Temporary Patchwork

Sir: Re your cover story on the French monetary crisis [Nov. 29]: more important, perhaps, than an overhauling of the world's monetary system is an overhauling of the nationalistic attitudes toward international economic policies. Germany refuses to revalue the Deutsche Mark, and Germans applaud the victory over France. France refuses to devalue the franc, and De Gaulle envisions the nation's return to the head of the pack. If forced to devalue. France threatens a devaluation of such magnitude as to pull down other currencies with the franc. The U.S. dogmatically upholds the value of the dollar. The world has suffered three major monetary crises in the past year; yet nations still attempt patchwork measures that only temporarily ease their ills and then only at the expense of others.

EDWARD J. POWERS Marquette, Mich.

Sir: Your excellent coverage of the monetary crisis shows the disastrous effects of fear and confusion. Let us hope Mr. Nixon learns the lesson. He must take positive steps to build a healthy monetary system the first few weeks he is in office. If he resorts to more self-defeating gimmicks, as the present Administration has, we shall likely have the worst recession since 1929.

DOUGLAS A. MAZZOTTA Detroit

Sir: I have never been exactly what you would call an admirer of France's Charles de Gaulle, but now that I learn the poor man is so out of step with the 20th century as to think that the way to solve his country's financial difficulties is to reduce expenditures below income, I must really despair of his ever restoring his beloved country to its former glory. Hasn't the dummy ever even heard of refinancing?

WILLIAM I. SMITH Denver

Sir: TIME has perpetuated one of America's greatest fallacies in its Essay "Of Truth and Money" by referring to money as "one reliable means of keeping score on the accomplishments of a person, a company or a country."

By reducing the individual once again, as the American language does in its epithet "a $X-a-year man," to his income-generating abilities, TIME has put down the contributions of the Platos, Aristotles, Kants, Pascals, Salks of this world in favor of the measurable but more ques- tionable contributions of this world's Onas-sises and Gettys. Money does not mirror reality; it provides a market value. To use it as any indication of intrinsic worth is as fallacious as the notion that the artistic value of an entertainment is reflected in its box-office returns.

EVELYN KONRAD Manhattan

Sir: There is an immutable law that says extra wealth can only be produced by each person exceeding his own needs in whatever he produces. Just as a farmer must grow more than his family eats in order to have something to sell, so must the factory worker turn out more value every hour than his hourly wage amounts to. The solution to the problems of rising costs and falling productivity is to put everyone back on either piecework or commission. This will eliminate featherbedding, slowdowns, etc., and at the same time raise our productivity nationwide.

I know the labor unions and the socialists (both in and out of Government) would scream, but it should be pointed out to them that the highly paid commission salesman is actually all that keeps the unions employed. If they don't sell it, no one can afford to produce it.

G. M. MEACHAM Chattanooga, Tenn.

The Bear and the Book

Sir: Your "Thanksgiving 1968: Mixed Blessings" [Nov. 29] commentary upon the American scene is far, far too optimistic. The materialistic clamor all about us has just about stilled the human spirit, and the only way the human spirit can now be heard above this deadening din is by way of dissent, protest and demonstration--peaceful and violent.

The crux of the Western human condition lies in what the great Indian Chief Drowning Bear said in a penetratingly revealing remark about the Bible: "It seems to be a very good book. Strange that the white people are not better, after having had it so long."

JOSEPH A. PRACHAR Lombard, 111.

Love Those Elbows

Sir: Regarding the speculation as to the future of Mr. Robert Finch [Nov. 29], close adviser to President-elect Nixon: I have been a Robert Finch watcher since my freshman days at Inglewood High, Inglewood, Calif. ('43), when I observed this talented and qualified senior from afar. The graduating-class book of that year is a chronicle of the young Robert Finch--everything from president of the senior class and letterman in sports to star of the senior-class play (Death Takes a Holiday). But my most vivid recollection is, I am sure, one of his very first quotes by the news media (Inglewood High Sentinel): "One of the things I most admire in a girl is clean elbows." Evidently I was not the only Finch watcher. The following day I was only one of many girls with red, scrubbed and shiny elbows.

(MRS.) REKEE TAIX Los Angeles

Mousetrap

Sir: You have the point of Aesop's mice-belling-the-cat fable [Nov. 29] exactly backwards, I think. If the fable really offered "the best put-down of the narrow-gauge expert," as you suggest, the mice would have to be narrow-gauge experts at something. But what? Certainly not cats, bells, belling nor, on the evidence, any other form of mouse defense Far from being "assembled experts," the young mice are obviously ill-informed brainstorm-ers--generalists of the most shallow kind--glibly tossing out solutions to a problem they don't begin to understand. The old grey mouse--a specialist, no doubt--saves them from folly by pointing out the enormous technical difficulties in their plan. As a matter of fact, the addition of one further specialist--a professional cat beller--would have made the youthful spitballers look pretty good after all. That's generally the way.

RICHARD BOETH Manhattan

Learn, Don't Burn

Sir: Cheers to the Pikeville College students [Nov. 29]. Why call it a "protest in reverse" when students seek to gain an education? "Dialogue," "confrontation" and "polarization of ideas" can be had on the streets and across the back fence. Who needs college for that? It's refreshing to see at least some students who would rather learn than burn.

DONALD W. TREICK Aberdeen, S. Dak.

Sir: The future of American higher education lies not only in the ivy-covered buildings of Cambridge and Berkeley but also in the bayous of Louisiana, asphalt jungles of Harlem, and the mountains of Appalachia. The challenge of educating the impoverished is being met by men like Dr. Thomas Johns of Pikeville College. The student reaction shows how difficult the challenge really is.

MARVIN L. RUDNICK Glens Falls, N.Y.

Whaling Away

Sir: Unlike your business reporter, I was cheered to learn of Norway's exit from the 18th century endeavor of whale hunting [Nov. 29]. Will the final exit of this industry be the result of responsible action by civilized nations or the extinction of these remarkable mammals? May a whale always be a whale, not margarine, dog food and then a memory.

WADE C. SHERBROOKE Tucson, Ariz.

Eleven-to-One

Sir: The other side of the Heidi story [Nov. 29]: Small town, two channels, football on both of them. Rotten weather, ten children, nine of them running, leaping, screaming and fighting. Baby can't walk, thank God. Father in absolute coma, doesn't see, hear anything but football game. Mother a pitiful, broken creature, swilling beer (small town, no LSD available) making dinner; will they ever stop, grow up, sit down? Finally, 6:55. Mother sits down with Sunday papers. Children settle down. Cut to Heidi, end of game on television. Father goes completely berserk. Tough, there are eleven of us, and only one of him.

JUDITH WILKES Warrensburg, N.Y.

Shell Game

Sir: Your reviewer of this season's coffee-table books may dig big art books, but he obviously doesn't understand or like our innocent seashells [The Shell: Five Hundred Million Years of Inspired Design; Nov. 29]. Explain to him that all those hundreds of glistening shells that he thinks were polished and doctored actually came out of the sea just as Photographer Landshoff shows them.

R. TUCKER ABBOTT Academy of Natural Sciences Philadelphia

Man of the Year

Sir: Dr. Christiaan Barnard is my choice for Man of the Year. In a year not very different from those that have preceded it--with politicians, warriors, assassins, bigots, extremists, racists of all colors, policemen and the like making the day-in-day-out headlines--the presence of Dr. Barnard, squeezed in between these people and their ugly deeds, on the front pages of all the major newspapers of the world was most welcome.

EVERTON MARQUES DOS SANTOS, M.D. Rio de Janeiro

Sir: Pope Paul. If his decision is "of God," then perhaps someone's fifth--or ninth or twelfth--child will be the one who leads us into peace and plenty. If it is "of man," then he is dooming future generations to famine and frustration.

In either event, he uniquely qualifies for your criterion of "the one who, for good or evil, has had the most influence on mankind in 1968."

(MRS.) MARILYNN ALCOTT Kansas City, Mo.

Sir: Leonid Brezhnev. By invading Czechoslovakia, he showed that the Russian plan for world domination has not been given up for peaceful coexistence; showed De Gaulle that he needs to study Russian history; demonstrated that the purported will of Peter the Great still defines Russian foreign policy; convinced the world that the need for NATO still exists; woke up the U.S. and made most of its citizens grateful for the election of Nixon.

R. E. BASSLER Tampa, Fla.

Sir: Woman of the Year, Rose Kennedy.

JOHN F. WAYGAN Brockton, Mass.

Sir: For his efforts to awaken humanity to the awesome problem of overpopulation: Dr. Alan Guttmacher.

MIDGE RIGGS Hastings-on-Hudson, N.Y.

Sir: Mayor Daley of Chicago, one who had the courage to employ his authority where so many others have failed.

S. P. GREEN Troy, Mich.

Sir: Aristotle Onassis. If he were American, his success story would be considered a typical American boy's dream come true. We admire him most of all for getting the Bride of the Year.

AUGUSTIN HARRER San Ignacio, Bolivia

Sir: Yale Chaplain William Sloane Coffin, a man of unimpeachable conscience and motivation, whose Thoreau-like dissent has inspired thousands and ennobled all.

JACK R. FRIEDMAN New Haven, Conn.

Sir: Mark Rudd. Montreal

IAN URQUHART

Sir: The American law enforcement officer. Provoked, assaulted and criticized in virtually every urban area, the police have held their thin blue line, providing the force that unfortunately has been necessary to keep law and order in 1968.

EDWARD D. STAIGER Washington, D.C.

Sir: The American Doctor, from the dedicated G.P. of rural areas to the surgeon of the battlefield to the impersonal practitioner of computerized medicine. They keep on striving to build a better man--even as the same men tear each other down.

E. MALARA White Plains, N.Y

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