The Johnson Image

Sir: I am surprised at your emphasis in stating [Aug. 6] that "by no means does Johnson always come out behind" in comparison with his predecessor. Can anyone imagine Kennedy producing Johnson's legislative record? Can anyone imagine Johnson producing the Bay of Pigs? However one regards their respective objectives, the difference between the two men is the difference between form and substance.

MALCOLM H. BELL New York City

Sir: Your cover story graphically points out that the U.S., a democratic society, has a Utopian, paternalistic, benevolent dictator. Your article should have ended: "The people consider him a remarkably effective Dad, the Commander in Chief of his family, to whom his children can't say no without a verbal or physical spanking or without Daddy's sulking."

THOMAS DEL BLUTH Granada Hills, Calif.

Sir: You write that Johnson is "so possessed by his vision of building a better life for every American that at times he seems ready to scoop up the country in his bare hands and mold it to suit him." Is this the much lauded Great Society? What will be left of individual responsibility and initiative? What is left for man to work for if the Federal Government provides shelter, education, health services and retirement benefits?

ROSAMOND TEARE Glastonbury, Conn.

Sparks & Flowers

Monsieur: J'ai ete tres touche par votre attention et par le soin apporte a cet article dont les reproductions sont tres bien faites. Je sens toute votre sympathie et je suis sensible `a votre attention `a mon egard.

MARC CHAGALL Les Collines Vence, France

Sir: Your Chagall cover story [July 30] captures a timely record of this humble, pink-cheeked, wispy-haired little man. It was language to the eye. Your portrait demonstrated that the mirror of the artist is his work. Faith, goodness and kindness, so needed everywhere, finds the mark in him; they all appear translated into his gift of art for everyone to cherish.

MARTIN STUART West Orange, N.J.

Sir: I may be a clod, but I do not see any art in Chagall's paintings. They are just a mess. In fact, they rather remind me of nightmares.

MRS. C. S. DAY Asheville, N.C.

Sir: You imply that Chagall's Jewishness is incidental to his paintings; to my mind, it is crucial. His joyous, heaven-soaring creations are pictorial representations of basic Hasidic doctrine. In Judaism, matter and spirit are inseparable. The flesh is not corrupt; it is good, but must be illuminated by the spirit. This doctrine Chagall displays beautifully. Marriage, singing, dancing, the common, ordinary concerns of the village, all contain divine sparks that, if allowed to shine through, bring man into harmony with his fellow man and with God. Chagall is not consciously spreading Hasidism. But he imbibed it to his very core when he was a boy in Vitebsk, and has been giving it forth ever since.

JOSEPH RADINSKY Lafayette, Ind.

Sir: Of the flowers that fill Chagall's home in Vence you report: "The moment they begin to fade, the artist prods his wife to throw them out." The contrasting attitude of Pierre Bonnard is interesting. In an interview some years after Bonnard's death, his longtime housemaid said that one of her despairs was the master's way with the bouquets she brought in from the garden daily. Not until they were ready to throw out did he show interest in them; then, when that first shine was off and petals were falling, he began to paint them.

FANNIE HALL LESLIE Los Angeles

Lessons from the Bay of Pigs

Sir: As a Bay of Pigs veteran who spent 20 hard months in Havana and Isle of Pines prisons, I was most interested in your brilliant Essay [July 30]. The main reason for our defeat was Kennedy's indecisiveness under pressure, a longtime ill in U.S. foreign policy arising from the country's lack of long-term planning and definition of ultimate objectives. Unfortunately, our enemies do not have this lack of continuity in foreign policy. They have defined their goal quite clearly: to conquer the world by any means at their disposal. FRANCISCO JOSE DE VARONA Gainesville, Fla.

Sir: Because I am a Cuban exile, I know how deeply the Bay of Pigs episode touched the lives of the exiled. We all had a brother in the invasion, a cousin, friends, fathers or fiances. Some of my friends were killed in combat on the marshes, others died by suffocation inside a sealed truck in which hundreds were packed for an eight-hour trip to Havana. Others had a more cruel death as they drifted in the Gulf of Mexico for weeks. Some were fortunate enough to be sent to prison for 1 1/2 years and, after suffering the most inhuman psychological tortures, to be reunited with whatever remained of their families. Was all this caused by the lack of nerve of a soft President?

JORGE MIRANDA San Jose, Costa Rica

Sir: From the Bay of Pigs fiasco, President Kennedy learned that it is vital to our security that a President be a forceful and intelligent leader, the sole determiner of policy. The major lesson for the American people is that it is better to accept a momentary setback in prestige than risk a long-lasting loss of respect throughout the world. Kennedy best expressed this concept when he said, "What is prestige? Is it the shadow of power or the substance of power?" The Bay of Pigs was far from a total loss for the U.S., for it provided Kennedy with an insight into foreign affairs and decision making that had been absent from American Government for almost a decade.

DANIEL H. GOTTESMAN Jamaica, N.Y.

Who's Against Whom

Sir: I would like to comment on and to correct a section of TIME [July 30] in which my participation in next year's California Republican gubernatorial campaign is described. My comments both to businessmen and to many other groups, public and private, have been to this effect: As of today I believe that Ronald Reagan is the strongest candidate for the party nomination, while Senator Kuchel would be the best vote getter against Governor Brown. This view represents my interpretation of various polls and is a judgment widely held in California. Neither Reagan nor Kuchel are announced candidates. It would, therefore, be premature for me to endorse either man at this point. On the contrary, without reference to all other contenders, I have indicated the possibility that I might consider campaigning for the gubernatorial nomination myself.

ALPHONZO BELL Congressman for California House of Representatives Washington, D.C.

Sir: You label Senator Thomas Kuchel a "moderate." What a joke! Any informed Republican knows he is a Western liberal of the Eastern liberal establishment variety. Viva Ronald Reagan for California Governor!

WILBERT A. null

Brooklyn

Sir: I wasn't surprised to learn that Ronald Reagan never flies. But I was amazed that he drives a car instead of a horse and buggy, which would be more in keeping with his obsolete and dangerous political notions.

(MRS.) PATRICIA ZAHROBSKY Bethel Park, Pa.

Freshman Congressmen

Sir: Your article about freshman Congressmen [July 30] omitted some major reasons for our support of forward-looking legislation. As a freshman, I support these programs because I believe in them and because I campaigned on the premise that I would vote for them.

LLOYD MEEDS Congressman for Washington House of Representatives Washington, D.C.

Sir: Throw them out! Hitler, Mussolini, Tojo, Stalin or Khrushchev would welcome these spineless, nodding, grunting freshmen. Since the people have lost their say in Congress because Representatives must bow to der Leader's "political advice," why have an election? If Congressmen don't do their job for the people because they fear loss of their position, where is our Republic, our Constitution, our Bill of Rights? In the future, I shall pay more attention to the way my Representative and Senators are voting.

BEN E. YOUNGBERG San Jose, Calif.

Legal Questions

Sir: Congratulations on your Law section. But we don't charge "up to 50 per cent of the judgment" [Aug. 6]. That's unconscionable. The interesting quaere you didn't consider is whether the strict-liability doctrine will ever be applied to services, i.e. doctors' malpractice, as well as to commodities.

MELVIN M. BELLI San Francisco

Sir: During the past 130 years, the will of Stephen Girard [July 23] has been taken to court for many reasons. Now the N.A.A.C.P. is trying to break his will. It seems unfortunate that the segregation problem should become magnified in this case so that it infringes upon a basic right of every American citizen, white and Negro: the right to pass his property on to whomever he desires. If, by endowing a school for "poor, white male orphans," Mr. Girard discriminated against the Negro, then he also discriminated against the rich and females and children who are not orphans. If it is discriminatory for a man to will his money to an orphanage for poor, white male orphans, is it not also discriminatory if a man wills money to a Baptist church or to a Catholic missionary? Is it discriminatory for a man to create through his will a medical scholarship for the Navajo Indians?

JOHN V. SMITH Charlotte, N.C.

$2 Milk Sir: From the size and activity of the black market here in Ankara, it's a wonder Kusadasi isn't filled with people banished by the Turkish government for illegal trading [July 30]. Many shops carry a bewildering variety of American goods and sell them at enormous prices. The supply seems to be quite regular. We are Americans living on the Turkish economy, and it hurts to pay 20 Turkish lira (about $2) for a box of dry milk stamped 48-c-.

MRS. PAUL D. TERRELL JR. Ankara, Turkey

Flight 901A

Sir: After reading your thorough report on Flight 901A [July 30], I feel compelled as a professional pilot to make these comments: The CAB concedes that the compass may have been 15DEG off, that the altimeter may have been off, and that someone on the ground falsified a weather report. Yet the board concludes that Cap tain Norris and his passengers are dead because of his error! Captain Norris' only errors seem to have been believing that a federally licensed mechanic would fix a compass and/or an altimeter, that a person on the ground would tell him the truth about a serious matter, and that his fellow man would give him decent treatment after he met his mountain.

L. D. LAFFERTY JR. Friendswood, Texas

Laurence Candor's Courage

Sir: Laurence Gandar, editor of the Rand Daily Mail [July 23], is the most courageous man in South Africa. His enemies feel that he does South Africa harm. How wrong they are! He fights for the rights of all: white, black, Afrikaner and Englishman. He is the only bright ray of hope coming through the dark cloud that hangs over our country.

ROBERT HURWITZ Johannesburg, South Africa

Papa's Poems

Sir: I very much enjoyed your article on Ernest Hemingway's poems [July 30]. But although the German magazine in which they first appeared may have been obscure, the title should not be: it is not Der Querschnitt, but Der Querschnitt (Cross Section). In addition to a few of Hemingway's poems, there also appeared in Der Querschnitt a story called Stierkampf (The Undefeated).

MOSES WILLIAMS JR. Philadelphia

Sir: I object to your calling Der Querschnitt "obscure." It was founded in Berlin in the '20s by Alfred Flechtheim, owner of two then widely known galleries of modern art in Berlin and Dusseldorf, himself a renowned author and critic. It was a monthly publication of high literary standing, epoch-making for a new generation, run with discrimination, comparable in a way to The New Yorker, and published until Hitler came.

WALTER FUCHS Bonn, Germany

Sir: Hemingway published not "just a few poems in Der Querschnitt" but 19 poems in such little and slick magazines as the New Orleans Double Dealer and Poetry, as well as in Der Querschnitt. They are very revealing, for most of them, especially the imagistic six titled "Wanderings in Poetry," were written when Hemingway was attempting to formulate his own distinctive style.

WILLIAM S. DOXEY JR. English Department Middle Tennessee State University Murfreesboro, Tenn.

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