Escalating in Viet Nam

Sir / President Nixon's resumption of large-scale bombing of North Viet Nam is the appropriate answer to that country's enhanced aggression against South Viet Nam [April 17]. That an aggressor army, equipped lavishly with the most deadly implements of war, should be allowed to ravage its neighbors while its own homeland remains exempt is ridiculous.

And let the Soviet Union refrain from fueling strife throughout the world if it is genuinely desirous of reaching a state of accord with the U.S.

EUGENE S. COOPER

Los Angeles

Sir / Escalating the war at this time is only one more arrogant act on the part of a corrupt Administration.

Thank God the time is near at hand when we can show our bullet-happy President the power of a ballot.

(MRS.) LOURENE CRIDDLE

Bellevue, Wash.

Sir / Three cheers for President Nixon for having the political courage to do what he feels is right in Viet Nam! I hope the American people realize the North Vietnamese are pulling a cheap political trick. They hope that we are gullible enough to elect a candidate who pledges total withdrawal, thereby leaving South Viet Nam open for immediate Communist takeover.

VIRGINIA MELHORN WELESKI

Newark, Del.

Sir / As an Italian, as a longtime war correspondent in Viet Nam, as the author of a book on the Viet Nam War, I have to answer the sort of judgment made by the unnamed Rand Corp. analyst who said that the South could hold out against the North Vietnamese "... unless the North Vietnamese are all Prussians and the South Vietnamese are all Italians."

I assume that he refers to the fact that the Italian soldiers fought with total lack of enthusiasm during the second World War and particularly in its last phase. Yes, indeed they did. They showed the same lack of enthusiasm that the American soldiers have shown in Viet Nam. Many times, while following your G.I.s in combat, I have had the impression that I was seeing Italians and not Americans. Do you know why? Because both those Italians and those Americans were fighting a war they did not believe in, a war they were ashamed of.

ORIANA FALLACI

Europeo Magazine

Milan, Italy

Sir / So, American fighter-bomber crews felt that they were doing something really significant in the Viet Nam War when the massive Communist offensive provided them with an actual view of the men they were destroying. The real significance lies in the fact that the U.S. has yet to come out of its own cloud cover and realize clearly the human toll we are exacting in Viet Nam.

DANIEL E. BIRNEL

Seattle

What It Means To Be Jewish

Sir / It was very flattering to be included in your story on the Jews [April 10] with a direct quote, but when I wrote that it is not membership in a synagogue that ties a Jew to Judaism, I was not underrating the Jewish religion.

I was making the point that in Jewish religion, it is not membership in a synagogue that defines the religious affiliation or originates it or exhausts it. Jewish religion and Jewish peoplehood are inseparable. The synagogue is merely one of the agencies of the Jewish community. Jewish identity is gained at birth.

Most Jewish religion is practiced outside of the synagogue, even though the synagogue is its most conspicuous external form, especially in America.

JACOB CHINITZ

Jerusalem

Sir / Thanks to your article on what it means to be Jewish, my long search for an identity is at an end.

I am a quasireligious, nationalistically oriented, culturally inclined, existentialist-leaning, Hasidim-admiring, gastronomical, Yiddish-speaking American Jew.

As we say ethnically, bleib t gezunt.

PAUL BOTZMAN

Schenectady, N.Y.

Sir / For me, Father Berrigan is Jewish, Kissinger is not.

SAM WAKS

Los Angeles

Sir / Your article on Jews was both interesting and informative, but it troubles me that you did not mention more about anti-Semitism in America today. Every Jew has to deal with some form of anti-Semitism almost every day of his life.

Only a year and a half ago I nearly lost my job because of my refusal to work on Rosh Hashana, after I had explained in depth about the holiday and why I could not work.

The anti-Semitism that I see every day in my dealings with non-Jews is as unhealthy for the American people as it is painful to me.

PAULA SWENSON ROSENBERG

Holyoke, Mass.

Nay Poisoning

Sir / In your story on James Keogh's book, President Nixon and the Press [April 17], you say: "If the press has weakened public confidence, the best tonic is not to cry 'Vulture!' but to exert strong, wise leadership that proves the naysayers wrong." Fine, except that any strong, wise leadership will not be fairly reported by professional naysayers. Do you suppose my weakened confidence in my Government is a sign of nay poisoning?

W.O. ENDICOTT

Fair Oaks, Calif.

Sir / You say that "strong, wise leadership" would fend off unfair treatment of President Nixon by the press. I submit that it is absolutely impossible to reach any definition of such leadership. No matter what Mr. Nixon does or does not do, I will bet you that the intellectuals who write journalism in this nation will never cease to distort and vilify Richard Nixon. They will never forgive him for what he is --careful, conservative and devoted to a kind of simple uncomplicated Americanism.

HORACE SCHWARTZ

San Francisco

Sir / James Keogh accuses newsmen of telling blacks that they have an enemy in the White House. But blacks don't need help to make this discovery. The President made a special TV appearance in an attempt to set the clock back on integration efforts by proposing a busing moratorium. He is not going to let an ex-pugilist from Alabama rob him of the Archie Bunker vote if it can be prevented.

T.M. BENSON

Colorado Springs, Colo.

Needed Now

Sir /I realize that Adam Clayton Powell Jr. was indeed "The Playboy Politician" [April 17]. His life-style has been known to the public for practically all of his years of political service. Yet I find it inconceivable that anyone could say that Mr. Powell has become an embarrassment to any cause he ever fought for.

We needed him, we need him now, as we do Dr. Martin L. King Jr., Senator Robert Kennedy, President John Kennedy and all of America's outstanding leaders who have in some way or another been snatched from us.

GLORIA JACKSON

Baltimore

Pregnancy Puffs

Sir / The Pregnancy Puff [April 17] represents a threat that chivalry, one of our most glorious institutions, will finally die. The woman who is truly pregnant will be the one who suffers; when she is forced to stand on a crowded bus, then the makers of the Puff will have gotten what they have been asking for.

ALAN RICH Los Angeles

Sir / May the "funny secret" be aborted in its first weeks.

MARY JANE KARP

Syracuse

Mafia Chic

Sir / One wonders about the psychology underlying the phenomenon of "Mafia chic" [April 17]. What is it about the gangster Joey Gallo that appeals to people like Actress Joan Hackett and Author Marta Curro? Are they titillated by the company of violent and dangerous men? Would they find such men "absolutely charming" and "fascinating" if they were to witness firsthand a gangland slaying?

CHARLES CUMMINGS

Omaha

Sir / I introduced Joey Gallo (and hundreds of others) to authors like Camus and Sartre when I was education supervisor at Attica state prison. Like Joan Hackett and Jerry Orbach I too can believe that "something happened to him" when he "read and studied." For lack of a better term we called it part of the "rehabilitation" program.

Whether Joey was "playacting" or "life-acting" is a question most of us have to answer for ourselves about ourselves. In these times of crisis, condemnation and soul-searching in penology, I ask whether we have been doing an altogether poor job.

CHARLES P. KINSELLA

Education Director

Masten Park

Buffalo Rehabilitation Center

How Many Mistakes?

Sir / Personally, I congratulate the California social welfare board for its proposal that a woman who bears a third illegitimate child should be required to hand the child over to the state [April 10].

You can make a mistake once, even twice --but three or more times? Besides, it is certainly a lot better for the child to have a chance for adoption into some kind of normal environment. Also, it makes better economic sense to offer a child for adoption than it does to maintain him or her at a subsistence level on welfare money.

The illegitimate child is not being attacked --the child is finally being given a break.

JUDITH PRATHER

Cincinnati

Sir / First it was surplus chickens; now it is surplus babies. May I remind the barbarians on the California social welfare board that we no longer live in the days of Herod the King?

Why don't they do something about the wayward fathers of illegitimate children? Or are they waiting for him who hath not sinned to make the first proposal?

SARA L. SMITH

Harveys Lake, Pa.

Sir /I was nauseated but not particularly surprised by the California social welfare board's proposals for reducing illegitimacy. As an unmarried mother (working full time at the local social services department, no less), I am well aware of the hypocrisy that uses the unwed mother as a scapegoat for the welfare mess.

Better solutions would be to allow an unmarried mother to remain in school or on the job as long as possible and to return as soon as she can; to crack down on non-suppport-paying fathers; either to program schoolgirls to be future breadwinners or to program boys to be responsible.

ANN GEBHARD

Lansing, Mich.

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