The Madame's Power

Sir: I have argued with you, disagreed with you, and threatened to cancel my subscription (which I might yet do), but I have always read you.

As of now I am extremely proud of you.

You seem to have been the first in the entire country to have recognized the awful power of Mme. Nhu.

RICHARD J. WETHERN

Palo Alto, Calif.

Sir: Mme. Nhu in your cover story of Aug. 9 is mistakenly termed a "queen bee." A far more appropriate term would be a black widow.

In my opinion she makes the Diem government seemingly and literally weak and indecisive. An impulsive, violent and radical person should not have the authority to shape the destiny of a country over which she has no legal powers.

Mme. Nhu was the ramrod in the ban on jazz and dancing in Saigon some time ago. A person this prudent on the one hand while on the other clapping at the thought of Buddhist nuns burning themselves to death seems highly unstable. If the U.S. is going to pump millions of dollars and hundreds of men into South 'Viet Nam it would be better not to have such a paradox in a governing position.

GRANT KEENE

Alto, Ga.

Sir: I was very surprised to be casually mentioned as "Mme. Nhu's father, who violently disapproves of her--: and only partly because the government expropriated his vast property seven years ago."

Indeed an inaccurate allegation has been made which may impugn my motives. The truth is that the Ngo Dinh Diem government did not expropriate any property of mine by application of its land reform of 1956. By that time most of the land I had in excess of the allowed 247 acres had been abandoned by me and even by the peasants because of insecurity in that area of the province of Rach-Gia during the long Indo-Chinese war of 1946-54. This can be checked at the Department of Land Reform in Saigon and will give an idea of the fables that were told your reporter for eight hours.* To my knowledge the land is still abandoned.

The Ho Chi Minh government did requisition my house and my law office in Hanoi in September 1945, immediately after the Viet Minh revolution in North Viet Nam, but that was only an effect, not the cause of my disapproval of Communism.

TRAN VAN CHUONG Former Ambassador

Embassy of Viet Nam Washington. D.C.

-- The length of time Hong Kong Bureau Chief Charles Mohr talked to Chuong's daughter.

Russian Rules

Sir: I don't see how Nikita could have beaten Dean at badminton [Aug. 16] with the horrible form displayed in the picture --unless, of course, playing without a net allowed him to improvise rules as the game progressed.

WADLEIGH W. WOODS

Portsmouth, N.H.

The Bard's Petard

Sir: It seems to me that instead of using a "curious choice of words," Senator Morton [Aug. 16] was making an apt allusion to a well-known Shakespearean quotation from Hamlet:

For 'tis sport to have the engineer

Hoist with his own petar; and 't shall go hard,

But I will delve one yard below their mines

And blow them at the moon!

I think the Senator sees us and the world at large dependent upon our own explosive, hard-to-control invention.

WILLIS G. WALDO

West Palm Beach, Fla.

Anti, Hyper & Quasi

Sir: I read the article on the Anglican Communion [Aug.16] with great interest, and I thought it good. There is only one factual correction that I would make. It is said that the recent measure passed by Parliament freeing church courts from final appeal to the Privy Council was Ramsey-inspired. In fact, the initiation of this measure and of the Canon Law Measures goes much farther back. In 1948 and subsequent years. I initiated the machinery of inquiry and deliberation and drafting, whether by commissions or by the convocations out of which these measures came.

(THE MOST REV.) ARCHBISHOP LORD FISHER OF LAMBETH

Dorset, England

Sir: Queen Elizabeth II is a welcome member of the Anglican Communion, but does she claim to be the head of the church? In the Book of Common Prayer we read, "The Church is the body of which Jesus Christ is the head and all baptized people are members."

Our Bishop Gooden--always ready with a pertinent joke--tells us that not long after the death of King George VI of England, when a Roman Catholic priest said to an Anglican priest. "I am sorry the head of your church died," the Anglican priest replied. "Yes. and on the third day He rose again!"

MAXINE KEENAN Curundu, C.Z.

Sir: While the Rt. Rev. Arthur Michael Ramsey supports antidisestablishmentarianism, the hyperantidisestablishmentarianist, in considering the archbishop's favor of greater liberty for the church, may feel that the revered churchman thinks quasiantidisestablishmentarianistically.

CHARLES W. SAMUELS

Ridley Park, Pa.

Mark Twain at Marienbad

Sir: Your Aug. 16 report on the bads seems to echo the savory words of Mark Twain, printed in 1892 by the New York Sun: "What I have been through in these two weeks would free a person of pretty much everything in him that wasn't nailed there--any loose thing, any unattached fragment of bone, or meat or morals, or disease or propensities or accomplishments, or what not. And I don't say but that I feel well enough, I feel better than I would if I was dead. I reckon." These words seem appropriate also: "They say they can cure any ailment, and they do seem to do it; but why should a patient come all the way here? Why shouldn't he do these things at home and save the money? No disease would stay with a person who treated it like that." Of course. Mark Twain had just spent two weeks in Marienbad.

DONALD F. PILKENTON Alexandria. Va.

Playwrights' Protest

Sir: We protest your remarks about the late Clifford Odets [Aug. 23]. An important American playwright deserves more than a perfunctory dismissal with a tastelessly exhumed pun.

JOHN HOUSEMAN

CHRISTOPHER ISHERWOOD

GAVIN LAMBERT

JEROME LAWRENCE

ROBERT E. LEE

DOROTHY PARKER

LEONARD SPIGELGASS

GORE VIDAL

Santa Monica, Calif.

What a Man

Sir: When we freshmen, back in 1919. saw Bill Douglas [Aug. 16], top senior student at Whitman College, stride the campus with his head toward the stars, we could say, "What a scholar!"

In later years, when he reached the Supreme Court and came within one man's whim of the presidency, we could agree, "What a driver!"

Now, when we see him a virile 64, marrying a nubile 23-year-old beauty, those of us left of his college generation can only gasp, "What a man!"

STUART WHITEHOUSE Honolulu

Sir: This is a great year for nominations, and I have one! William O. Douglas: the Elizabeth Taylor of the Supreme Court.

(MRS.) MARIE M. HAWES Granville, Ohio

Wagnerism

Sir: Mr. Erich Leinsdorf to the contrary notwithstanding [Aug. 23], we have more first-class Wagnerian singers now than we had in the Melchior-Flagstad era. In the last few years the Metropolitan Opera has offered us such topnotch artists as Birgit Nilsson, Leonie Rysanek, Gladys Kuchta, Inge Bjoner, Regine Crespin and Anita Valkki, sopranos; Jon Vickers, Sandor Konya and Jess Thomas, tenors; Jean Madeira, Nell Rankin and Irene Dalis, mezzos; George London, Hermann Prey, Walter Cassel and Eberhardt Wachter, baritones; and Jerome Hines, Giorgio Tozzi and William Wilderman, bassos.

This company could very easily give us the 30 or 40 performances of nine Wagner operas we used to have every season, and, judging from the attendance at the token performances we get now, people would come to hear them. There is only one reason for the current decline in the popularity of Wagner--Rudolf Bing.

Incidentally, I think most music lovers will agree that the overdriven orchestral excerpts from the operas are by no means Wagner's best work. His greatest genius was not in his wonderful melodies, or his magnificent orchestration, or his stunning orchestral effects, but in the symphonic development of his themes. This cannot be fully appreciated unless the operas are heard in full.

FRANK W. RITZMAN New York City All Rite

Sir: Your article on low-calorie soft drinks [Aug. 9] was unfortunately incomplete--you omitted mentioning the bestseller in the field. The big news, as everybody in the industry knows, is Diet-Rite Cola--by far the biggest seller and most widely distributed. Diet-Rite Cola, alone, at present projections, will sell in 1963 the 50,000,000 cases you predicted for the entire industry. Parent Royal Crown Cola Co. already has more than 360 bottlers producing this product.

F. C. WEBER

D'Arcy Advertising Company New York City

Infant Care

Sir: The fact is that "Infant Care" [Aug. 9] has carried pictures of Negro babies since its 1945 edition, so that the pictures in the new edition are in no way an innovation. Our records show that only two Southern Congressmen canceled their allotments.

During the first month that the new "Infant Care" was offered for sale by the Government Printing Office, some 61,760 copies of the new edition were sold. A total of 169,615 copies of "Infant Care" were distributed to Members of Congress during July--at their request. This set an all-time high in the number of copies requested by Congressmen during any one month.

KATHERINE B. OETTINGER Chief, Children's Bureau Department of Health, Education, and Welfare Washington, D.C.

Separate Prayers

Sir: In view of the fact that the Rev. Billy Graham and many others are at present condemning the U.S. Supreme Court for its decision in the Schempp-Murray Lord's Prayer and Bible reading in the public school cases, I am wondering how these critics of the Supreme Court's decision would bring a prayer into the public schools that would satisfy the Lutheran Synods [Aug. 23], let alone the Catholics, Jews and many other religious groups in our society. When a single denomination, such as the Lutherans, finds it difficult to engage in joint prayer, isn't it the height of folly to expect school administrators and teachers to come up with a "common denominator" prayer or Bible reading that will satisfy all religious denominations in our country?

SAMUEL L. SCHEINER St. Paul

One for the Girls

Sir: How about letting us see this blond blue-eyed, circus strong man, matinee idol, Dancer Paul Taylor [Aug. 16]?

MARY WHITE San Diego >Take a look.--ED.

Other Caprices

Sir: Your recent review of The Last Caprice [Aug. 9], describing odd wills and bequests, did not mention the strange testament of Mme. Marc Guzman, who died in 1908, leaving 100,000 francs to the French Academy of Science as an award for the first person "to communicate with inhabitants of any heavenly body other than the planet Mars." Once considered forever unattainable, the fantastic Guzman Prize may conceivably be won before the end of this century by some explorer from Earth who contacts any lunarians, Venusians or other denizens of deep space--except Martians!

ALLEN GLASSER Brooklyn

Sir: The late Sir H. Rider Haggard, in his book, Mr. Meeson's Will, published about 1888, tells of a dying testator, shipwrecked on a South Pacific isle, who was obliged to have his last will and testament tattooed on the back of the neck and shoulders of a young lady companion. When she was rescued and returned to England, the will was probated but could not be filed.

WILLIAM S. MIDDLETON Harrisburg, Pa.

* The length of time Hong Kong Bureau Chief Charles Mohr talked to Chuong's daughter.

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