The War Over Here

Sir: I am perplexed. One year ago the youth of America cried, "Peace!" "Don't let our boys die needlessly in Viet Nam!" "Make love, not war!" Today colleges are virtual battlegrounds. Either we are confronted by a generation of neurotics or we are permitting a few malcontents to disrupt our entire educational system. Like thousands of other G.I.s, I am looking forward to a college education after my discharge from the Army. More than anyone, I believe, we truly value the chance for self-improvement that a college offers. It would be a shame if we returned to the U.S. only to find piles of rubble where universities once stood.

SP/4 KARL F. MADEO U.S.A.

A.P.O., San Francisco

Sir: The youthful activists on our campuses are seeing through the hypocrisy of the juxtaposition of "higher learning" and death and war research. Their attack on the expansion of the military may finally bring a review of what this country stands for. If we spent as much time and money on human injustice as we do on war preparation, the blacks might not have to use guns, and students could use the university for its intended purposes. If the taxpayers refuse to support the universities, as you suggest [May 9], then a double loss will be incurred. First, education will be stifled. Second, an important source of protest against the ills we've all been made aware of will be shut off. Right now, the best tax bargain for my money is all that is spent for education at all levels.

WALTER F. SWANSON

Whitewater, Wis.

Sir: What kind of man is Cornell President James Perkins? He wants to negotiate when they spit at him, when he is kicked and robbed. Truly, this is obscene. Is there not a courageous man left in this country, somewhere? I hunger for the sight of a moral man, a man of integrity, principle and reason. But all we meet are squeaking sponges and hardened arteries. Capitulation is called negotiation; absence of all principle, reason. Irrational whim is youthful idealism, the hairy savage a student with commitment. But the professors and administrators, who have fed and reared the monster by compromise after compromise, make for a spectacle that is even more disgusting.

FLORIAN VON IMHOF, '69

University of Illinois

Chicago

Sir: Hurray for Cornell's James Perkins! If Mr. Perkins had been at Cambridge, Harvard would probably not have known violence and strikes. When will it be realized that the principle, "never budging under pressure," is often not worth the consequences of repression, which invariably only leads to more violence?

KATHLEEN WILCOX

Sao Paulo, Brazil

Sir: However desirable a department of black studies might be in a culturally chauvinistic sense, it is hard to see why it should be given priority over training for the professions. While a course in Jewish history and culture might have been personally edifying, I fail to see how it would have equipped me to discharge my responsibilities as a psychologist. I have done my share of griping over the obduracy of professors and the vacuity of courses, but I never challenged the options of the faculty. Always in mind was the awareness that I was on campus by qualification, not by inherent right. In short, I went to college to change myself and not the world. In doing so, I achieved freedom from ignorance and a modicum of knowledge. Maybe that was revolt too.

GEORGE LEVY

Canon City, Colo.

No Free Ride

Sir: The article on the Louis Harris poll regarding commitment [May 2] is terrifying, and should make many a friendly country run for cover. It is an invitation to Communist pressure throughout the world. Anyone who has experience in leadership knows that there is a price for leadership. Anyone who lives with the benefits of an affluent society should know that there is a price for affluence. There is really no free ride in life. We must be prepared to meet with force, if necessary, those who seek to take away our liberty and our advantages. We must continue to pray that they will not try to do it by physical aggression.

K. L. SHIRK JR.

Chairman ' Republican Committee of Lancaster County

Lancaster, Pa.

Sir: I would be most interested in learning which of the countries named in the TIME-Harris poll would, in fact, defend the U.S. or aid in some way if we were to have an attack from China or Russia?

HOLLY J. MEYER

Rockford, 111.

Judas Goat

Sir: Anent the nameless "Jewish leader" who angrily warned Secretary of State William Rogers, "Don't think you can get our support, Mr. Secretary, for any kind of imposed settlement now being cooked up [for the Middle East]" [May 9]: Just who designated this person as spokesman for the American Jewish community, whose support he dares threaten to withhold from the legally constituted representative of the American people charged with the conduct of our foreign relations?

European Jewry suffered the holocaust in intensified aggravation because of the chutzpah of just such self-appointed Ge-meinde Fuehrers. In fact, such self-anointed Jewish leaders "negotiated" countless numbers of (mis)represented Jews right into the crematoria.

This alleged spokesman speaks not for me nor for the several millions of other American Jews. The vast majority of the American Jewish community has not opted for "Jewish leadership" to represent them before our own American government officials.

As Americans, in the historic traditions of this country, we avow Israel as a sovereign power in the family of nations, which sovereignty therefore must safeguard its own national interest on behalf of its citizens. America, similarly as a sovereign power, must also freely do likewise, unfettered in its foreign policy by pressures from communal minorities of Arab or Israeli ethnic sympathies, or motivated by empathy with their respective coreligionists.

SAUL E. JOFTES

Former Director-General

Office of International Affairs B'nai B'rith

Lake Barcroft

Falls Church, Va.

Another Occupation

Sir: You say, "Except for Berlin, Okinawa stands as the last occupied territory of World War II" [May 9].

May I remind you of the Russian occupation of the southern half of Sakhalin Island (north of Japan) and the Kuril Islands (northeast of Japan)? These territories, formerly owned and populated by Japan, are now exclusively occupied by the Soviet Union. Japanese fishing boats that stray too close to these islands are often seized or fired upon. To the best of my knowledge, both areas are sealed off from normal tourist or business travelers.

And what about Russian troops still stationed in Hungary? Perhaps you could say Soviet divisions in East Germany, Poland or Czechoslovakia are part of the Warsaw Pact defense system--but Hungary is far removed from the East-West invasion routes, yet Soviet troops remain there unchallenged and unquestioned.

JOHN L AMOUR

Monroe, Mich.

Weight on the Scales

Sir: I would like to answer the critics of defense spending and ABM funding [May 2] with a quote from Vom Kriege by Karl von Clausewitz:

"Woe to the cabinet which, with a policy of half measures and a fettered military system, comes upon an adversary who, like the rude element [of war], knows no other law than that of his intrinsic strength. Every deficiency in activity and effort is then a weight on the scales in favor of the enemy. Then it is not so easy to change from the fencing posture into that of an athlete, and a slight blow is often sufficient to throw the whole to the ground."

T/SGT. JAMES J. HARKINS

U.S.A.F.

A.P.O., New York

Performance Rating

Sir: You have very aptly reported on the great loss the death of President Barrientos means to Bolivia [May 9].

I do take exception to your qualification of Bolivia's army as "ineffectual." If effectiveness is the capacity to perform specific tasks, it is well to remember that the Bolivian army successfully and speedily dealt with the guerrillas organized by the infamous Che Guevara, who was considered, together with Chairman Mao and General Giap, the supreme specialist in that kind of warfare. If the U.S. Army, with its fantastically superior might, had been proportionately as successful in dealing with the Communist threat in Southeast Asia, I am sure you wouldn't have thought of calling it ineffectual.

EDMOND LEMAITRE

Santiago, Chile

Numbers Game?

Sir: In the article "The Global Glut" [May 9], you say that "agricultural technology has shown that the Malthusian apocalypse of starvation can be avoided."

It is true that agricultural technology has created some local surplus in products, and possibly this technological boom is a temporary solution to worldwide starvation; but we are playing the numbers game. At the current rate of increase, the world population will double in the next 35 years. Even assuming that we can support unchecked population growth for the next 260 years (400 billion people), the idea of regimentation, loss of personal freedom and destruction of the natural environment is a ghastly prospect.

The only way to progress toward a solution of the starvation problem is to feed only people who can help themselves. Each time we rush to counteract a famine, kill disease-carrying mosquitoes or build hospitals in a backward country we aggravate their own problem.

RICHARD T. HAARD ] Assistant Professor of Biology

Western Washington State College

Bellingham, Wash.

Eye for an Eye

Sir: I have just read the unbelievable fantasy about the Cultural Mafia's study of Afro-American culture [May 9]. I am a student at Barnard College majoring in linguistics, and I am black. I have spent time in Nigeria, Ghana and Senegal in West Africa. I also have traveled the Caribbean and all parts of the U.S. I was positively revolted by the claims this group made about black laughter, black eating habits, aversion of eyes and more than anything else teaching ghetto students in incorrect language so they will "understand." Every individual I have seen in my life has his own unique laugh that has nothing to do with cultural background. There is no such thing as black eating habits. Eating habits of any particular family depend on occupation. Field workers who work sunup to sundown would keep a pot simmering on the stove so that they could dash in and grab a bite and dash back out to work again. But it is definitely a ritual among black people to sit down with their families and eat, and for children there are even punishments for being late to dinner.

Talking loudly has not got one thing to do with being black. People talk loudly because they want attention, and almost all children go through a loud-talking stage. Any large group together in public tends to talk loudly. Eye aversion is not a black trait either. The Cultural Mafia certainly must not have talked to any young black militants because they will definitely give you an eye for an eye --no pun intended. Eye rolling is too ridiculous to comment on.

But most important, if people are not taught in correct language, they will never know what is correct, and communication with the white world will be broken down forever.

(MRS.) BARBARA C. LADD

The Bronx

Let's Spike the Bike

Sir: I was particularly intrigued by the article that told of the Army's use of Hondas in Viet Nam [May 2]. It creates quite a paradox. I'm 20, and am wondering what my fellow students will do to the Honda makers to retaliate. Do you think that there will be boycotts of their products, or revolts on campuses when Honda recruiters come to ask would-be graduates to join their establishment? Just think, the new version of Dow chemicals: Honda motorcycles!

AL PACER

Chicago

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