Letters: Feb. 11, 1966

The Secretary & the Struggle

Sir: Your Feb. 4 cover story on Dean Rusk and the struggle in South Viet Nam is the best and most factual story on this subject that I have read since coming back from five months in South Viet Nam. Dean Rusk is, the best Secretary of State in the past 30 years.

TIGER TORN Taylor, Texas

Sir: Your story seemed to reach the precise central issue in the controversy over the war. You report Rusk's quoting Harry Truman as saying that we must "support free peoples who are resisting attempted subjugation . . ." Agreed—but note that very important word "free." All the arguments of the Lyndon Johnsons, McGeorge Bundys and Dean Rusks have totally failed to convince thoughtful Americans that the South Vietnamese are, or ever were, a "freer" people than the North Vietnamese. Until they are so convinced, many Americans must continue to regard their country's present military activity as 1) immoral and 2) incomprehensible.

RICHARD M. LEMMON Berkeley, Calif.

Sir: The cover portrait is TIME'S most meaningful so far. Dean Rusk, an otherwise most handsome man, becomes a stricken symbol of the war in Viet Nam. The artist has drawn a picture of my own considered reservations about the U.S. commitment in Southeast Asia.

MRS. HOWARD B. SWEIG Highland Park, Ill.

The Draft

Sirs: A 21-gun salute to your statistically infallible and comprehensive Essay "The New Demands of the Draft" [Feb. 4]. Would my financial status permit, I would mail a reprint to every draft-age male.

(Sgt.) EDWARD C. JONES U.S. Army Recruiter San Antonio

Sir: Why not mobilize the Reserves? If they "must serve on active duty for four to six months . . . and be ready for active duty . . . during an emergency," then they should be called up now. If the current situation is not an emergency, when will there ever be one?

MARC BRENMAN Chicago

Sir: The draft being one of the two most-talked-about topics on our campus (sex, of course, the other), we all read your Essay with great interest. Since "they" have decided to take from us the lowest quarter of the junior class, third of the sophomore class, and half of the freshman class, we coeds have come to the point where we must choose between a male-less campus next fall and the supreme sacrifice of deliberately becoming the bottom half of each class.

LYNDA MCLAURIN Freshman

Michigan State University East Lansing, Mich.

Long Live the Republic

Sir: You call the Electoral College "an undemocratic anachronism" [Jan. 28]. It is, indeed. The founding fathers gave us a republic, in which the franchise was entrusted to qualified voters, not a democracy, with the franchise in the hands of the unqualified mob, which they mistrusted. Benjamin Franklin, when asked what kind of government the framers of the Constitution had devised, replied, "A republic, if you can keep it." If we were wise, we would keep it.

CHARLES DENSFORD Pipe Creek, Texas

California's Court