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Sir: Eager to rejoice in the Supreme Court's apparent step backward toward your own smug preference for guarding society from "smut peddlers," [April 1] you neglect to criticize the Ginzburg case for its deviation from the legal distinction between direct and hearsay evidence: is obscenity now to be defined by examining not the product itself but how the salesman touts it? If indeed Americans so desperately need guidance that censorship is necessary, let our mentors at least concern themselves with the contents of the allegedly pornographic package instead of its wrapping.
ROBERT MCGEEHAN Member of the New Jersey Bar Brooklyn
Sir: Censorship, whether by the Supreme Court or by Hitler Youth burning books, is the same thing. Self-appointed censors —the Supreme Court, the Post Office Department, etc.—are, in this respect, morally equivalent to the Hitler Youth, the Inquisition and other charming organizations. I find it disgusting.
JON WULFF Columbus
Drafting an Alternative
Sir: Quoted as finding "something morally questionable" in the deferment of students [March 25], I want to put this remark into its wider context by adding that I have long wanted to see a national system of service established that would permit young people to enter the Peace Corps or similar (sometimes hazardous) agencies as a legitimate alternative to military service. Moreover, many students, as you suggest, are troubled by this issue, complicated as it is by their often finding the war in Viet Nam itself morally questionable. A lottery, while in some sense more democratic, contributes nothing to the problem of enlisting the idealism and capacity of young Americans for a required period of hardship and service at home or abroad.
DAVID RIESMAN Harvard University Cambridge, Mass.
Where the Temple Is
Sir: Good Samaritans may be forced to pass TIME by for locating Jordan's Mount Gerizim, the sacred mountain of the Samaritan community, in Israel [April 1]. The high priest of the Samaritans, who lives with the majority of his people (all told, fewer than 400) in nearby Nablus, Jordan, may, however, be willing to forgive all, if TIME could show him where the Samaritan temple is. John Hyrcanus was supposed to have destroyed it circa 128 B.C., and there is no clear record of subsequent reconstruction. TIME may also have put Dead Sea Scrolls Dealer Kando at odds with his fellow Arabs by stating that he reported the Jericho cave finds to persons in Israel. In fact, the report reached American archaeologists, including Harvard's Semitic scholar Frank Cross, at the American Schools of Oriental Research in Jerusalem, Jordan.
ROBERT J. BULL
Associate Professor of Church History Drew University Madison, NJ.
Flaying Solo
Sir: Robert Vaughn [April 1] is more O.S.T.R.I.C.H. than D.O.V.E., I'd say. Napoleon Solo is no more. Even tongue-in-cheek derring-do involves a necessary small illusion, and Mr. Vaughn has shattered it beyond repair. If David McCallum holds the same head-in-the-sand views, U.N.C.L.E. has been annihilated from within.
JAN BARNHART Glen Ellyn, Ill.
Sir: I was appalled to discover that TIME equates dissent with defection. Aren't the only real defectors from a democracy those who don't take a stand?
W. J. JAMIESON JR. New York City