Letters: Oct. 1, 1965

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Pope Paul

Sir: Berks's sculpture of Pope Paul: magnificent! Your cover [Sept. 24]: great! Viva Pope Paul!

GABRIELLA LINDO New York City

Sir: The cover was a great shock and disappointment to me. It seems a pity that such a great person as the Pope should be pictured as a cracked piece of clay.

(MRS.) JOSEPHINE RAIMONDI Philadelphia

Sir: Your story is a masterful attempt to unconfuse the confused.

EDWARD L. OWEN JR. Valhalla, N.Y.

Sir: I am puzzled by your cover story. It is incompetent, disrespectful, and may harm the ecumenical movement and the papal peace plea at the U.N.

DAVID F. REA New York City

Sir: You ask: "Will the Pope's words of peace have any more impact than those he has littered in Rome during the past two years?" No! Nothing the Pope utters will have any impact as long as he refuses to expiate his church's complicity in the slaughter of Jews and other "accursed" people during the almost two millennia of the church's existence.

THOMAS KIERNAN Editor Philosophical Library New York City

Sir: Pope Paul might contribute to peace by staying in Rome and working to get the Vatican Council to pass a meaningful statement on religious liberty. He might liberalize his church's birth-control laws. The population explosion contributes to unrest, and the Pope can slow it down. His trip will do about as much good as the trips of those do-gooders who invaded the South in clerical garb instead of working at home for these worthy causes.

(THE REV.) F. RICHARD BENKEN The Lutheran Church Madison, Conn.

On War

Sir: While I salute your Essays as an attack on anti-intellectualism, "On War as a Permanent Condition" [Sept. 24] made me rueful. You apologize for our Viet Nam presence by arguing that our interests, political, economic and moral, are served by this engagement. Eventually, we shall see that "freedom" was a cloud under which we concealed a Machiavellian dominance of the economic-political over the moral.

WILLIS E. ELLIOTT United Church Board for Homeland Ministries New York City

Sir: You write: "No man of dignity can shrink from war if he is to preserve his freedom." Quite a few men have done just that: Jesus, Buddha, Francis of Assisi, William Penn, Gandhi and Schweitzer, to name the more illustrious.

ALBERT C. SCHREINER Ossining, N.Y.

Sir: I laud your Essay. At last somebody has defended war as the expedient it can sometimes be in solving international problems. Too many pacifists and bleeding hearts have vilified war in favor of negotiations, when in some cases water, not words, is needed to extinguish fire.

ERIC O. BERGLAND Rockford, Mich.

India v. Pakistan

Sir: Your cover story on the war in Asia [Sept. 17] is the most factual piece I have read. Not only have you dug up the background, but you have interpreted the Pakistani way of thinking. In April, I returned from Pakistan. We all knew then that this fight was coming: the Paks were painting their ground equipment battle-grey over the original yellow, were building revetment for their aircraft, etc. Thank you for your article. It will be saved for my son's children.

BERNARD E. ANDERSON Lieutenant Colonel, U.S.A.F. Battle Creek, Mich.