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Sir: When I hear someone say, "We must get out of Viet Nam, but only when we can leave with honor," I think of an old streetwalker saying that she will retire when she can do so as a virgin.
PETER VANADIA
Manhattan
Sir: I've cried with them at their funerals, laughed with them at their weddings, drunk with them during their celebrations. I've seen pride in a yellow-and-red flag on the faces of peasants who not many years ago had no flag. I've seen rice fields that have lain bare for years spring to life with rice again. I've seen canals reopened that had been previously closed for years by the Viet Cong. I've seen the people clear the years of undergrowth from their ancestral tombs, rebuild and begin to live again. I've seen 13-year-old children start to school for the first time. I've seen a young mother saved at childbirth because of a newly opened dispensary. I've seen communities spring to life again as they are given security to travel and trade goods in adjacent villages. And I've slogged with these same people through mud toward tree lines that burst into hostility; toward an enemy that assassinates their elected officials by night, intimidates them in their fields by day, shells their communities and claims to be their liberator.
My America, you may declare a moratorium on what is happening here, but I've seen it and lived it—if I joined you, I would have to declare a moratorium on my soul.
RICHARD T. CHILDRESS
Captain, U.S.A.
A.P.O. San Francisco
Sir: Knowing that it is about as popular—and as safe—to defend Spiro Agnew in these columns as it was to defend the chief rabbi of Berlin in Der Stürmer in the '30s, I nonetheless feel compelled to name Spiro Agnew the winner in his battle of wits with Senator William Fulbright, as reported in TIME [Oct. 31]. Agnew, TIME reported, said of "M-day": "A spirit of national masochism prevails."
What other words could more accurately describe an intellectual Establishment that quivers in ecstasy, and whimpers for more, when it is called "racists," "bigots" and "brutes" by any rapist, wrecker or riot leader who is given a long enough prison sentence to write a book?
Agnew went on, in TIME's report, to describe the M-day demonstrators as "an effete corps of impudent snobs."
Could Jonathan Swift, or even Allard Lowenstein himself, have said it better? Certainly Sam Brown, the twentyish Harvard hysteric who organized M-day, was pretty impudent (and a bit of a snob, too) to insist that the President needed his urging, and that of a half million other pubescents, to seek the peace that his public life depends on, that the life of the nation that chose him to govern depends on.
He needed it about as much as a brain surgeon, in the midst of a delicate operation, needs his elbow shoved and to be screeched at, "Get it over with faster!" There are those of us who might have preferred the phrase "Arrogant Punks," but then, we're not Vice Presidents, restrained by the majesty of that office.
"Perhaps the best put-down (to Agnew)," said TIME, "was the calm one that came from Senator William Fulbright. He said, 'I just considered the source.' "
Now that may be a blazing new bon mot to TIME's reporter, but anyone familiar with early American ethnic humor has found that phrase in Jerome Weidman's early novels of low-life in The Bronx, in Arthur Kober's old "Having Wonderful Time" stories in The New Yorker, and even earlier, in the comedies of Montague Glass.
It was a phrase used by queenly shopgirls to express their disdain for anyone brighter than they were.
Speaking only in my private role as an American institution, I prefer the normal nausea expressed by Spiro Agnew to the menopausal querulousness of Senator Fulbright.
AL CAPP
Portland, Ore.
Sir: Written on the wall of a dormitory John at the University of Michigan: "Mickey Mouse wears a Spiro T. Agnew watch."
LISA JOHNSTON
Bowling Green, Ohio
Indomitable Spirit
Sir: Can we Beatle Freaks ever relax [Oct. 31]? My friends and I have found 75 irrefutable examples proving that Paul McCartney is indeed dead, John Lennon is dying of incurable throat cancer, Ringo Starr has no arms, and George Harrison is in his 70s. Despite all these setbacks, the Beatles continue to play. Incredible the indomitable spirit of the British.
BILL WEINSTEIN
Pasadena, Calif.
Shape of the '60s
Sir: May I comment on two paragraphs dealing with Arthur Burns's selection as next chairman of the Federal Reserve Board [Oct. 24].
First, my reference to him as "ponderous and a little pontifical." If Arthur is at times ponderous, it is a mark of deliberateness, and we need this in central bankers. He is also capable of moving fast on crucial policy matters.
The second matter concerns economic events in 1959-60, which are described in a way that is commonly believed, I fear, but is nonetheless incorrect. What readers would have to conclude from your paragraph is that 1) credit conditions were not eased in advance of the 1960-61 recession, 2) federal spending was not increased, and 3) as a result there was recession.
The facts are different. That there was recession is correct. But it is not correct that there was no response from policy. Credit easing started in mid-1959, with net free reserves swinging from minus $500 million to a zero position by mid-1960 and to plus $500 million by November of that year. It is hard for me to visualize a faster move. There was a response also from federal expenditure policy. Federal purchases of goods and services were flat in 1959 but rose in the first quarter of 1960 and climbed thereafter at a pace that continued substantially unchanged through the Kennedy years.
Moreover, the record shows that when the '60s began, prices were stable, labor cost increases were in line with productivity improvement, we had weathered a gold crisis, and the trade balance was back to a hefty plus. How splendid it would be if only we were entering the '70s in similar shape!
RAYMOND J. SAULNIER
Chairman, President Eisenhower's Council of Economic Advisers, 1956-61
Barnard College
Columbia University
Manhattan