The Passing of Ho

Sir: I am not surprised that our Government was not represented at the funeral of Ho Chi Minn [Sept. 12].

But I am surprised that Senators J. William Fulbright, Albert Gore, William Proxmire and Ralph Yarborough did not attend as private citizens.

JAMES MACPHERSON

Ajijic, Mexico

Sir: What a horrific background and path to tread to attain world infamy. His mother the worst kind of thief, stealing guns so others could kill. A father who defected and was a traitor to the French government for which he worked. Ho, a hard man who literally butchered his way to leadership--an opportunist who rode every horse as long as it suited his purpose.

JOHN R. JOYCE II

Carlsbad, N. Mex.

Sir: Despite Ho Chi Minh's shortcomings --and they were considerable--I think we would have to agree that he was a man dedicated to his people against Western colonialism.

If Ho is remembered for anything, it will have to be for his undying dedication to his people, a quality not found too often in our politicians today, and they prove it after they're elected.

PHILIP J. SCHACCA

West Hempstead, N.Y.

Sir: Growing doubts about Hanoi's intentions puzzle me. Some years ago, Ho Chi Minh said that the North would fight its war of liberation for 15, 20, 30 years--as long as necessary. That is plain enough response to any U.S. "plan" to terminate the war.

PETRUS VAN DER SCHAAF

Christchurch, New Zealand

Sir: You grudgingly admitted that Ho Chi Minh was "the only truly national leader that Viet Nam has produced in modern times," but over the question of partition of Viet Nam, you conveniently forgot the 1954 Geneva agreement on Viet Nam. This agreement stipulated that Viet Nam--from the China border to the tip of Ca Mau Peninsula--was one country, that the question of reunification of Viet Nam was to be decided by an election throughout Viet Nam in 1956.

The partition line along the 17th parallel was set up merely to facilitate the withdrawal of the French colonial forces rather than to create the so-called Republic of Viet Nam "with heavy American assistance." Of course, the admission that Viet Nam is one country would have made it difficult for a time to justify American aggression against the Vietnamese people.

FAZAL H. DAR

Saskatoon, Sask.

Haunted Houses

Sir: The Russian churches pictured in TIME [Sept. 12] are beautiful. Yet that beauty evokes a certain sadness--all those churches, and no God.

RICHARD W. THIES

Sherman Oaks, Calif.

Depends on How You Look at It

Sir: The Governors talk about "surplus" tax money [Sept. 12] as if it had come from the gods. Why not give it back to the individuals and corporations that earned it?

Why is it that when the Government spends money that has been confiscated from the taxpayers, it is called "getting rid of the surplus," but when the taxpayer spends it himself it is called "feeding inflation?"

BARBARA CROWLEY

St. Marys, Pa.

Life in Death

Sir: The manner and place of Bishop Pike's death are symbolic of his life. His motives and goals were the burning light of curiosity, the examination of origins, the checking of premises, the questioning of absolutes. His personal dilemmas closely paralleled those of a troubled society: rigorous thinking v. religious orthodoxy, individual integrity v. institutional hypocrisy, compassion v. indifference.

Yet we should not mourn his passing, for he found the one treasure in life so often denied us all--the knowledge that man's happiness is its own vindication, that joy is no sin, that all charity begins at home.

ANDREW USCHER

Falls Church, Va.

Rodell Reviewed

Sir: Re the letter from Yale Professor Fred Rodell further castigating the nomination of Judge Clement Haynsworth to the Supreme Court [Sept. 12]: the professor obviously is a man who suffers from frustration. In his frenetic effort to compensate for his failure in self-accomplishment, he has resorted over the years to abrasive attacks on members of his dicipline, and especially on judges. Whether Judge Haynsworth is or is not sufficiently qualified by character and learning to be a member of our highest court is yet to be determined. But, certainly, he is not "slob" and not a "mediocrity." In any event, it was a gratuitous detente for the professor to make the matter of Judge Haynsworth's qualifications the occasion for a wholly uncalled-for assault on such eminent scholars as Professor Freund and Judge Friendly.

SAMUEL H. HOFSTADTER

Justice

Supreme Court of the State of New York Manhattan

Sir: Thank God for little favors. Hayns worth could have been a "mediocre slob from Yale.

B. REA NESMITH

El Paso

Program Notes

Sir: Let's cut out this malarky [Sept 12] about the errors and deficiencies of the computer and put the blame where it belongs: on incompetent and irresponsible help who program these machines.

MAURICE CLAMAGE

Farmington, Mich.

Sir: When the heat of battle lessens some what, the computer will be credited with helping our crowded scientific schedule: by performing lightning-fast computations

It must always be kept in mind that although the computer may well take over the world at some future time, one does; not yet have to worry about one's daughter's ever marrying one.

The computer in our research laboratory has a great sense of humor. The other morning we found the following printout lying beside the machine. It must have worked half the night on this rebuttal.

COMPUTERS HAVE MAGNETIC PERSONALITIES.

COMPUTER PROGRAMS ARE RERUNS.

A COMPUTER IS WELL ORGANIZED. IT HAS A SYSTEM.

A COMPUTER'S SCOPE IS LIMITED

YOU HAVE TO PUNCH A COMPUTER TO MAKE IT WORK.

COMPUTERS ARE KEYED UP.

GOVERNMENT COMPUTERS ARE TIED UP IN MAGNETIC TAPE.

A COMPUTER CAN'T BEAT THE SYSTEM.

And so, realizing that it can't beat the system, maybe it's ready to join it.

JOYCE REVENSON

JOE DELANEY

Human Resources Center

Albertson, N.Y.

Sir: Somebody should fold, spindle and mutilate Harvey Matusow.

DAVID PFAU

St. Catharines, Ont.

Bone of Contention

Sir: After reading "The Age of Man" [Aug. 29], I happened to pick up G. K. Chesterton's The Everlasting Man and read his perceptive comment on another famous reconstruction by paleontologists --Pithecanthropus. Every word of it could be applied to Ramapithecus and the Yale investigators who have reconstructed him from "no more than partial jawbones and a few teeth."

Said G.K.: "Those bones are far too few and fragmentary and dubious to fill up the whole of the vast void that does in reason and in reality lie between man and his bestial ancestors, if they were his ancestors . . . But the effect on popular science was to produce a complete and even complex figure, finished down to the last details of hair and habits. He was given a name as if he were an ordinary historical character. People talked of Pithecanthropus as of Pitt or Fox or Napoleon . . . A detailed drawing was reproduced, carefully shaded, to show that the very hairs of his head were all numbered. No uninformed person looking at its carefully lined face and wistful eyes would imagine for a moment that this was the portrait of a thighbone; or of a few teeth and a fragment of a cranium.

"Sometimes the professor with his bone becomes almost as dangerous as a dog with his bone. And the dog at least does not deduce a theory from it, proving that mankind is going to the dogs--or that it came from them."

PAUL G.JACKSON

Mayville, N.Y.

How to Make Friends and . . .

Sir: As deplorable as the kidnaping case of U.S. Ambassador Charles Burke Elbrick [Sept. 12] might seem, it does have a positive side.

With the exception of the moon landing, no recent event has had a more favorable impact on U.S.-South American public relations than the well-publicized actions and reactions of a poised and seasoned diplomat during and after his capture. Ambassador Elbrick's newly acquired title: "Respected amigo."

FRITZ FINGADO

Rio de Janeiro

Wheels Within Wheels

Sir: I view with alarm TIME'S account [Sept. 12] of our present wheeling-dealing man in the White House(s). It used to be comforting that Truman was satisfied to be poor; that Eisenhower achieved security through royalties; that Roosevelt and Kennedy possessed inherited wealth; and that even L.BJ. had Lady Bird. But will a President who has already gained so much from inflation, and who stands to gain so much more, feel impelled to fight it for the rest of us? Maybe "Nixon's surprise call for milder tax reform" isn't so surprising after all.

L. RORABACHER

Sylva, N.C.

On Further Analysis

Sir: Political Scientist Barber's long-distance analysis of President Nixon's personality and predictions of his behavior [Sept. 12] began to wobble my confidence in your Behavior section until it was later mentioned that he claims no professional credentials as a behavior expert. That much had to be obvious, of course.

For anyone professing to analyze an individual without even once talking to him, making behavioral predictions on such mystically obtained and inherently distorted types of data, using such unscientific methodology and thereupon proclaiming to the world his "conclusions" deserves but one comment: he has either unwittingly succeeded only in giving some sort of insight into himself, or he is pulling our collective legs.

THEODORE J. STAMOS

Psychiatric Social Worker

South St. Paul, Minn.

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