The Name Game

Sir: For TIME'S Man of the Year I nominate Mr. Average, the taxpaying, vote-casting citizen. He may be bemused, bothered and bewildered, but he's more powerful than ever, and is exchanging apathy for a strength he didn't even know he had.

MRS. TERRY HIERS JR.

Nashville

Sir: The 1966 college student everywhere, from China's Red Guards to Berkeley.

ANN SCOLNICK

Cold Spring Harbor, N.Y.

Sir: General de Gaulle, the only world leader today who has any idea what it is to be a statesman.

PHILIP G. CERNY

Kenyon College Gambier, Ohio

Sir: Ralph Nader, whose labors will lead to a fundamental re-engineering of our automobiles, thus saving hundreds of thousands of lives.

SIDNEY RADEK

Washington, D.C.

Sir: Dr. DeBakey, for his contribution to heart surgery.

RICHARD LOWE

Canoga Park, Calif.

Sir: Why not the American woman? She's been the backbone of this nation for centuries, and it's about time she was recognized as such.

PAM COFFEY

Milford High School Milford, Ohio

Sir: Our servicemen in Viet Nam, who are doing a tremendous job for us.

SEYMOUR W. STEIN, D.D.S.

Sharon Springs, N.Y.

Sir: As a member of the U.S. armed forces in Viet Nam, I nominate those entertainers who have taken the time and interest to brighten our day in this far-off land.

(SP4) CRAIG W. POINDEXTER

12th Evacuation Hospital APO San Francisco

Matter of Accent

Sir: Thanks for such an objective report about Chancellor Kiesinger [Dec. 9] and Germany.

GERO WEBER

Heidelberg, Germany

Sir: Your cover story, like flattery, makes me uneasy. One wants to believe it, but one can't. The details are right, but the accents are set in a way that makes the picture seem most questionably rosy. To call growing trends toward nationalism "search for a more fulfilling place in the world" is a euphemism if I ever heard one.

The present German problems are, at least in part, evidence of the fact that we are not yet in reality an established democracy. And isn't it exactly that that should worry us?

ERNST F. MUELLER

Psychological Institute Muenster, Germany

No Promised Land

Sir: Plaudits for your expose of the Great Society [Dec. 9].

It is becoming increasingly obvious that this much-vaunted edifice, the pride of the Johnson Administration, though designed to abate the sting of the inequities of opportunity inherent in our system, is not achieving the promised result. Where are the American resources and determination that could fulfill this country's promise? They are concentrated in a small country in Southeast Asia, where the Johnson Administration thinks it can impose a political house of cards upon a proud people.

ART HEROLD

University of Texas Austin

Sir: I have about come to the conclusion that the Great Society's principal roadblock is not lack of money, means or know-how, but paucity of will and desire. At local levels, too many people just don't give a damn.

DAVID A. LANE

Ossining, N.Y.

With Two Voices

Sir: The chopping-up and brightening around the edges still hasn't altered much of Voice of America's bedrock mediocrity. VOA [Dec. 9] still sounds like some bureaucrat's idea of everyman's radio entertainment. I've had enough of interviews with Midwestern chicken farmers and the supercilious, you're-not-too-bright enunciation American announcers have been instructed to use. I'll take the BBC's thoroughly professional and human sound. Besides, their reception is a whole lot clearer.

WILLIAM H. CORWIN

Ankara, Turkey

Sir: As a short-wave listener and radio amateur, I'm glad to see VOA get some recognition for the fine programs it broadcasts. In my opinion, it has more informative and entertaining material to offer than NBC, ABC or CBS--and without the commercials.

BRUCE TENNANT

Long Beach, Calif.

Integrated System

Sir: To say that Adam Clayton Powell is "a Negro who has managed to outplay Whitey at his own game" [Dec. 9] is to encourage the useless emotions of race rivalry. Blaming Adam on the small fraction of Negro heritage he claims and abuses is as inappropriate as blaming the "game" you speak of on Caucasians, for Powell cannot sensibly be considered Negro any more than he can sensibly be considered truly American. The sensitive person of Nordic, African or whatever stock you please places men like Powell in the simple category, "moral garbage," which is a totally integrated system.

REED C. ANDREW

Green Bay, Wis.

The Bugs in Berkeley

Sir: I appreciated your story on Berkeley's problems [Dec. 9].

After a week of pushing through militant picket lines to get to class, fending off soggy leaflets, standing in the rain for hours at mass rallies to find out what was going on, straining to hear professors over the noise of the amplified strike pleas echoing through the campus, and being called obscene names by hippies when I tried to buy a sandwich at the cafeteria, I decided that this would be a nicer place to get an education if Mario Savio would stop bugging us. Has anybody thought of drafting him?

JUSTINE TRUBEY

Graduate Student

University of California Berkeley

Sir: You might have checked on all the facts before you wrote your latest misleading article on Berkeley.

The issues were neither "trivial" nor "phony" but a general protest against the war in Viet Nam as well as against university rules that permit nonstudent U.S. Navy recruiters to set up tables when other nonstudents, such as conscientious objectors, are forbidden representation. It was the arrival of riot police with helmets and clubs that "enraged the demonstrators," not just cops.

JOAN D. LAXSON

Graduate Student

University of California Berkeley

Sir: Having helped to condition a generation of young Americans to question every standard and reject every authority, academicians at Berkeley should not be surprised that their students are now challenging the necessity of attending to classes and to study.

ANTHONY JAMES JOES

University of Pennsylvania Philadelphia

Mutual Admiration Society

Sir: It is unfortunate that the SEC holds the philosophy of free enterprise and the intelligence and good judgment of the American people in such low regard. In their proposed purge of the mutual-fund management companies [Dec. 9], the SEC seems to have decided that the American investor is too ignorant to judge for himself what is or is not a good investment opportunity. Furthermore, the commission seems to have concluded that the profits generated by a corporation's successful decisions and good service to its investors are undesirable.

Fortunately, the present SEC was not around to judge and regulate the initial decisions and investments upon which the world's greatest economy and highest standard of living were built.

JOHN D. HAYDEN

Denver

Sir: My worst suspicion has been confirmed: someone has been making money with my money. For twelve blundering years, I've paid between 7 1/2% and 8 1/2% sales charge on the seven funds I've bought. I'm so angry I'd sell them all now, except that I'd be charged an excessive capital gains tax for the four-fold appreciation.

WALTER W. HARTMAN

Minneapolis

Birth Certificate

Sir: In "Screenwriter in the Ghetto" [July 22], TIME said that I was born "in the ward of a women's prison." My birth certificate shows that I was born at Memorial Hospital in Cheyenne, Wyo., in a room reserved for Negroes.

JOHNIE SCOTT

Los Angeles

P: TIME regrets the error in a story that was intended to be wholly complimentary to young Johnie Scott.

Consensus Ethics

Sir: With all due respect to Bishop Francis Simons, his conclusions on ethics may sound startling, "especially coming from a Catholic bishop" [Dec. 9], but they are not startling to the great majority of Protestant pastors. I feel sure I am only one among many religious leaders who have for years believed and taught the things that the good bishop now "startles" us with. And I fail to see how his conclusion that "love is the fulfillment of the law" differs in any way from situation ethics--as propounded, for example, by Dr. Joseph Fletcher in his book Situation Ethics: the New Morality, except that the word "consensus" is used.

(THE REV.) WILBUR R. BRANDLI

Totowa Presbyterian Church Paterson, N.J.

Sir: Your summary of my view on morality is on the whole as fair and accurate as its brevity permits, but I did not propose a "consensus ethics."

It is not "the consensus of what constitutes the good or welfare of man" that I consider "the root source of morality" but the good of man itself. The demands of man's welfare constitute natural moral law whether they are recognized by many or by few.

A consensus, however, can be a useful pointer, and a growing consensus outside the Catholic Church obliges it to reconsider what the good of man really demands and, where necessary, to correct traditional positions.

(BISHOP) F. SIMONS

Indore, India

Viewed from the Barracks

Sir: It was with a feeling of acute nausea that I read your story about Truman Capote's faux-party [Dec. 9].

There are 40 men in this barracks. In less than a year, most of them will be in the jungles of Viet Nam. When 500 of the wealthiest, most influential people in the country have nothing better to do but decide whether to spend 140 or $400 on a mask, I wonder what these boys will be fighting for.

With the world more and more resembling the last 50 years of the Roman Empire, I can't bear to think of my country's future at the hands of this fat, lethargic, useless intelligentsia.

(PvT.) CHARLES ROSNER

Fort Jackson, S.C.

Will Me a Wills

Sir: Reviewing Ken Purdy's book "Motor Cars of the Golden Past" [Dec. 9], TIME speaks of the "Willis Sainte Claire." Actually, it was called the "Wills Sainte Claire." My uncle had one in 1926, and it was truly a gem. Way ahead of its time, both from the standpoint of body design and automotive engineering. I seem to recall it was one of the first V-eights with overhead camshafts. Anyway, I delighted in driving it. Uncle didn't, because he had such big feet that they sometimes hit both the clutch and brake pedals at the same time, as the pedals were rather close together. So he got rid of it for a Peerless, a Winton or a Cadillac, I forget which.

Sure wish I had the Wills today. I could cash in and live on the proceeds.

CHARLES S. CLARK

Houston

Whichward Ho?

Sir: By all means, onions and Scotch to Yachtsman Chichester [Dec. 16], but scallions to TIME'S editors who planned Chichester's return from Australia to Merrie England (hie) WESTWARD by way of Cape Horn. We in the topsy half of this tipsy world breathlessly await the second reel with port to starboard in this extremely wet adventure series.

DUANE W. JOHNSON

Washington, D.C.

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