Dear Editor

...is essentially free...

...What the New Left has been doing during the last two and a half years is absurd when considered" as an attempt at social change in the sense of the professed aims...

...Different equipment...

...Elliott knows nothing about the Vietnamese people and definitely does not speak the language...

...There is strong and positive NVA leadership of the Vietcong, if for no other reason than that the guerrilla forces have suffered heavy losses and to maintain pressure against U.S...

...San Francisco Edouard Roditi Guest Professor Department of World Literature San Francisco State College HUMAN CONSCIOUSNESS Donald Sutherland ("Making Morals Fun," NL, May 8) refers to the "extentialist assumption that the individual consciousness...

...In the course of the review, however, the idea expressed in the title gets partly lost...

...To complicate the matter, the brain is subdivided into huge clusters of cells which complement their functions like a symphony orchestra producing one sound from the contribution of numerous instruments...

...Thirty McLuhans with 30 research grants of $100,000 from Fordham University, will never be able to endow man with the ability to acquire, store and communicate information in sign languages corresponding to those senses with which bees or Nilotic fish are endowed but which we lack...

...Especially before television, baseball was not a leisurely game...

...There are those in public office who spend even less time during a visit to Vietnam and take the same tack as Elliott to promote whatever side of an issue they favor...

...Elliott claims that the NVA and VC operate differently along three areas of military operations...

...Ade covered the James Corbett-John L. Sullivan fight in New Orleans in 1894...

...For example, Elliott takes issue with John Mecklin's article ("Should We Negotiate In Vietnam" NL, March 13), which I admit to not having read...

...Elliott also takes pains to point out that both the VC and NVA operate differently in the field...

...They are young, and granted this is a young man's war, but they have not taken the time to acquaint themselves with military history, doctrine, developments, weapons, tactics, etc...

...Saigon, South Vietnam Edward Hymoff Military Editor M. W. Lads Publishing Co...

...I shudder at the line taken by Elliott, which is nothing more than a repetition of statements made by the vocal group protesting the conflict here...

...I believe that while Sacks' hypocritical use of the word may be food for home consumption, it hurts us in foreign countries, for example in Europe...

...A pitcher was allowed only four warm-up throws, and many of them worked fast...

...through the centuries, this may also have produced further developments in this special structure of the human brain...

...During the first several decades of this century, the platoon system was not employed in baseball, there were fewer substitutions, and the umpires speeded up the game...

...If the VC used only guerrilla tactics and the NVA used conventional tactics (as they did in the fall of 1965 and early 1966 to their dismay) the battlefield situation at this writing would be overwhelmingly in favor of the U.S...

...in recent months for the first time since the beginning of 1946, I have been fascinated by, among other phenomena, the controversies raging around the writings of Marshall McLuhan...

...His glib comments are symptomatic of many young people over here who refer to themselves as journalists...

...Unfortunately, Elliott is a pretentious young man who has commented about a subject for which he lacks the qualifications as an observer much less a reporter or commentator...

...Yet, this is what we talk about when we speak of consciousness being free to choose any sort of ethics...

...Tell the world we are fighting for strategic aims, for our own freedom...

...Happy Felsch, Johnny Mostil and Joe DiMaggio...

...If dogs were capable of inventing a system of artifact signs whereby they could communicate and acquire information much as we do in audio-visual terms by means of language, alphabets and printing, they might be tempted to invent a sign language that, instead of being heard or read, is interpreted through the nose...

...The need for printing indeed arose when education was beginning to produce more readers...

...If one believes in accuracy, a fundamental lodestone of the philosophers, ignoring brain activity while attempting to analyze ethics and "outer authority" is as practical as galloping off on a one legged horse...

...In the long run...

...these areas correspond to our ability to receive and store and convey information acquired by visual and auditive means...

...The human mind inevitably appears as it does because it is one way the brain behaves, and therefore must conform to the nature of brain activity...

...There are realities today which have not been presented to the American public by those who set national policy and by those who report it...

...From the U.S...

...certain Nilotic fish are similarly endowed with an apparently unique sense of radar or sonar that has not yet been detected in any other living species...

...McLuhan should also be informed that monastic scriptoria served the same purpose, for centuries, as printing presses, and that the earliest printers were not immediately able to produce books much faster or in much larger quantities than the more efficient monastic scriptoria...

...Our own brain, likewise, has areas that are more developed in humans than in other species...

...He criticizes I. Milton Sacks' use of the word "freedom" in his May 18 review of Arthur Schlesinger Jr.'s book on Vietnam...

...But when at the last annual meeting of the Modern Language Association I saw several hundred college professors and other "scholars" rush into a hall to listen, I knew I was confronting a weird phenomenon of mass hysteria—something analogous, in human and intellectual terms, to the mass suicide of lemmings...

...Elliott's knowledge of the Vietcong and North Vietnamese Array order of battle is sadly lacking...

...GAMESMANSHIP It is not true, as Herbert Leibowitz contends ("On Gamesmanship," NL, May 22), that baseball was disreputable until World War I. Before the War two teams, organized by John McGraw and Charles A. Comiskey, toured the world...

...In terms of pure military tactics, of strike and withdraw and ambush, they utilize the exact same formations and methods...

...But speaking as one who has been in the communications media for nearly a score of years, it's time for the press to seriously report the realities rather than the conceptions held by those responsible for selecting and disseminating the news...

...Avoca, N.Y...

...Incidentally, Lardner wrote the book in what is sometimes called "the Studs Lonigan neighborhood"?6002 Prairie Avenue in Chicago...

...In theory, one can conceive of sign languages that would convey information to these senses that we lack, much as we can also conceive of theoretical geometries for multi-dimensional worlds...

...But the basic problem is the type of reporter who either appears on the scene here looking for a job or is sent out by his news organization...

...In the Islamic world, printing was at first forbidden as a "desecration" of a "sacred" alphabet...

...These scriptoria were strictly audio-visual: One monk read and dictated while the others wrote down what they heard...

...Bees are gifted with a sense of polarity of which we are deprived...

...There is a human element in the selection of the news to be presented to the public by any of the major communications media...

...The father of sports fiction was Charles E. Van Loan...

...This also means providing qualified observers and reporters...

...The fault is two-fold...

...Elliott spent less than two months in Vietnam—during which he put in a week in Saigon, a week at Chu Lai, and spent the rest of the time sunning himself on the sands of China Beach in Danang or along the river wall at the I Corps Press Center...

...But technology supplies only what man demands, and man's demands are limited by his own psycho-physiological aptitudes and limitations...

...When I first chanced to read a few pages of his prose, I thought he was a humorist spoofing pseudo-intellectual jargon, a new kind of Petroleum V. Nasby...

...To the uninitiated, the above can only spell confusion...

...The times cry for something better...

...Yet he claims to have interviewed both VC and North Vietnamese prisoners without "listeners...

...Its an error I will not repeat, but I'm afraid that this phase of journalism in America will continue for some time to come—to the disservice of us all...

...This human element is predicated on conceptions or mis-conceptions of what the conflict in Vietnam is all about...

...I also shudder at the cliches expounded by those who prefei to fight in Vietnam rather than in America, who demand that we invade North Vietnam in the manner of our slashing attacks and resounding World War II victories...

...We could even add that we are fighting for the free world too...

...No: A political happening is not part of a social engineer's plan, and it is neither useful nor fair to judge it as such—that is, by its success in moving toward clearly visualized goals...

...I think this value will outweigh the harm the New Left is causing by supplying the Right with ammunition...

...the typewriter was only for commercial correspondence...

...Willie Mays is a great fielder, but there have been four center fielders who could field with Mays and more simply: Tris Speaker...

...He encouraged Ring Lardner to write You Know Me Al...

...I believe that S. L. A. Marshall summed this up in your pages when he complained about the quality of journalists and their reporting techniques ("Press Failure in Vietnam," NL, October 10, 1966...

...McLuhan similarly suggests an independent evolution of technology, no longer considering man as its inventor...

...Babe Ruth was more of a "natural" player than Cobb...

...Some other random comments on sports and sports writing may be of interest: Ty Cobb was not an instinctive base runner...

...Man's whole use of language, whether spoken, written or printed, thus corresponds to an increasingly diversified exploitation of the peculiar structure of the human brain and of its potentialities...

...Butler ridicules Darwin for suggesting a theory whereby machines breed machines independently of man...

...Modern biological knowledge has demolished the basic assumption of Western philosophy that by starting with human consciousness a rational edifice can be constructed which will outline an acceptable view of man in his universe...

...Some of the best straight sports writing was done years ago by George Ade and Ring Lardner...

...Their unpre-paredness is as basic as that...

...Man knew he had a personality from direct experience, and there could be no question of its competence to analyze, reason and know...

...and its allies...

...Had printing been invented a couple of hundred years earlier, it might have failed to find a market for bigger printings than the scriptoria could produce...

...This is undoubtedly a succinct statement of the dominant emerging mood of our times...

...As to the short run, I am not so sure, and we have to survive the short run to reap any fruits of the more distant future...

...That makes more sense in foreign countries—and ultimately more sense at home as well...

...Chicago E. j. Holland, M.D...

...As a technical innovation, printing thus served only to cope with a socio-culturai development which, creating a greater demand for books, made it necessary to provide a greater supply of them more rapidly...

...Thus, philosophy...

...Hamburg, Germany Carl Landauer McLUHAN As an expatriate American who has been residing in the U.S...

...We are concerned here with human consciousness, which can be distinguished from the consciousness of nearly all other living species in physiological terms: Man relies to a remarkable extent on visual and auditive perception and is remarkably lacking in perception through the other three senses that we share, for instance, with all other vertebrates...

...I cannot speak on behalf of the policy makers who ultimately must answer to the voting public...

...among Sephardic Jews, certain very solemn texts, such as ketuboth or marriage contracts, continued for several centuries to be written and illuminated by hand, never printed...

...Inevitably, man is doomed by the very structure of his brain, unless he undergoes radical biological mutations, to remain primarily an audio-visual species...

...The enemy's greatest problem is logistics and he is quite well aware that standardization of arms, ammunition and equipment will give him a more effective combat force in South Vietnam...

...At the time Elliott wrote his letter he had a bit more than four weeks in the country and his experience as a working journalist cannot compare with Mecklin's impressive credentials as a newsman and longtime on-the-spot observer...

...Man invented language, then writing and printing too, because his senses of sight and sound are so closely associated and more highly developed than his senses of touch, taste and smell...

...A dog learns more through its sense of smell than men do...

...When in the field, they are unable to read, the symbols on a platoon commander's terrain map...

...Its basic absurdity is moveover amply illustrated in Samuel Butler's satirical theory, expounded in Erewhon, of a Darwinian evolution of machines...

...These few examples should suffice to suggest the absurdity of much of McLuhan's thought...

...There are the cliches of the so-called "hawks" and "doves" that I keep reading and hearing time and again...

...to choose any sort of ethics...

...In a relatively affluent mass society, inevitably maintained through bureaucratic operations, it is vitally important constantly to be reminded of the danger of dehumaniza-tion, and there is a presumption in favor of every spark of spontaneity...

...Perhaps he meant without interpreters...

...At most, McLuhan can reduce us, out of a kind of intellectual sloth or suicide, to the use of Braille...

...Today, the human consciousness can be seen to be a fragmentary, limited phenomenon, a manifestation of brain activity, and remarkably handicapped for exploration of the traditional philosophical questions...

...Yet from another viewpoint, it can also be grounds for sadness, since traditional philosophy, while noble in history, is obsolete as an instrument to deal with man's plight today...

...As an editor, I made the latter grevious error of not providing a qualified observer and reporter...

...For the blind, man then invented Braille, because our sense of touch is more differentiated than our sense of smell or of taste...

...Fifty years ago, in my own childhood, it was still considered rude, instead of writing by hand, to type a personal letter...

...Also, the recruiting of VC guerrillas is becoming more difficult...

...He noted that many newsmen never left the comforts of Saigon (or Danang Press Center) to pursue the news and report in depth and detail the events of this most complex of conflicts...

...but should not appeal for justification to any outer authority, since it will itself have arbitrarily constituted the outer authority...

...New York City James T. Farrell...

...In turn, the brain being an aggregation of billions of cells, follows the rules of individual cell life...

...Clearly, it can produce only the opposite: more Reaganism, white backlash, frustration of the anti-poverty programs and of the peace movement...

...Harold Koretz, M.D...

...I am writing concerning the letter by Neil Elliott which you published in your issue of April 10 last...

...and Allied units the Communist battlefield commanders have been forced to replace losses among the VC with NVA regulars until new VC guerrillas can be recruited...

...This needs to be expanded, to be made more specific...

...Sutherland points out the admirable scholarship exhibited by Hazel Barnes, and this, of course, entitles her to the highest respect...

...Ring Lardner reported White Sox and Cubs games around 1910, and his accounts were uniquely good...

...Grover Cleveland Alexander kept the batters continually off balance since he had no wind-up...

...But the sonar sense of these Nilotic fish is located in a highly developed area of their brain that does not appear to exist in the brain of other species...

...VIETNAM I am very pleased about the letter from Martin Leichtman in The New Leader of May 22...

...The earliest printers were content to "reprint" those books which the monastic scriptoria had for centuries been producing in the largest numbers: More medieval manuscripts of Boethius have thus survived than of any other author, and Boethius continued for a long time to be one of the more widely printed authors...

...The Europeans do not believe that we are fighting primarily for the freedom of the Vietnamese people or the freedom of the world When we say this they mistrust us and come Continued on next page DEAR EDITOR to their own conclusions about our aims, which are not very flattering...

...Moreover, the fault also extends to editorial direction...

...he thought out every aspect of the game, even to the point of examining grains of wood in order to get the best bat possible...

...military point of view, if NVA and VC units used different equipment and weapons they would surely suffer an early defeat...

...To go a step further than General Marshall, my contention is that newsmen assigned to cover the conflict here are arriving unprepared to cover this complex story...

...It can also be seen to be an attempted answer to a basic problem civilized man has wrestled with throughout recorded history, how shall he relate himself to his world...

...In the early phase of its civil rights fight, to be sure, the New Left appeared to be a rationally planned movement for social change, but from late 1964 on it moved into another phase in which its professed aims supplied neither the fervor nor the opportunity for a common expression of a vaguely conceived faith, or—perhaps more accurately—for the joint venting of a deeply felt malaise...

...The New Leftists, Simon Lazarus writes, "sought to be engineers of social change, and they must be judged in that role...

...He managed to win games in a hurry, finishing in 75 to 80 minutes...

...In your May 8 issue, in Raymond Rosenthal's "McLuhan's Tom-Toms," I at last find one sentence that can provide the basis for a reasonable critique of McLuhan's mystical invitations to intellectual self-immolation: "Someone should inform McLuhan that consciousness came before books, movies or television...

...In England, the King attended a game in which Chicago White Sox catcher Tom Daley hit a home run...

...It can be taken seriously only as a loud, if inarticulate, outcry of young intellectuals against the culture of the age...

...Sports writing used to be more technical, and one of the best at giving a straight account was Hugh S. Fullerton...

...Perhaps the best writing Arthur Brisbane did was his coverage of the John L. Sullivan-Charlie Mitchell fight in England...

...If he had taken the time to research his subject, he would have found several examples of combined NVA-VC operations in I Corps, where he spent the greater part of his brief stay in South Vietnam...