What's Wrong with the Country

Sir / In your answers to questions about Phase II [Dec. 20] you say that a 10% pay raise might be awarded to secretaries while a 1 % increase is given to cleaning women, as long as the raises do not add up to more than 5.5% for a whole company, department or labor union.

This is what is wrong with the country today: the idea that the small increase should go to the little people while the bigger increases should go to people who are already getting much more. The whole thing is unfair. Percentage increases are always unfair. What we have done over the years is to polarize the nation. We have divided people into the very well paid v. the poor, who can't buy anything because they don't have enough to spend. Then we wonder why business is poor and products are going begging at high prices the poor can't afford, and why they buy cheap, foreign-made products, leaving our own people out of work.

DON F. HILL

Hemet, Calif.

Sir / Many physicians, notably psychiatrists, are raising their fees despite the Phase II controls. This is grossly unfair, since the patient is placed in an untenable position. The minute you say to your therapist that you feel his price rise is unfair, he answers with a typical psychiatrist's remark like "What are your fantasies about this?" and he suggests that your objections are merely "resistance" to therapy.

The vision of bringing my psychiatrist before the Pay Board chills my spine.

NAME WITHHELD

Alexandria, Va.

Justice and Honor in Bangladesh?

Sir / One can recall the statement issued by the State Department upon the outbreak of the 1967 Arab-Israeli war, saying that it was "neutral in thought, word and deed." Perhaps one could rephrase this now, with regard to the India-Pakistan conflict [Dec. 20], as being "blundering in word, guilty in deed and innocent of thought." How many more such idiotic policies will it take before the rest of the world loses all remaining faith in the U.S. sense of justice and honor?

WILLIAM W. BURNS

Albany, Calif.

Sir / Isn't it wonderful that in the U.N. the Soviet Union has emerged as the champion of the people fighting for freedom from an oppressive government in East Pakistan?

Tell it to a Hungarian or a Czech!

WILLIAM P. SIMONS III

Atlanta

Sir / For most of my life I have heard it said that if more of our leaders were women, we would not have wars. It would appear that Indira Gandhi has cast grave doubts upon this theory, for this generation at least.

BOB WOODSIDE

Greenville, N.C.

Sir / As a refugee from the former province of East Pakistan, I would request the Bangladesh leaders to prevail upon their emotionally charged people to exercise the greatest restraint and sobriety. The people of the newly emerged state should pool their resources to maintain peace and discipline as a basis for economic rehabilitation and democratic growth, and not dissipate their energy in revenge. They should follow a path of "noble" revenge and prove themselves better than their persecutors. As a Bengali proverb says: "If the dog bites a man, the man does not bite the dog."

ABOU AHMAD

Warwood, W. Va.

Help for Kidney Patients

Sir / Your article on kidney dialysis [Dec. 20] mentioned nothing about the program being carried on by Veterans Administration hospitals all over the country.

I have been a patient on the artificial kidney for almost five years at the Manhattan V.A. Hospital, and I am very grateful for all the V.A.'s help in keeping me alive. For 4 years I was an outpatient at the hospital, commuting twice weekly to have my blood cleansed; recently, the V.A. trained my wife and me to operate the artificial kidney at home. They not only supplied me with a machine but also with a chaise longue, a medical cabinet and all the supplies needed to operate the artificial kidney.

GEORGE J. HUMMEL

Hasbrouck Heights, N.J.

Sir / If the need for the donation of kidneys and other transplantable organs were better publicized, a large portion of the dialysis problem and expense could be avoided. Individuals should make known to their families and physicians that they wish to donate any usable organs to a medical center at the time of their death.

MRS. LEONARD J. PERLOFF

Philadelphia

qedThe Uniform Anatomical Gift Act, permitting the donation of organs, including kidneys, by a simple declaration on a wallet card, has now been approved by all 50 states.

If I Were Pope

Sir / More voices should speak out against the murders and bombings in Northern Ireland [Dec. 27]. The Pope, the Irish cardinal, each bishop, priest and minister was ordained alter Christus (another Christ), and yet they do not act the way Christ would.

If I were the Pope today, I would go to Belfast, excommunicate known murderers (after conviction at a legal trial), denounce and remove each priest and bishop who did not go out to his flock and restore order. I would go into the pubs, homes and meeting places of all the people. I would hold an ecumenical service in each Christian church and knock on any door where I might bring peace.

Where are the good shepherds who would lay down their lives to save their sheep?

JOHN D. SULLIVAN

Yonkers, N.Y.

Rights of Age

Sir / It is high time to remember and acknowledge, as you did in your report on the White House Conference on Aging [Dec. 13], how much the elder citizens have done and toiled for the now middle-aged and younger citizens, during the first half of this century.

I am now 85 and a survivor of shell wounds at Chateau-Thierry in World War I. It is more than high time to restrain the excessive demands of the younger people. Some of the claims of youth may be quite right when ambition does not exceed the mark; but older people, too, have full rights to be heard, and should not be shunted aside.

ANDREW V. DUNCAN

Santiago, Chile

Challenger v. Charger

Sir / The Dodge Challenger was not, as TIME said, formerly the Charger [Dec. 13]. The Challenger was introduced in 1970 as a new line. The Charger, a personal-sized sporty car that does not compare with any of the others you show on your graph, was introduced in 1966, and is still in production after two major styling changes.

B.D. WHITELAW

Union, N.J.

Kent State Mothers Speak

Sir / May we, the mothers of the four killed at Kent State, express our horror at your conclusion that the dropping of 20 indictments by the State of Ohio heralds the passing of this tragedy "into history." We believe that this is a nation of laws, wherein violators, whoever they may be, are accountable to the people through our courts and juries of their peers. The dropping of indictments against students and others for offenses allegedly committed during the disturbances at Kent State does not alter in any way the fact that our children were killed by what Attorney General Mitchell called an "unnecessary, unwarranted, and inexcusable" use of force by the state.

It has become all too painfully clear to us that the lives of our sons and daughters are to be sacrificed on the altar of political expediency in a country posturing to the world as the citadel of equal justice for all. We can think of nothing more brutal than this cruel rejection of our children's Constitutional rights.

DORIS KRAUSE

SARAH SCHEUER

FLORENCE SCHROEDER

ELAINE MILLER

Thwarting Oscar

Sir / In your Dec. 20 story about Oscar, New York City's Porsche rip-off artist, you tell about his skill in changing auto serial numbers. It is almost impossible to alter an automobile serial number so skillfully as to escape detection (and modern cars have more than one serial number location). Also, it is very easy to spot a repainted car if you can look under the hood.

If the insurance companies would furnish lists of stolen cars to all gas stations and auto-repair shops and offer a substantial reward, these fellows who peer under hoods would recover the cars.

I'll bet that they wouldn't even start to work on the car without first checking to see if they had struck gold.

WILLIAM N. MCCARTHY

Harwich Port, Mass.

Sir/The Curtis code cutter, called a "key punch" in your story, is legitimately and widely used by locksmiths and auto-service men to replace lost keys for the convenience of the motoring public.

Its operation in the ignition depends on the availability of key-code reference numbers. In order to thwart thieves, car manufacturers have stopped putting reference numbers on locks in new cars. This simple and effective action does not hinder legitimate use cf the code cutter. Our product is not some kind of burglary device. It is the hand that guides the tool that makes the mischief.

MANNY SCHOR

President Curtis Industries, Inc.

Eastlake, Ohio

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