The Roaring 40's

Sir: TIME'S cover story, "The Command Generation" [July 29], is a delight. I am tired of hearing that the teen-ager is the biggest spender in the country, that it is on his shoulders that the world rests, etc. Where does the teen-ager get his money, who feeds him, educates him, employs him, houses him, gives him cars? The middleaged, of course.

(MRS.) MARY L. OLSEN

Eden, N.Y.

Sir: What a tender and perceptive look at middle age! Still, the idea that youth is at a disadvantage because of what it lacks in experience is a sour grape most of us in the latter group will not willingly swallow. Let us look for the compensations of our stage in life without tearing up the memories of the days when we too were young and blissfully ignorant.

(MRS.) A. A. VILKIN

Beverly Hills, Calif.

Sir: Your story was very comforting to me even though I'm still 21. It has given me back my future, dispelling the fear that everything had to happen here and now. How about another one in 20 years on the glories of old age?

MICHAEL D. WAITMAN

Evansville, Ind.

Sir: As you imply, one source of the new fullness of life in middle age is--paradoxically--a new awareness of death. This comes not only in the form of assorted aches and pains but also in quite harmless and humorous ways.

A few years ago, at a mere 47, I decided that I must buy a new pair of patent leather dancing shoes--in itself a rather daring decision. Trying to make small talk with the clerk, I remarked that the shoes I was replacing had lasted ever since my college days. "Yep," he replied, "you can get a lot of wear out of this kind of shoe." And then, as he fitted the shiny new shoes to my middle-aged feet: "You're buying your last pair right now."

WILLIAM G. MOULTON

Princeton, NJ.

Sir: I agree with all you say except that I think you're wrong about European attitudes. The cult of the young is inanely proliferate all over the Continent and Britain. There are TV programs in which the main idea is to focus the camera on young faces; people adore them just because they're so beautifully young.

One thing I noticed and liked about the U.S. on my first visit this year was the impression one got that the scene is still actually run by adults. Fashions, attitudes, morality, radio, TV and newspapers still seem to be geared to the serious and responsible rather than to the kinky and groovy. Nice. Amazing.

MARY KENNY, 22

London

Sir: My plaudit for Chaliapin's Bacall `a la Botticelli. She emerges bewitching and eternally feminine right into our frantic 20th century.

(MRS.) MARY RISCH

Connersville, Ind.

Tiger Skins

Sir: We of the special liaison group have lived and worked daily with the Korean Tigers [July 22] since their arrival in Viet Nam. They rank professionally with any fighting unit we've known. We find them "brutally efficient," but nowhere have we seen any grave sitting, tae kwon do cheekbone splitting, or mutilation by skinning. Had the Tigers done these things, 695 Viet Cong would never have surrendered.

A. S. BOLCAR

Major, U.S.A.

Qui Nhon, Viet Nam

The Chicago Murders

Sir: TIME has earned a well-deserved reputation as a champion of justice. That reputation has been tarnished by your portrait of the alleged murderer Richard Speck [July 29]. The portrait could hardly have done more to prejudice the jurors who may decide this wretched man's fate. Although he is suspected of having committed one of the most sordid crimes of the century, there was no excuse for TIME'S emotional comparison of his character with that of Lee Harvey Oswald. Nor could there be any justification at this stage for publishing details of his previous convictions. The publication of the accusation that "He's crazy when he gets liquor in him," and the blatant association of him with the murder of a barmaid and the rape of a 65-year-old widow, constitute an unpardonable violation of the principles of justice.

ALAN L. LIMBURY

Sydney, N.S.W., Australia

Sir: You suggest that "the Chicago police have talked about Speck enough so that his lawyers may well plead 'trial by newspaper.'" They may, but they, like you, will probably be wrong. So far, the case has been an impressive antidote for the Oswald-Ruby disaster. Harmful publicity has been minimal. The police--and the news media--deserve praise, not a gratuitous knock.

JON R. WALTZ

Professor of Law

Northwestern University

Chicago

Sir: TIME says that Chicago police applied the Escobedo "dictum" in the Speck case. In my opinion, the police were guided by Miranda v. Arizona, not Escobedo v. Illinois, the forerunner of Miranda. The essential difference between the two cases: in Escobedo, the defendant requested to see his attorney while being interrogated, permission was denied, and the Supreme Court held he had been denied his constitutional rights. In Miranda, the high court held that the suspect must be advised immediately of his constitutional right to have an attorney present before and during interrogation and of his right to have the state pay for counsel if the suspect is indigent. I do not remember reading any account of Speck's requesting an attorney, and even if he had, the rulings in Miranda then in effect would have made the issue academic.

LEO KAPLOWITZ

Union County Prosecutor

Elizabeth, NJ.

Three Ms

Sir: It's absolutely amazing that 53% of U.S. Catholics with a church-sponsored education [July 29] agreed that Christ's command to "love thy neighbor was more important than not eating meat on Friday." Any well-versed parochial-school student can tell you that the three deadliest sins are the three Ms--missing Mass on Sunday, attending bad movies, and eating meat on Friday.

T. D. McCORMICK

Oakland, Calif.

Sir: In most religious groups other than the Catholic, a large number of the clerics come from families in which one or both parents were members of the clergy. Since Roman Catholic religious cannot marry, their church is deprived of this source of potential priests, nuns and brothers--and that is where the Catholic schools come in. It is perhaps an overstatement, but probably close to the truth, that the primary purpose of Catholic schools is to cultivate a clerical manpower pool. The church is faced with the painful choice of maintaining a school system that is becoming critically inferior to secular schools, or facing up to the question of clerical celibacy.

JAMES S. MELLETT

New Rochelle, N.Y.

Interpreting Kipling

Sir: The Methodists who ousted Kipling's Recessional from their hymnal [July 22] should have considered the comment of George Orwell (no friend of colonialism) on the line, "lesser breeds without the Law"; "This line is always good for a snigger in pansy-left circles. It is assumed as a matter of course that the 'lesser breeds' are 'natives,' and a mental picture is called up of some pukka sahib in a pith helmet kicking a coolie. In its context the sense of the line is almost the exact opposite of this. The phrase 'lesser breeds' refers almost certainly to the Germans, and especially the pan-German writers, who are 'without the Law' in the sense of being lawless, not in the sense of being powerless. The whole poem is a denunciation of power politics."

DON CORAY

Bloomington, Ind.

Ho for the Open Road!

Sir: Let's get a few things straight about "Mayhem on Motorcycles" [July 29]. Society is more concerned with eliminating motorcycles than with eliminating the real cause of the problem, the Average Joe Driver, who never sees anything smaller than a Chrysler and blithely turns left in front of motorcycles with a devil-may-care attitude engendered by the two tons of steel between him and that 300-lb. bike.

Add to this the legion of drunken misfits who roam the highways, maintaining their licenses through "friends" at the Registry of Motor Vehicles, and sure enough, these cats start killing off a lot of kids who have never even terrorized a small Midwestern town. So they get all shook when they get hit with a big suit. Their first reaction? Outlaw motorcycles.

And what does society think of the recommended leathers and big bikes that can be seen? Ha! If you can avoid the never-even-saw-'em-CRASH! drivers, the fuzz locks you up as a menace to society. Admittedly, the Bermuda shorts set on their Japanese toys aren't too bright, but it still comes down to one thing: on a bike you have to expect every jerk on the road to try and hit you.

CHARLES C. STARR

Los Angeles

Sir: After reading your article, my parents offered to buy me a car in return for the surrender of my bike. I have chosen to reduce the probability of dying on the roads by four-fifths, and to join the ranks of the merry millions who consider it good sport to pick off the two-wheeled buffs. I sleep a little better each night knowing that I'm now doing the gunning.

MITCHEL D. ROSE

Ann Arbor, Mich.

Well, Almost Anywhere

Monsieur: In "The Impact of the American Way" [July 22], TIME claims that one can get a dry martini almost anywhere in the world. We have traveled all over France, where Martini is a brand name for a French aperitif and where bartenders are reluctant to put more than five drops of gin in a glass without pouring five ounces of vermouth on top of it. No, our brand of culture has not corrupted la belle France, where the champagne is dry and the martinis are all wet.

PHILIP E. CHARRON JR.

WINSTON S. EMMONS

ELLIS L. PHILLIPS III

Aix-en-Provence, France

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