Bobby's Credentials

Sir: Senator Kennedy's less than subtle, self-emulatory campaign and his image-making political antics disgust the rational, intelligent voter and remind one of Abe Lincoln's familiar quote: "You can fool all of the people some of the time, some of the people all of the time, but you can't fool all of the people all of the time"--or can you?

At least TIME [Sept. 16] didn't slobber over him.

MARIBEL P. AGULLO Rocky Point, N.Y.

Sir: Why do you insist on fobbing off Robert Kennedy's political strength on some sort of mystical personality cult? The fact is that no other living man can show credentials of experience and accomplishment equal to his at his age--even fuller and more distinguished than John Kennedy's at the same age.

L. NICHOLL

Claremont, Calif.

Sir: It is obvious that Senator Kennedy believes in deeds, not words. I don't know about sounding like Bugs Bunny, but he certainly has enough kids.

JEFF GRAY New York City

Sir: Taking a second look at David Stone Martin's cover portrait of Senator Kennedy a question came to mind. Would Bobby be flattered by a picture which makes him look like a young Everett Dirksen?

MICHAEL ROSENBERG Chicago

The Guru & the Guards

Sir: Your cover story on that nut house called China [Sept. 9] was a splendid piece of political writing. Mao Tse-tung has gone even beyond Stalin, his patron saint and political guru, in villainy. No political leader in history cuts such a ridiculous figure trying to stamp his aging image on the hearts of nearly 800 million people.

The resistance he has met shows that freedom still flickers in Red China. As hard as Mao and Piao try, they will not be able to quench this smoking flax of freedom, for this idiotic brand of totalitarianism can never ever establish itself. IVAN SASSOON Calcutta, India

Sir: Target the Red Guards overlooked: their atomic-weapon development facili ties and the work of foreign devils like Newton, Einstein, Faraday, Mendeleyev, Leibnitz, Gauss, Huygens, Kirchhoff. There, indeed, is a monument to the West that any sane man would like to see at the bottom of Lake Baikal. If they do a really thorough job long enough, they will be walking to work and working at night by the light of blazing pine knots, even in the Celestial City.

REID WATSON

San Diego

Sir: China's Red Guards baffle me. They order a candy shop to drop "Happiness" from its name, but allow it to continue in operation and to some extent sweeten up a nation determined to become the world's No. 1 sourpuss. Now try to explain away capitalistic cavities from that Mukden milk chocolate.

DANIEL M. PEARSON Bethlehem, Pa.

Views on the War

Sir: Your account of the "changing climate" of the Viet Nam war is a too optimistic view of a deepening national pessimism over the war. No student demonstrator am I, nor do I speak from the platform of professor, nor yet as religionist. I am an attorney, and my work puts me in contact with representatives of the vast middle leadership in business and community affairs. In recent months, travels have taken me to all sections of the land. I have talked with people from all walks of life--taxi drivers, barbers, trucking executives, architects, contractors, merchants, service-club associates. To a man, I have found no support of this war. It is viewed as the classic example of economic waste, a tragic waste of American lives, the primary cause of domestic inflation, the greatest blunder in American history.

No dove, I support our fighting men in their assignment. However, 1 and millions like me think we should get out of Viet Nam. We see the futility of organized protest; we become resigned. But we do not approve.

DONALD E. BLANCHARD Denver

Sir: Like many others, we are unable to make up our minds about the Tightness of the war in Viet Nam. Nevertheless, that war exists and our young men are fighting in it. They are not mercenaries; they are making sacrifices for us--while we who are not fighting and suffering are behaving as though there were no war. Our guns-and-butter policy encourages business rnd pleasure as usual. A country at war must close ranks on all levels and let the we rid and our boys know that we mean business.

IRVINE H. PAGE, M.D. BEATRICE A. PAGE Cleveland Clinic Cleveland

Dictates of Conscience

Sir: Your article on Father Groppi's stand in Milwaukee [Sept. 9] was the last straw my conscience could tolerate. My powers of rationalization were finally defeated. If an elected judicial official should not be a member of an exclusive private organization where Negroes presently are not allowed membership, why would this apply any the less to ordained Christian ministers or to any Christian, no matter how convenient and helpful the club or organization may be?

Therefore, today I have submitted my letter of resignation for the reasons stated above, to the Columbus Athletic Club, a club very prestigious, ancient, convenient, helpful, and no less biased nor exclusive than all other such clubs. I should have been able to do this by just reading the Bible rather than waiting for TIME.

(THE REV.) HUGH G. CARMICHAEL St. Paul's Episcopal Church Columbus

Sir: In replying to your article on civil rights in Milwaukee, I feel that in a free society men should be able to band together in social or fraternal organizations to the exclusion of whom they please, without stigma. The Fraternal Order of Eagles should have the right to exclude arbitrarily Negroes, left-handed people or those who cannot play the violin. It is pathological to impute bigotry to an individual simply because he associates, in his private capacity, with certain people to the exclusion of others. No man's freedom is abridged by his being denied membership in the Eagles. Every man's freedom is threatened if the Eagles cannot choose their members freely, and if immorality is imputed to them because they exercise their right.

E. A. POUND JR. Columbus, Ga.

Larceny Squad

Sir: Your Essay on Larceny [Sept. 9] provided an excellent insight into the symptoms and causes of this modern malaise. An additional causative factor is that people need to counteract the boredom of today's routinized living; they therefore actively seek sources of stimulation and excitement. As grown-ups they tend to rebel against those moral repressions forced upon them in childhood. By playing the larcenous game called "beat the system," they achieve both the exhilaration and retribution they crave.

MORRIS GLACHMAN Washington, D.C.

Sir: My job at Bloomingdale's in New York City includes handling customer returns. We have a very liberal return policy, and time and time again, I am forced to take back worn merchandise, out-of-sea-son merchandise, and merchandise that does not even come from our store. It is always the honest customer who is hurt in the long run. The customer who is trying to put something over on you or who is trying to get something for nothing always seems to win only because he fights and demands to see someone higher up. After reading your article, I doubt if I will ever trust anyone again.

ANN H. JONES Weston, Conn.

Sir: Any amateur or potential shoplifter lacking the skills and techniques needed to be successful in this trade will learn them well in TIME.

LAUREL D. BRAINARD Arvada, Colo.

Sir: That Essay reminds me of what a Russian Jew once told a Polish Jew. Said he: "When one dishonest Czar cheats some other Czar, it is called High Policy; when one dishonest Prime Minister cheats another one, it is called High Diplomacy; when one dishonest banker cheats another one, it is called High Finance; when one dishonest merchant cheats the public, it is called the Trade; but when a housewife walks out with a pair of pretty earrings, it is called robbery and she is speedily deported to Siberia!" "Well," mused the Polish Jew, "she was probably condemned not for shoplifting but for clumsiness!"

E. NANSEN New York City

Sir: Admittedly we all have a bit of larceny in us--but we also have a conscience. Just last week the New Everglades Hotel received a letter from a woman with a $10 money order. She wrote: "Years ago your cashier gave me too much change. This money I want to return to your hotel. Each time I have a remembrance of it, I am convicted again." T. JAMES ENNIS Managing Director New Everglades Hotel Miami

Sir: After reading your Essay on larceny, I find that my conscience will no longer allow me to accept free the copies of TIME you so obligingly send me each week, since my subscription expired two months ago. I am now renewing it.

MELINDA DALLAS Reno

The Play's the Thing

Sir: TIME [Sept. 2] described the forthcoming play, Chu Chem, as a "cynically commercial concoction." Permit us to rebut that cynical description.

Chu Chem's main plot is based on historical fact: a colony of Jews came to Kaifeng Fu, Honan Province, in China, in the year 931. The play deals with what happened to them. Its main theme deals with conditioned behavior, the need to free our minds from all superego images, and the necessity to learn to laugh at ourselves.

Before Chu Chem opens in New York, months of concentrated rehearsals, out-of-town playing of previews will precede it. The theater, as you have occasionally pointed out, is in a sad state. But what is the state of journalism that forms a judgment before the play is presented? CHERYL CRAWFORD AND MITCH LEIGH

Producers New York City

>TIME was too hasty, awaits opening night with expectation.

Addition to the Roster

Sir: Bravo for delivering the goods in your story on American fashion designers [Sept. 9], except for an astonishing omission. Any roster of our designing Establishment without Donald Brooks is like a rundown of ranking painters that bypasses Bonnard.

GERALDINE STUTZ President Henri Bendel New York City

Need for Identity

Sir: I am convinced that Donald Thorman's pessimistic prognosis of Catholicism's future in America [Sept. 16] needs a qualifying footnote, for it underestimates the experience of insecurity which attends the exercise of private judgment in religion. Emma Lazarus' "huddled masses" are still huddled, and will go right on huddling, whether on a campus or within a ghetto of Cuban refugees. Catholicism knows this, and it presents a power structure that makes it not only difficult to question the divine nature of the Church but dangerous as well. As a Protestant, I have often wanted this assurance. But each effort to converse with a priest has ended with the pious chant: "You lack faith."

But all is not lost, for I have gained a fresh insight into the reason why intelligent Catholics, fatigued from the task of having to think, experience relief on Sunday by letting an ecclesiastical hierarchy do the thinking. Even if such Catholics show signs of rebellion from authority, they prove their need of identity with the church by retaining their membership.

It follows, therefore, that the psychological attraction of Catholicism, quite apart from the question of truth, will guarantee a bright and prosperous future for the Roman Catholic Church in America. Protestant probabilities offer little attraction to those who, whether in a devout or rebellious spirit, have touched the sacred robes of absolutism in Catholicism.

EDWARD JOHN CARNELL Fuller Theological Seminary Pasadena, Calif.

Giant Steps

Sir: My compliments on the informative, accurate, and very readable article explaining those Lilliputian giants--integrated circuits [Sept. 2]. As an electronics engineer working toward a doctorate in the field, I feel a very keen anticipation for the Dick Tracy wrist TV communicator and the domestic computerized control center in each home--both well within economic possibility because of those highly processed wafers of sand (silicon). You have removed part of the mystery that the general public feels surrounding the operation and fabrication of such unfathomably tiny circuits.

HOWARD E. ABRAHAM General Dynamics San Diego

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