Restless Shifting

Sir: We unyoung people can gratefully welcome the very fine historical perspective m Melvin Maddocks' Essay "Rituals--The Revolt Against the Fixed Smile" [Oct. 12]; it very nicely places us in the highly uncomfortable position of the "In-between Generation."

It also helps to clarify our restless shifting, sometimes toward "too much passion," and other times toward "too much reason," all done in our agonizing attempts to relieve the sharp discomfort of our unattractive in-between position.

If the article falls short of pointing to any specific easy path to follow, it at least avoids the futile error of advocating some "final solution."

SOL D. PRENSKY Brooklyn

Sir: It appears that the grasshoppers are going to score--at long last. And of course, the ants are yelling FOUL!

(SFC) JAMES O. GABBARD APO San Francisco

Sir: I am a Mason and have been a Boy Scout. I do not wander aimlessly about slack-jawed with a vapid grin on my face. I, and I am convinced many Americans, happen to believe that man, in common with other members of the animal kingdom, is faced with a continual struggle to stay alive.

This is not a complaint but a simple statement of fact. All that the Masons, the Boy Scouts and others of that persuasion attempt to do is to lift this struggle somewhat above the level of the jungle--to make man stand just a straighter.

LLOYD C. SCHUETTE Wauwatosa, Wis.

Hollow Answers

Sir: The President's Commission on Obscenity and Pornography [Oct. 12] can argue and delve forever, but their answers will be hollow ones.

Man must listen to his higher nature to tell him what is offensive to the spirit.

A nation giving full license to pornographers can only be on its way down.

ZENA ATTRILL San Gabriel, Calif.

Sir: Laws aimed at controlling the adult's consumption of pornography are a waste of public money and police time.

No book ever forced itself on an offended reader. No movie theater shanghais its audience. Anyone old enough to vote has the right--the duty, in fact--to decide for himself what books he will read, what films and pictures he will look at.

Must we grown-up Americans depend on Big Brother Government to control our minds and our tastes--at the cost of our own tax dollars? Rather let that money be spent to hire more policemen to patrol our streets, not our bookstores, and to pay the police a salary commensurate with the danger and difficulty of their work. This would do more to prevent sex crimes than all the censorship laws on the books.

NORMA S. HASS Dundee, Ill.

Sir: While the Scranton Commission was calling for renewed "moral" leadership, the Pornography Commission was holding morality "irrelevant" for adults. Perhaps we need a Commission on the Relevancy of Morality?

TOM S. FITZSIMONS Kensington, Md.

Spirologists

Sir: Some Spiro watchers, dazzled to find their prejudices suddenly in vogue, scintillate with satisfaction. They urge Spiro on to greater efforts as he skewers and roasts fellow citizens, and renders ineffectual attempts at reconciliation within his own party [Oct. 12].

It is unfit behavior for the Vice President of the U.S., who represents all of the people. It is sickening to watch so-called leaders make political hay out of society's ills. It is more sickening to watch people who will suffer because of these ills applaud these suicidal rites.

NELL K. SPITZ Monmouth, Ill.

Sir: The man who has replaced Mickey Mouse on the face of a watch now wants to rewrite the membership of his own party. Why doesn't he rename the party after himself: Spiro Agnew's Party (SAP)?

DIANE JOHNSON Downey, Calif.

Sir: My! My! What a lot of thin-skinned whiners we have these days complaining about "Agnew's acerbatics." These lightweight intellectuals and assorted birdbrains are the very ones who for 30-plus years now have voted blindly for exactly those who have brought the nation to its present parlous state. They can't stand a few blunt truths, can they?

T.P. CHITTENDEN Edmonds, Wash.

Sir: I am constantly amazed by some Americans' insistence that the Vice President should be the only American to be deprived of his right to speak. Do you really elect a Vice President with the understanding that once elected he is to become a total ghost for the duration of his public office tenure?

JEAN HUGHES Cincinnati

Sir: Why not institute a special honorary(?) degree, say an M.O., Master of Opprobrium, in recognition of the special mission that Vice President Spiro Agnew is performing with such relish?

WILLIAM H. FRANKHAUSER Coldwater, Mich.

Che in Theory

Sir: In your article on Che Guevara [Oct. 12], you state that "critics with less sympathy attribute much of the present wave of bombings, kidnapings and cop killings to an obsession with Che's emphasis on immediate, almost mindless action." Che, at least in theory, did not believe in terrorism. He wrote that "terrorism is of negative value, that it by no means produces the desired effects, that it can turn a people against a revolutionary movement, and that it can bring a loss of lives to agents out of proportion to what it produces." He goes on to state, though, that assassins (in special cases) of leaders who are against the revolution are justified.

PAUL HARLESS Fullerton, Calif.

Sir: This fellow was a paranoid, overheated Latin--a psychotic killer-type of "sick" person who wanted to kill everybody around him. He is better buried. God, we have enough of his kind around these States beating their chests.

CHESTER G. MILLER West Los Angeles, Calif.

Prejudicial Error?

Sir: In your article on Angela Davis, "The Fugitive" [Aug. 31], you commit the same prejudicial error President Nixon committed when he announced his opinion on the guilt of Charles Manson. You say: "Some of her radical supporters . . . seemed to be . . . proclaiming her guilt." To support this gratuitous charge, you cite statements from Black Panther Huey Newton and Panther Attorney Charles Garry. Actually neither of those statements proclaimed her guilty of anything. Newton's comment was taken from the funeral eulogy given for the Panthers killed in the Marin County courtroom breakout and did not mention Miss Davis at all. The Garry statement, while mentioning her, does not pass on her guilt.

MARSHAL A. PHILLIPS Hollywood

The Only Way

Sir: Re "Taxpayers to the Barricades" [Oct. 12]: if school officials will listen, they will find that the average taxpaying voter is saying--in the only way he feels may get attention--that we are not getting full value for the amount of money being spent. We need smaller classes, with less emphasis on fancy buildings and more concern that our children get the education they will need to become taxpaymg voters themselves some day.

JODl CORRIE Roswell, N. Mex.

Sir: In reporting that school tax increases are being defeated repeatedly in St. Louis suburban districts you incorrectly blame the situation on a taxpayers' revolt.

The real culprit is a Missouri law requiring a two-thirds majority of yes votes for passage of a tax for any amount over $3.75 per $100 assessed valuation.

The rural-dominated Missouri legislature refuses to change this unfair law. Our hopes now rest with the U.S. Supreme Court. If the court applies the "one-man-one-vote" principle and rules in favor of a simple majority, Missouri's law will be crossed off the books.

(MRS.) DOROTHY C. POOR Clayton, Mo.

Wishful Thinking

Sir: Lest your article [Oct. 12] give the wrong impressions, my repeatedly stated position is: 1) It is wishful thinking to speak, as President Nixon and Arthur Burns do, of getting our sluggish economy back to full employment in 1971, for that would require force-feeding of the economy and touching off a new wave of inflation. 2) It makes much more sense to aim at full employment by the end of 1972. 3) Under present Administration policies, we won't even reach that modest target. 4) To do so calls for more aggressive policies to ease and lower interest rates, a positive budget policy, and a genuine White House effort to achieve wage and price restraint.

WALTER W. HELLER Regents Professor of Economics University of Minnesota, Chairman of President's Council of Economic Advisers 1961-64 Minneapolis

The Judge

Sir: I was a second lieutenant in World War II, fighting the Japanese. If I were the judge, I would find Lieut. Calley [Oct. 12] guilty and sentence him as follows: I sentence you to four years at Harvard University, I sentence you to 15 years of social work, helping your fellow man; I sentence you to a lifetime of probation to prove that you really want to better this miserable society that made you do "your duty."

JOSEPH T. WOOTTON San Francisco

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