We Won?

Sir: It is interesting to note our President's declaration of victory after the Nov. 3 election [Nov. 16]. The facts, as we all see, hardly show a vast support of Nixon's policies or a swallowing of his vulgar campaign tactics.

However, since the President feels he can see these facts and still declare "We won," one would hope that this device would be applied to Viet Nam.

If Mr. Nixon would only announce to the world that "We won" the war, then all troops could be pulled out, and who could question it since "We won"?

LEONARD CHAPLA Manhattan

Sir: Following Nixon's advice of working in the American electoral system, my spirits have been uplifted by the recent elections. The fabled Silent Majority wielded its power of the ballot to remind Nixon that he has failed to fulfill his mandate to stop the war, end the draft, curb inflation, bring peace and freedom to Middle Americans, etc., ad nauseam.

I pray that we will have learned by 1972 not to again be misled by the fascist law-and-order advocates. Our problems are more fundamental than a mere lack of law-and-order. We need a President who can understand and reconcile grievances, not one who exploits them.

JOHANNES CURTZE Middleburg, Va.

Sir: After watching hours of election coverage, I am most encouraged.

All victorious candidates favor peace, law-and-order, fiscal responsibility in government and vigorous antipollution legislation. Conversely then, our enlightened electorate must have rejected war, crime, profligate governmental spending and environmental decay.

In such a Utopia, how can we lose?

(MRS.) JOAN R. WASHBURN Westmont, Ill.

Asking for It

Sir: The simplistic rationale for the Kent State tragedy often heard in some conservative quarters--"They asked for it" --has appealing applicability to Nixon's behavior in San Jose. Confronting a known hostile crowd of several thousand, waving the V salute and remarking, "That's what they hate to see" [Nov. 9] has got to be the act of a very calculating politician or a damn fool. I in no way condone the behavior of the hostile crowd.

ROGER W. MEYER St. Paul

Sir: It is really a disgrace when the President of the United States cannot go through a city or town without having bottles or rocks thrown at his limousine. Here is a good man, speaking for what is right, doing the best he can for his country, and people don't even have the decency to give him a bit of respect.

MARK PACE Buffalo

The Human Equation

Sir: I would like to compliment you on your fine article, "The Blue Collar Worker's Lowdown Blues" [Nov. 9]. I am a blue collar worker, and I know that pride in one's work is all a blue collar can hope to achieve. But this pride is being squeezed from one side by big management and from the other side by out-of-touch big-union labor leaders.

If this reality of human needs keeps being pushed aside, I hate to guess what will happen to our present-day society. In the early days of labor and management, the company was usually owned by one family or by a small group of men. But our present-day company belongs to its stockholders. Somewhere between then and now, human reality has been pushed aside. But it need not die there, not if they really want to help.

THOMAS J. MORGAN Silvis, Ill.

Sir: The impassioned protest against management really has quite a simple solution. It is not fringe benefits that those employees seek--it is variety. Therefore, management really ought to offer the chance for job variation within its organizations. Who indeed could stand the monotony of "seven goddamn identical bolts" year after year? Proper procedure ought to be that a chance at a different type of production job should be offered from time to time. I've no complaint myself --I started an odd-jobs business five years ago. Variety? My God!

JOHN T. CLARKE, PH.D. Falmouth, Mass.

Where People Meet

Sir: The current popularity of encounter groups [Nov. 9] only emphasizes the well-known fact that human beings need group relationships and that our society lacks meaningful natural groups where people can meet on an intimate, informal level. Any properly taught small college class where students know one another and discuss a common topic, any group effort to put on a play or work toward common goals, any neighborhood coffeehouse or bar will serve the same purpose.

The leaders of the human potentials movement should see this movement in a larger social context, and concentrate on the re-establishment of smaller social units and natural groups in society at large. Otherwise the movement becomes just another empty institution void of significance and meaning outside the four walls of the joy seminars, unable to provide satisfying answers to the search for intimacy and friendship by people who have never experienced close human contacts in real life situations with actual common goals. ELSE WEINSTEIN Glendale, N.Y.

Sir: I believe the object is to put one back in touch with authentic feelings, with one's self or, in Freudian terms, with the ego. To accomplish this, some of the veneer of manners, civilization and other superego accomplishments needs to be scraped away or at least temporarily removed. What often happens, however, is that the id merely has a night out.

(THE REV.) DONALD HEINZ Richmond, Calif.

Sir: You failed to mention one "reentry problem": the fate of those who are obliged to associate with the newly "aware" T groupies. Ah, the compulsive openness they are so determined to inflict upon us, the venting of untapped spleens and the breathless revelations of profound new sensual experiences, experiences most of us old normal deadheads have known for years. Seems like the "T-group" encounter amounts to little more than an adult rekindling of the pubescent awakening accompanied by an unrestrained display of their current hang-ups. Ho-hum. I hope the next encounter-group alumnus I meet will have already gone through withdrawal.

ALAN B. ROHWER Boxborough, Mass.

Something Right

Sir: The Champ Clark Essay, "Mystique of Pro Football" [Nov. 9], was excellent. There is the "disciplined machinery of its teamwork: eleven men performing eleven separate actions in pursuit of a common goal." And therein lies something worth probing.

For the typical American, the utter incompetence and inefficiency that have become part of our daily lives, the things we take in stride and pass off as "What more could you expect from that outfit?" are really an important part of the "mystique." By Sunday, we can no longer tolerate static, sloppy anything. On Sunday, the pro football fan becomes involved. We are now a real if vicarious part of the team. We are part of a decision-making group that, having made that decision, executes that plan in the exact manner and accomplishes a goal. We are part of an organization that by training and discipline is able to accomplish something. We have seen someone do something right--and what a rare treat that is for most Americans!

ROCCO J. COSTANZO Minneapolis

The Flower Bit

Sir: Thanks for that article about France's bringing back the whorehouse [Nov. 9]. I am a man old enough to know about whorehouses, and I can say that they are badly needed in these United States today. I am not trying to be funny. My conviction is that the population explosion is the single greatest threat to this country and the entire world. Nowadays young men practically force their girl friends to engage in sex. They have no other way to relieve their urge. So you have early marriages. That means lots of babies. And this sudden incursion of family life on young people who should still be having fun causes many divorces with broken homes and distressed kids.

Our ancestors were wiser. A young man would take a girl out, give her the bit with flowers and candy and dinner dates and dances, kiss her good night, then go to a whorehouse. In a whorehouse he was fairly safe. It was run by a madam, not a pimp. He wouldn't be robbed, and he wouldn't be likely to get syphilis, for the madam would want to keep up the reputation of her house.

Why shouldn't a young man have safe relief from his strong urge to copulate? Why shouldn't young ladies have a few years of courtship--postponing those grim years of dishes and diapers?

ANDREW JOHNSON Minneapolis

Sharing the Prize

Sir: In the three years we worked with Photographer Kyoichi Sawada [Nov. 9] in Viet Nam, he never lost his sensitivity for people or his professional dedication. Long after many photographers had become worn thin by the daily dangers of covering a war, Sawada continued to return to the U.P.I, office on Ngo Duc Ke Street with action photographs of the fighting. Sawada was a credit to the international press corps. In 1966, when he won the Pulitzer Prize, he tramped through hamlet after hamlet and traveled to many refugee camps until he found the woman who was the subject of his prizewinning photograph and shared the prize money with her.

FRANK FAULKNER

STEVE VAN METER BOB HODIERNE Chicopee, Mass.

Hi-C and the FTC

Sir: Re your article, "The FTC Gets Tough" (Oct. 19], the FTC has neither directed nor ordered the Coca-Cola Company to take any action with respect to its Hi-C products. All the FTC has done is to issue a proposed complaint, and it has done nothing more than that. We believe the allegations of that proposed complaint are without foundation and we intend to challenge them vigorously.

It is our position that Hi-C products are wholesome and nutritional beverages that have met and continue to merit widespread consumer approval.

CHARLES W. ADAMS

Senior Vice President

The Coca-Cola Company

Atlanta

Clinical Competence

Sir: The Carnegie Commission's proposal [Nov. 9] to shorten medical school and residency has one basic flaw. It does not eliminate the "wasted time" in the first two years. Rather, it hits medical education in the very area the commission hopes to improve: clinical medicine. The commission's proposal to eliminate the fourth year, internship and first year of residency would, in my opinion, gravely reduce the clinical competence of physicians while simply increasing the number of men practicing.

Let us not diminish the quality of medical training simply for the sake of numbers. It is difficult enough to become a good clinician under the present system. N. ANTHONY MASTROPIETRO Class of 1971 Georgetown University School of Medicine Washington, D.C.

Sir: I am an immigrant physician. I took a liking to North American medicine about ten years ago. When I served as an intern in a community hospital on the East Coast, an obstetrician asked me: "Do you still have those nurse-midwives over there on the other side of the Atlantic? In this country they are a thing of the past." A few days later, I learned that one of his patients had delivered in a nearby hospital without the wanted help while he was desperately fighting the traffic. What a pity that there wasn't an R.N.-midwife on duty. Hopefully the new training program for doctors' assistants will also provide for some R.N.-midwives to work along with the physicians.

HELMUT HAIBACH, M.D. St. Louis

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