From Puerto Rico’s Governor

SIR:
Seldom I write letters to editors, but I have been moved by the January issue of the Atlantic (Supplement on “Spain Today”); I want you to know that Spain came through it, in her best literature and in her best thinkers. If countries were presented in this way to the United States readers and not in the current tourist-propaganda Madison Avenue style, great and profound education would occur.
In Puerto Rico we are in a unique position, having a Spanish cultural heritage and a natural friendly feeling toward the United States that has led to close political association in the Commonwealth of Puerto Rico. But our roots are in Spain, in our Spanish language and in the island habitat that has given us the diversity of which Spanish spiritual richness is capable when moved to new lands.
Do more of this communication of peoples.
LUIS MUÑOZ MARÍN
Governor of Puerto Rico
San Juan, Puerto Rico

A letter to the new President

Immediately after the publication of “A Letter to the New President“ by William R. Mathews in the JanuaryAtlantic, we received a spate of letters, many of them objecting to Mr. Mathews’ suggestion that negotiations with the U.S.S.R, if given a fresh start, might result in a workable compromise for both sides. We knew, as did the author, that his proposals were provocative, but we believed that they were in keeping with the new Administration, and we were gratified when Edward R. Murrow quoted Mr. Mathews’article at length on hisBack-grounds;when Marquis Childs and Eric Sevareid featured it in their columns; and when other readers, on reflection, gave it the following endorsements:

SIR:
I have read — and reread — with the greatest interest and satisfaction your open letter “To the New President” as published in the Atlantic for January, 1961. No wiser words were ever written concerning the world situation, and no better advice could be given to our new President.
FLEET ADMIRAL CHESTER W. NIMITZ
Berkeley, Calif.

SIR:
I want you to know how much I enjoyed reading your article “A Letter to the New President,” by William R. Mathews.
I have never read an abler presentation of our foreign policy problems, and I admire and thoroughly agree with Mathews’ thinking regarding the way to meet them.
I wish every American could read it.
ERNEST LYNN, Vice President
Newspaper Enterprise Association
Cleveland, Ohio

Pressures on college girls today

SIR:
In his article “The Pressures on College Girls Today” (February Atlantic), Dr. Carl Binger made the following statement: “The price of mistakes in relations with the opposite sex can be high indeed, sometimes nearly ruinous.”
It seems to me that the truth of this statement should be constantly emphasized with our young people. When responsible adults give the impression that premarital sexual relations really aren’t very bad, they are giving young people very poor guidance and are doing them a great disservice.
MRS. J. E. SINCLAIR
Carmel Valley,Calif.

SIR:
Dr. Binger suggests that college girls and their parents have an unhealthy relationship because the girls don’t discuss their sex life with their parents. This is ridiculous. Any woman, young or old, who confides her feelings about a man to her parents is unconsciously trying to dilute those feelings - to demote them to the level of a child’s worry or pleasure over a toy. Such a woman is cherishing not her lover or would-be lover, but her childhood’s relationship with her parents. She wishes to remain a little girl, and as long as she continues to confide in her parents, she is sure of never becoming a woman.
Can you imagine Anna explaining her first sharp joy in Vronsky to her mother?
From time immemorial, women have rejoiced in deciding by themselves whom they will kiss and when, whom they will take for lovers, and whose children it is their most inner dream to bear.
MRS. CHARLES REYNOLDS
Brooklyn, N. Y.

SIR:
The article “The Pressures on College Girls Today” by Dr. Carl Binger was especially interesting to me since I am a college student. Male, not female, I find myself and my friends often confronted with the same depression Dr. Binger aptly describes for coeds.
May I request Dr. Binger to write an article concerning “The Pressures on College Men Today” — or would that require a volume?
STANLEY F. KOSS
Xavier University
Cincinnati, Ohio

SIR:
A note of praise for Dr. Carl Binger’s article on the college girl. It is so frighteningly true, but I suppose we all will emerge relatively unscathed. In the meantime, we seem to be blessed with a remarkable ability to rationalize glibly.
MARY BRENNER
University of California
Berkeley. Calif.

SIR:
It was a pleasure for us to read at last a perceptive article on the special problems of college women. Dr. Binger treated the problem in its full complexity and avoided the pitfall of making such a “normal” college woman sound merely immature, or, worse, as if she had an advanced case of psychoneurosis.
We, as college women, have become acutely aware of these tensions. Out of our discussion, we have developed what we call the thesis of the marginal woman. This idea is open to a number of different interpretations. Briefly, however, a marginal woman is one whose education is not appropriate to the traditional role of the woman in society. Her awareness and sensitivity only serve to complicate the situation. She cannot choose between the role of a male or that of a female. Strict intellectual discipline leaves her unsatisfied. Her mind, however, is too active to be satisfied with the mediocre. The thesis boils down to an unsureness of her role in society. Ironically, this unsureness is a product of our education.
AVERILL OLSSON
ELLEN AIKENHEAD
Mount Holyoke College
South Hadley, Mass.

(For a more extended response to Dr. Binger’s article, see page 67.)

Our national parks in jeopardy

SIR:
Along with the authors of two of the articles on the perils faced by our national park system, I believe that the Wilderness Bill now before the Senate Committee on Interior and Insular Affairs will be a major step toward preserving rugged tracts of forest substantially free of man’s works. It has been five years since a Wilderness Bill was first introduced in Congress. But I feel confident that the public has grown sufficiently alert to the need for preservation of primitive areas, penetrable by foot and horseback rather than motor vehicle.
Akin to this bill is legislation also before the committee looking toward the protection of certain shoreline areas for their public recreational, scientific, scenic, and historical value. Both these measures are made urgent by the burgeoning demands of a growing population, as is so clearly revealed in the recent valuable articles.
CLINTON P. ANDERSON, Chairman
Committee on Interior and Insular Affairs
United States Senate
Washington, D. C.

SIR:
You deserve the gratitude of every conservationist for the articles in the February issue on “Our National Parks in Jeopardy.” Particularly, I enjoyed “Resorts or Wilderness?” by Devereux Butcher. It is a revealing fact of our way of life that the national parks, comprising only three fourths of one per cent of the total land area of the United States, are constantly in danger of commercial inroads and overdevelopment.
MRS. GEORGE BEGUN
Oak Ridge, Tenn.

SIR:
About ten million copies of Devereux Butcher’s article “Resorts or Wilderness?” should be published in pamphlet form and distributed to the American public.
GENEVA L. PARMLEY
Southeast Missouri State College
Cape Girardeau, Mo.

SIR:
I think the efforts of your contributors Devereux Butcher, Clark C. Van Fleet, and Paul Brooks under the general title “Our National Parks in Jeopardy” are important and useful in stirring the American people to stop the encroachment of civilization on the wilderness.
While these old-time nature lovers wax nostalgic, there are whole generations — our population has doubled in the past fifty years — who have exactly the same right to see the wilderness as they do. Are Butcher, Van Fleet, and Brooks the only men in the country who can enjoy nature? No, they will be the first to say. But, are Butcher, Van Fleet, and Brooks the only men who know how to enjoy nature? Well, almost, they will say; Mr. Brooks does allow a grace-saying group inside the elite.
E. C. ROBERTSON
Silver Spring, Md.

SIR:
Congratulations on the papers on our national parks! They will help to offset the powerful influence of the outboard motor and the bulldozers.
GEORGE CHEEVER SHATTUCK, M.D.
Boston, Mass.

SIR:
I am astonished by the criticisms of Devereux Butcher on the management of the national parks. It is for the people — the citizens of the United States, who own them — that the national parks should be administered. This would not be possible if their management were dictated by the fancies of the evangelists of the wilderness cult. If it is more satisfying to the people, for whose welfare the national parks were established, to stay at motels and travel on efficient highways than to sleep in tents or not travel at all, their wishes should not be denied to comply with the selfish demands of a small group of nature worshipers.
If Mr. Butcher and his fellow enthusiasts for the great outdoors would devote one tenth the time to development of adequate recreational facilities for citizens of the crowded industrial East that they give to preserving the wilderness of the West, they would render a service rewarding to human beings as well as to nature.
MRS. ANTOINETTE FRIEDMAN
I Washington, D. C.

SIR :
Devereux Butcher rightly heads his article “Resorts or Wilderness?” In early days of human history, some places were treated as shrines, to help people in their endeavor to think on a high plane. Our national parks, coming at a later time, were established with largely the same motivation, though it was not put in those words. We have been trying to keep portions of our earth, in national parks, wilderness areas, and other such designations, in the original conditions, so that aesthetically we might gain inspiration for our living. Mr. Butcher rightly depicts how far we have wandered from those ideals.
In Clark C. Van Fleet’s article, “Nature Out of Balance,” there is described a condition that applies equally well outside of national parks, and his article points up the problem Paul Brooks shows us in his following piece, “The Pressure of Numbers.” I, too, have found many park employees who are surely dedicated people, and I agree with Mr. Brooks that in the naturalist service these dedicated ones are doing their best to educate the public on how to use national parks. As he says, it involves brains rather than bulldozers, and this should be “Mission Number One.” An important forward step is the zoning of Yellowstone Lake to keep the three south arms in wilderness condition. I hope that a great many people will honestly study the contents of these three articles.
OLAUS J. MURIE, Director
The Wilderness Society
Washington, D. C.

SIR:
May I commend you for your excellent series concerning “Our National Parks in Jeopardy.” Only one thing was lacking in your treatment of this important national problem. Having aroused your readers’ interest — and ire, perhaps — you left them with no effective means to express their feelings. Could you not, for example, furnish information concerning the Wilderness Bill, especially the bill’s sponsors and official title?
JOSEPH L. THOMPSON
State College, Penn.

The official designation of the “Wilderness Bill,” now under consideration by Congress, is S 174. It was drafted to meet the wishes of all major conservation organizations and is supported by them.
Letters in behalf of S 174 should be addressed to: Chairmen, Interior and Insular Affairs Committee, Senate and House Office Building, Washington 25, D. C.
DEVEREUX BUTCHER
Washington, D. C.