Incidence of Violence

Sir: By escalating the incidence of violence both at home and abroad, President Nixon has betrayed the expectations of the American people as egregiously as did his predecessor. As President of this great country, he has set an example of lawlessness and irresponsibility in both word and deed that cannot help exacerbating the existing divisions between men and nations. The pursuit of short-term political ends can no longer be permitted to interfere with progress toward the long-range objectives necessary for the preservation and improvement of our society.

DAVID T. ROY Chicago

Sir: I was taught that those who live by violence usually die by violence; but apparently the students nowadays are not taught that, or anything else. What do the students think the National Guard is called out for? To their way of thinking, if they think at all, it is all right for them to riot, throw stones, Molotov cocktails, and destroy what others have built; but it is not all right for police or soldiers to defend themselves.

The young people have not contributed anything to the well-being of their country. Instead, they seem to think it is all right to destroy anything they wish to, on the principle of a spoiled child pulling his toys to pieces simply because his parents won't buy him new ones.

Their heroes apparently are Che Guevara, Ho Chi Minh and the Viet Cong. To the young potheads, America and the Americans are always wrong, and the other guy is always right, especially if he is a Communist. If I could feel sorry for the younger generation, I would; for soon there will be no teachers, no doctors, no lawyers, no engineers, no merchants, no anything, except revolutionaries running in a thousand different directions, having mistaken license for liberty.

(MRS.) EILEEN R. ADLER APO New York

Sir: If we were to close down the universities, withdraw our troops from South Viet Nam leaving Southeast Asia to the Communists, and persuade the Establishment to shut up and stay away from their jobs, would that satisfy the dissident young? Chances are that within hours they would be protesting that the universities should be open, someone should stop the spread of Communism, and that the Establishment should get back to work.

Perhaps this reverse psychology would be worth a try. It often is successful with hostile, aggressive four-year-olds -according to Dr. Spock.

MARY D. CLARY Pasadena, Calif.

Sir: The reason that I came to Kent State University was for an education. And I'm getting one. Seeing those khaki-green tents and trucks on the football field, men carrying real M-1 rifles loaded with real ammunition, and then witnessing some of my fellow students bleeding and hysterical, left a far deeper impression within me than my most effective professor could have.

It was real. It was shocking. It was devastating. From it, I have observed that violent confrontation results only in impertinent deaths and unwarranted destruction. I feel that this is much too high a price to pay for any nebulous cause.

BERYL-ANNE H. TUFFYAS Kent, Ohio

Sir: In March 1770 a military unit took offense at being called names and being pelted with rocks and fired into a crowd of unarmed civilians. They called that the Boston Massacre. Then they started a revolution.

JOHN J. GUINIVEN, '71 Massachusetts Institute of Technology Cambridge

Sir: The young decry hypocrisy yet practice a brand all their own. Many talk peace while destroying and hating. They demand money for worthwhile domestic causes, but money needed elsewhere must be used to help straighten out lives ruined by mind-blowing, body-damaging drugs. They take up the ecological banner, and yet the Woodstock happening was an ecological nightmare. Some cry liberty for all and in the same breath laud the Viet Cong. Materialism is rejected, but as products of a materialistic society, they knowingly use and benefit from it daily. They want the war ended, but the type of protest used, I feel, has prolonged it. They think the older generation unyielding, but they won't budge from their position.

To rebuild, many say, you must first destroy. If the roof of my house leaks, I don't blow up the house, leaving my family homeless. I mend the roof. I long for a day when each person will try to figure out a real solution to a problem instead of a nonnegotiable demand.

PATRICIA M. WASBOTTEN Phoenix, Ariz.

Sir: Is it not paradoxical to watch these sincere and deeply concerned prophets of peace engage in so many acts of arson, vandalism and violence? I sometimes worry about my own generation.

GARY R. DOGGER Atlanta

Parents March

Sir: Linda Eldredge says: "And our parents watched their children go to this insanity and did not seem to mind. Even when we came back in boxes" [May 11].

Well, we mind. We mind very much about our three sons of military age, and everybody else's sons. We mind the haggard and frightened faces of the 19-and 20-year-olds in Viet Nam, which come into our homes every evening via the 6:30 news. We mind that we are not marching with Dr. Spock; we are the angry Establishment, the not-so-Silent Majority of mothers and fathers who mind that their sons are drafted, and for what? An honorable peace? Brush wars in Southeast Asia for the next 50 years? It is time that we parents marched also.

DR. and MRS. NATHAN SHLIM Portland, Ore.

Sir: So Linda Eldredge, 19, after five years of marching and demonstrating and some serious losses, you have not been able to force the world to accede to your demands for peace. After just five years, you have not been able to bring about that which others have been working toward for centuries. Thank goodness Lister, Pasteur and Salk didn't feel that way. What bloodbath would India have suffered had Gandhi turned from pacifism to violence after five years? If you had an ill or handicapped child, would you destroy doctors and hospitals because they could find no immediate cure?

Curing the ills of the world will take much longer than five years.

ANNE O'HARRA Boonton, N.J.

Epitaph Drear

Sir: America's interminable conflict in Southeast Asia [May 18] recalls Rudyard Kipling's lines about Asia:

It is not good for the Christian health to hustle the Aryan brown, For the Christian riles, and the Aryan smiles and he weareth the Christian down; And the end of the fight is a tombstone white with the name of the late deceased, And the epitaph drear: "A Fool lies here who tried to hustle the East."

FREDERIC A. MORITZ Taipei, Taiwan

Sir: After 200 years of espousing the principle of liberty, America is told by some of her eminent U.S. Senators that millions of free Asians are just not worth the trouble. If we wash our hands of Asia in this shrinking world, how easy it will be to wash our hands of Israel, West Berlin -anyone. Right on, America! All power to the people -just like it is on the other side of the Berlin Wall.

KENNETH J. ROP Arlington, Va.

Comparative Religion

Sir: Vice President Agnew's denunciation of those ministers who are sincerely attempting to make the Gospel relevant to today's tragedies and inhumanities indicates his incompetence to make judgments in the field of religion [May 11].

Perhaps if he had a better acquaintance with the history of religion and its institutions, he would know that the old-time religion has too often been a major cause of precisely the evils we find in the world today. The oldtime religion has usually been racist in character; it has often been blind to the cruelties of war, economic oppression, cultural deprivation.

The radical Christian of today is doing what Christ did -becoming involved with the poor, the dispossessed, the victims of injustice and arrogance.

EDWARD WING Chairman Department of Religion Millikin University Decatur, Ill.

How to Elect a President

Sir: Congratulations on an excellent analysis of the problems present in our Government's attempt to hammer out a reasonable procedure for electing a President [May 4]. The best procedure would be to do what the present proposal of Senator Sam Ervin suggests: get rid of the electors, keep the present distribution of electoral votes by states, certify states' votes automatically; if no candidate has a winning majority, turn the election over to Congress, with each Senator and Representative having one vote. Then, in later years, if we find that refinements are needed, they can be introduced after proper analysis and study.

JAMES A. MICHENER Pipersville, Pa.

The System or the Man?

Sir: Your story on Father Phil and Father Dan Berrigan [May 4] shows their deep love for their fellow man. Permit me to go one step beyond your statement that "both priests deeply distrust private property because of the greed that it provokes in humanity."

After almost ten years of living in a primitive society, I distrust communal property because of the greed and laziness it provokes in humanity.

Is it the system, or is it man who promotes greed? Which needs to be changed? Contrary to Father Dan's No Bars to Manhood, perhaps our problems stem from trying to localize the solutions before we have recognized the universal problem.

(THE REV.) DICK HUETER Lutheran Mission Bongu Madang, New Guinea

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