The Lightning Strikes

Sir / When we heard of the resignation of Vice President Agnew, we could not have been any more shocked if a streak of lightning had hit us. We were guilty of criticizing TIME and other news media for their factual reporting and must now eat crow.

Now what? I often said, if we cannot trust Mr. Agnew, whom can we trust in Government? It would be frightening if all political officeholders were thoroughly investigated--for we might not have a Government at all.

EDWARD J. JOHNSON

Palm Desert, Calif.

Sir / If former Vice President Agnew really had "the best interests of the nation" in mind when he resigned, why didn't he do so before he divided the country into pro-and anti-Agnew camps with his constant protestations of innocence?

PETER STANWOOD

Oxford, Ohio

Sir / Well, it looks like spiroagnew was a disease after all.

ALLAN CROWTHER

Elmhurst, Ill.

Sir / Normally when you purchase faulty merchandise you can get a refund. I bought what Mr. Agnew had to say. Now I want my money back.

JIM FALIN

Tacoma, Wash.

Sir / I'll never go to the races with Nixon. All he does is pick the losers.

SUSAN BAUM

Washington, D.C.

Sir / Mr. Agnew has now done what he can do for his country.

Mr. Nixon is still asking what his country can do for him.

BRIAN DELAHANTY

Burlington, Vt.

Sir / I applaud Agnew for haying the courage to resign. It is too bad Nixon won't do the same and make it a majority. We need more people like ... what's his name?

RON QUINN

Marshall, Mich.

Sir / Why is Agnew resigning when we all know that Nixon's the one?

MAGGIE MCCOMAS

Brussels

Sir / No greater disservice can be done to our system of constitutional democracy than to demonstrate, as the Justice Department has in this instance, that there is one law for the politically influential and another law for the ordinary citizen. To call the Justice Department's handling of the Agnew case "just, fair and honorable" is to make a mockery of justice, fairness and honor.

The future of American constitutional democracy is endangered much less by the activities of a few politicians like Mr. Agnew than it is by the mockery of justice that characterizes the present Administration's response to such activities.

JOHN H. HALLOWELL

Professor of Political Science

Duke University

Durham, N.C.

Sir / Mr. Agnew's prediction that he would not receive fair treatment in the courts has proved to be true. His punishment for a felony is a mockery of fairness and proves that "justice for all" really means "justice for most, unwarranted mercy for a few."

ARTHUR CAIN

Claremont, Calif.

Sir / "Let him who is without sin among you be the first to cast a stone ...

MONA SEARLE

Barrington, Ill.

Reserved for the Jews

Sir / I am puzzled by your comment that if faced with extinction, Israel "might risk the wrath of the world" by using nuclear weapons [Oct. 15]. Is it also your view that the U.S., if faced with extinction, should lie down and accept that extinction rather than offend the rest of the world? Or is the acceptance of annihilation supposed to be a virtue reserved for the Jews?

RICHARD TAYLOR

Naples, N.Y.

Sir / There was a hue and cry about our getting into the Indochina mess. Are we taking precautions so we do not sink into the quicksand of the Arab-Israeli conflict?

JAMES SCOTT, M.D.

Streator, Ill.

Sir / Support of Israel is directly counter to the interests of the people of the U.S. It benefits 3,000,000 and injures 200 million.

GORDON M. JONES

Evanston, Ill.

Sir / Genocide or oil? If the U.S. stands by and does nothing for Israel, may God have mercy on us all.

GERALDINE ANDERSON

Deer Island, Ore.

Real Solid Americana

Sir / Your story on tailgating [Oct. 15] was grossly limited. A real example of this great American social phenomenon can be found on any football Saturday in Columbus. Rain, snow or sleet, you will see all roads leading to the Ohio capital city filled with cars. They will all be heading for the 50-year-old, 86,000-seat stadium on the campus of Ohio State University.

The tailgating begins five miles from the campus. You may find a former Ambassador to Japan tailgating next to a farmer, a famous cartoonist next to a troop of Scouts. This is real solid Americana.

All segments of this university-support population head home, win or lose, with a better understanding and respect for each other and each other's views.

BENJAMIN D. FISHER

San Diego

Sir / The Bloomington policemen's oh so "sportsmanlike" early departure from football games to avoid arresting "half the people there" as they drive drunkenly home is a fascinating way to lower crime statistics. With perseverance we could reach the point where we wouldn't notice any crimes at all, thus achieving a crime rate of zero.

PATRICIA POSPISIL

Meridian, Miss.

Me-Books

Sir / Me-Books [Oct. 8] are not new! Around 1923, my father (then about ten) received one from his aunt. It was a large picture book, entitled something like Thomas Finds St. Nicholas. His aunt had penned his name into every blank space provided throughout the story about the little boy who traveled to the North Pole. I thought that book quite magical because it was about my father. Somehow the fact that his name was merely written in did not diminish that glow in my ten-year-old world. Perhaps today's children are not so sophisticated after all, and perhaps that personal touch is one we all hungerfor--be we adults, children or literary critics.

ELLEN MIYAGAWA

Virginia Beach, Va.

Resident Citizens

Sir / Your depiction of five men as "Newly Arrived Mojados Exploring Their Neighborhood in Chicago" [Oct. 15] is inaccurate. They are all U.S. citizens and residents of Chicago.

RICHARD WOODBURY

TIME Chicago Bureau

. TIME regrets the error (see cut).

Odd Mountains, All

Sir / Yes, the real magic of Disney's "Tragic Kingdom" is everything a paying visitor doesn't see [Oct. 15]. Working there one summer, I remember feeling slightly guilty when I came up from the catacomb below to the stage above. Here were thousands of innocent people absorbed in an illusion of reality while the truth of hidden studios, passageways, machinery, electric trams, and thousands of employees lay beneath their feet and behind false fronts. I could not show them that truth.

But Disney World is no more an "odd mountain" than pro football, politics, or government, because what goes on backstage is usually more important than the surface effect.

R. SCOTT ABRAHAMS

Tallahassee. Fla.

Sir / To Disney's everlasting credit, he achieved what he did by his own efforts with the voluntary support of the public. What is your idea of "high culture"? Last Tango in Paris?

HARRY MULLIN

Bennington, N.H.

J.F.K. and the Laskis

Sir / TIME is mistaken in listing John F. Kennedy as a former student at the London School of Economics [Oct. 8]. It was Kennedy's older brother, Joseph Jr., who attended L.S.E., fell under the spell of Fabian Socialist Harold Laski and accompanied the professor and his wife to the Soviet Union in 1934.

Upon graduating from Choate, following the example of his brother and with the encouragement of his father, Jack Kennedy enrolled at L.S.E. in the summer of 1935. In conversation, he was sometimes fuzzy about his actual attendance. In biographies, he is often credited with attending the school.

As a London correspondent with Newsweek during the 1960 presidential campaign, I sought to verify the extent of Jack Kennedy's association with L.S.E. Laski's widow, Frida, recalled that Kennedy succumbed to jaundice and returned to the U.S. after registering but without attending classes. She remembered, however, that Jack frequently accompanied his brother to their house for meals or on walks with her husband, rarely saying much and listening in open-mouthed awe to Laski's torrent of scintillating gossip, dogma, generalizations and doctrine.

When Jack Kennedy's senior thesis at Harvard was published in 1940 under the brash title of Why England Slept, he sent a copy to Laski. The professor, according to Mrs. Laski, fumed that Jack had learned nothing from the conversations and wrote Jack a letter saying he would "think differently in time with experience."

IRWIN GOODWIN

Alexandria. Va.

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