Machinery of Education

Sir: As a student of secondary education, I feel that your Keppel cover story [Oct. 15] was one of the best I have seen in TIME. From it, laymen and educators can obtain a resume of federal action on schools.

FRAN WILLIAMS University of Nebraska Lincoln, Neb.

Sir: I have just returned from a year's teaching in England as an American exchange teacher. Over there, I was at a loss, at first, without my trusty motion-picture and slide projectors, tape recorder, phonograph, overhead projector, television, radio, duplicating machines and handy staple remover. However, I soon discovered what a challenge teaching can be when one has to do the job himself instead of leaving it to machines.

CHARLES A. WHITE Barrington, Ill.

Sir: You couldn't hardly expect a high school senior to explain double jeopardy like he should when TIME computes a population growth from 76 million to 195 million as "nearly 40%."

FREDERICK R. KLING Educational Testing Service Princeton, N.J.

> We can correct the figure as we should:

157%.

Not Good Enough

Sir: TIME deserves commendation for the lead article "Not Great, But Good" [Oct. 8], which refutes the impression cast by a lot of Great Society legislation that the U.S. is decaying. Nobody knows better than TIME that as Ben Wattenberg points out, "In American history, the evidence suggests that it is the optimist who has been the realist."

WILLIAM H. EWING Editor

Honolulu Star-Bulletin Honolulu

Sir: There is something unattractive about a well-fed middle class viewing the status quo with equanimity and not being able to see what all the fuss is about. The fuss is about unemployment, civil rights, ugly cities and countryside, poor education, and poverty. I for one am delighted that we have a President who knows what the fuss is about.

DON HUNT New York City

Sir: It is naive to soft-pedal the population explosion as "more myth than menace." "A modest growth of 18% per decade, one-half what it was 100 years ago," is not so benign. Eighteen percent of present population is 34.7 million; 36% of 1865 population is only 12.6 million.

GAY R. ANDERSON Neenah, Wis.

Classical Nonadherence

Sir: The sense of being flattered that some of us are experiencing over Russia's imitation of Western capitalistic methods [Oct. 8] seems a bit silly. We should congratulate them for realizing that adherence to classical Marxism is a poor way of going about things. At the same time, we should congratulate ourselves for having realized long ago that classical capitalism is not worth adhering to either. We have adopted many socialistic measures, such as the "from each according to his ability" progressive Federal income tax, and the "each according to his need" federal aid to poverty stricken communities, to education, to the arts and so on.

ALAN M. ROCKWAY Rochester, N.Y.

Paul's Pilgrimage

Sir: The coming of the Pope to New York City [Oct. 15] was a "lifter-upper" for all of us. Men of every religious viewpoint were moved by his devout piety, his warmhearted charity and his gracious humility. The faithful have been reassured that God is not dead--that he has not left himself without witness.

HERBERT BEECHER HUDNUT Minister

Woodward Avenue Presbyterian Church Detroit, Mich.

Sir: Now that the Pope has come to the U.N. and put the delegates to sleep in the name of world peace, I suggest that the Secretary-General invite the Rev. Dr. Billy Graham to wake them all up. The Pope's visit was nothing more than a propaganda farce for Roman Catholicism.

MEL ECKLUND Beverly, Mass.

Morrissey Disendorsed

Sir: You reported [Oct. 8] that Judge Morrissey's nomination to the U.S. District Court in Massachusetts had been approved by the American Trial Lawyers Association. Your reporter was misinformed. Judge Morrissey's qualifications never have been reviewed by our committee on the judiciary. The approval of Judge Morrissey by one of our members, speaking for himself and not for this association, was misconstrued as constituting an endorsement by the association. Such was not the case.

JOSEPH KELNER President

American Trial Lawyers Association New York City

Sir: The Kennedys have come to symbolize to many the pursuit of excellence and the standard of ability as the criterion for advancement. It is therefore doubly disillusioning, disheartening and disgusting for them to advocate Morrissey for a federal judgeship.

J. ANDREW HOBKIRK Camden, S.C.

Justice in Alabama

Sir: The acquittal of Tom Coleman [Oct. 8] and the way it was accomplished is unbelievably cynical and disgusting. The trial was an open mockery of justice and a blatant display of malice and slander. If a community cannot do any better than this, it has forfeited the right to try such cases.

(THE REV.) DWIGHT M. CARLSON The Covenant Church Thomaston, Conn.

Sir: Jonathan Daniels was my classmate at the Episcopal Theological School. Anyone who knew Jon could see the depth of his commitment to nonviolence and Christian love, and knows the absurdity of the idea that self-defense against him might ever be necessary. Thank you for making this absurdity clear to all who did not know Jon. We must work to bring true American justice to Alabama if Jon is not to have died in vain.

ROBERT D. GAMBLE Cambridge, Mass.

Menderes Rides the Bosphorus

Sir: Yours was an accurate story on the role of demirkirat in modern Turkish politics. Behind that story lies a legend centuries old that gives a mythical dimension to this symbol. When in 1950 the Western word democrat was affixed to a Turkish political party, it was mistaken by illiterate peasants for demirkirat (the iron-grey horse), which had been associated with Turkish leaders since the Middle Ages. Greatest of all Turkish heroes who rode a magic mount of that name was Koroglu, the Turkish Robin Hood of the 16th century whose feats are still sung by folk poets in rural Anatolia. As you indicated, the late Premier Menderes exploited this fortuitous association between his party and the Turkish heroic tradition. Two years after Menderes' execution, I heard Turkish peasants avow that they had seen Menderes riding the waves of the Bosphorus on the back of demirkirat, returning from the prison on the island of Yassiada to the mosque in Istanbul where frequently distributed largesse to the poor.

WARREN S. WALKER Professor of English Texas Technological College Lubbock, Texas

Shemittah & Sham

Sir: Your article "Shemittah and Sham" Oct. 8] pursues your consistent policy of sneering at orthodox Jewry. No one questons your right to report news fairly and fully. Everyone, however, ought to question your right to intrude upon the theological debates of a faith that is not your own and to dare to take sides. That sort of presumption is not reporting, it is trespassing.

(DR.) ARNOLD BLUMBERG Baltimore

Sir: As a Jew I feel ashamed of these orthodox Jews who believe they are religious men even though they cheat the Lord. This is a classic example of how, in abiding by the law, it is possible to circumvent its meaning and intent if these happen to be inconvenient.

DR. S. MARCUS Lima, Peru

Sir: Hairsplitting over religious law is not limited to orthodox Judaism. What has the Ecumenical Council been but tortuous verbal gymnastics over issues like transubstantiation?

EARL WAYNE VINECOOR Reading, Mass.

Quiet Sin

Sir: Your story on Los Alamos [Oct. 1] quotes me as saying: "Such sin as exists is pretty dreary." It is bad enough to attack sin, worse to aim shafts at sinners; but to charge anyone with ineptness in sin is to go too far. My remark, wrenched from context, does just that. I was only trying to say: 1) that people here are not particularly sinful, and 2) that, in the absence of night spots and cafe society, they do their sinning quietly, unostentatiously and in private.

ROBERT S. LEHMAN Minister

Unitarian Church of Los Alamos Los Alamos, N. Mex.

Dashing Hope's Hope

Sir: TIME quoted Queen Hope Namgyal as not being worried, since "trouble in Sikkim would be as rare as a comet at midday" [Oct. 8]. While not really wishing to dash Hope's hope, I must point out that a newly discovered comet is fast approaching the sun and will most likely be quite visible here at midday before it arrives there on Oct. 21.

IRWIN SHAPIRO Massachusetts Institute of Technology Lincoln Laboratory Lexington, Mass.

Pembroke Pills

Sir: Dr. Johnson's birth-control-pill prescription to "a very, very small" number of Pembroke girls [Oct. 8] is another very, very small verse in the requiem for American morals.

RICHARD MOGA Rockville, Conn.

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