable, if indeed not shameful, that our social institutions have failed to keep abreast of our technological leadership. It is small comfort that the rest of the world emulates our methods and longs for our goodies.
That an affluent and supposedly humane society can tolerate inequality of opportunity resulting in illiteracy and joblessness is an American tragedy. That "democracy" of the marketplace in housing virtually excludes Negroes is equally tragic. Not until America can organize its technological society to allow all individuals to flourish will the "American Way" have its fullest impact.
JOHN S. COLEMAN
Lafayette, Ind.
Sir: One thing you failed to consider is the wish of women around the world to adopt the "American bosom." A friend from England told me that during the war her G.I. boy friend had his mother send her a box of American lingerie. Her figure became an instant attraction as soon as she began wearing her uplift bra, which with care and patching lasted three years.
MRS. G. LAMBERT
Empire, Nev.
Light Adawning
Sir: About your Essay on Privacy [July 15]: solitude without loneliness is available to all who seek it. It is a question not of where but of when. That brief period in the morning from dawn until everybody wakes up offers a new and different world unknown to most of us--serene yet vibrant, peaceful yet alive, free of the hostilities of the strange or the pressures of the familiar.
The downtown of a city is comfortably inviting. Even your own back yard takes on a new look. There is an instant rapport with the people you meet; there are no intruders or adversaries, only kindred spirits. For a rewarding experience, turn the TV off a little early and set the alarm for 15 minutes before dawn.
JAMES K.V. WILLSON, M.D.
Mobile, Ala.
Milton on Divorce
Sir: Father Lepp's comments on second marriages for Catholics [July 22] follow very closely John Milton's views in his tract Doctrine and Discipline of Divorce, published in 1643. Milton discusses the need for divorce so that man can be more content either with himself or with another: "And this doubtless is the reason of those lapses and that melancholy despair which we see in many wedded persons, though they understand it not, or pretend other causes because they know no remedy; and is of extreme danger. Therefore when human frailty surcharged is at such a loss, charity ought to venture much and use bold physic, lest an over-tossed faith endanger to shipwreck."
ROBERT J. LAFAVE
Brooklyn
Postscript
Sir: Thank you for the splendid coverage of the London crusade [June 10, July 15]. The reporting was extremely fair and accurate. I am convinced that this crusade made the deepest penetration of any of the crusades we have ever conducted anywhere. It may take a generation to analyze the full impact.
BILLY GRAHAM
Montreal, N.C.
Credit Where Credit Is Due
Sir: About your story on Czechoslovak films [July 29]: Though you mention The Shop on Main Street, you ignore the film's author, Ladislav Grossman. Mr. Grossman, my childhood friend and schoolmate, wrote the story on the basis of very personal observation, and on the basis of the very personal suffering he underwent during World War II at the scene of the story. But for Mr. Grossman's great talent, there would have been no Shop on Main Street, and I fail to comprehend why the American habit of giving credit where credit is due is being so flagrantly overlooked in this case.
Both the book and the film version of The Shop on Main Street were flops in Czechoslovakia, undoubtedly because of the guilty consciences of the people depicted. They chose to ignore the book and to walk out of the movie in mid-performance. Only the success of the film in the U.S. has changed this lethargy into a willingness at least to accept the honors.
JOSEPH SCHILDKRAUT
Brooklyn
That Cussed Custer
Sir: TIME'S review of books about Custer [July 22] recalls the description written by Psychiatrist Karl Menninger when he was asked in 1947 to assess Custer's personality for a medical journal:
"He was a man who in the name of warfare executed surprise attacks upon communities of men, women and children and slaughtered the women and children along with the men; who deprived wounded soldiers under his own command of medical attention; who disregarded the safety of his troops to the extent of sending them into hostile territory with insufficient military preparation and protection to their almost certain (and quite pointless) death; who was convicted of one desertion of his own troops and was suspected of others; who either committed perjury or at least gave incorrect, damaging testimony in court to satisfy a personal spite; who disobeyed specific orders given by the one friend he seems to have retained and the one general who intervened in his behalf; who presumably planned the sacrifice of the lives of the bulk of his command in order to achieve a minor piece of personal military glory.
"These data describe a personality type only too familiar to psychiatrists, falling into a category of psychopathology typically characterized by excessive vanity, complete disregard for the feelings or safety of others, a lack of loyalty either to cause or friends, either to the principles of humanity or to the established code of ethics, and a conspicuousness of achievement at times passing for success under circumstances where ruthlessness and boldness are to some advantage."
CHARLES BARON, M.D.
Covington, Ky.
Driven to Distraction
Sir: A footnote to "Autoeroticism" [July 22]: in 1963, during an Army hitch in Germany, I was taken to Josef Beinert for a job estimate on my car. Beinert, apparently part of a vanishing German remnant, eyed my features with suspicion. Taking my German friend aside, he said, "I guess we missed making soap out of him during the war." Two weeks later, he met his death as you describe.
ROBERT M. SHERIN Miami
Sir: I was delighted by your story on West Germany's attachment to its automobiles, and so was Lucille when I went out to the driveway and read it to her. I should have skipped the part about most Germans washing their cars once a week, though, because Lucille, who is lucky if she is bathed once a month, immediately developed a rattle in the vicinity of her tail gate. In her defense, I must say that her only serious misbehavior, which occurred after I let a friend drive her, was a transmission tantrum violent enough to cause me to rent a car for the weekend. When I took her to the hospital, a team of transmission specialists and consultants was unable to find any organic disorder, leading us to conclude that she was just paying me back.
DENIS W. WADE
San Francisco
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