The Gasoline War
To the Editors:
It's about time we Americans stopped fighting each other over gasoline [July 2] and joined hands against the slippery blackmailers to the east. If war hasn't been declared, I just did it. Somebody please give us a battle plan: rationing, electric cars or roller skates, I don't care. Blood is thicker than gasoline.
Hugh A. Larkin Jr., M.D. Seattle
Will the person with the solution to the energy crisis please stand up, show yourself and be elected President? It doesn't matter if it's Crane, Carter, Brown, Reagan, Connally, Bush, Baker, Nixon or Ford. The person with the answer can be elected President in 1980.
Gordon Wayman Benton, III.
It is not the gasoline crunch that frightens me but rather the lack of dignity and strength that Americans have been displaying as we face the problem.
Lisa Airey Monkton, Md.
My mother was right: "Deprive Americans of the use of their cars, and there will be a revolution." It's almost here. All I hear is talk about how to obtain more gasoline, not how to use less.
Steven G. Schon New York City
OPEC has declared war on the Western world. An infinitesimal percent of the earth's population is directing the destruction of the economic foundation of the world. Odd and even selling days are not the answer. The basic solution is that the OPEC cartel must be broken, and now.
David N. Rosner Miami
Let's face it. It's their oil, and the OPEC nations are going to do anything they want with it. In my opinion, most citizens waste too much time and effort complaining about the oil companies and the Department of Energy, and devote too little to conservation efforts.
Joanna Thayer San Francisco OPEC countries are "one crop" countries. Do you want them to give away their only crop or sell it cheap to a wasteful country like ours?
Anthony Cordova New York City Rising prices place developing countries in a vulnerable position for exploitation by Communist governments, who might point their fingers at the West and say, "See what their capitalist greed did to you?" No better foreign aid policy could be established than for the U.S. to develop alternative energy sources, thereby lowering the worldwide cost of energy.
Larry Joyce Seal Beach, Calif.
If I have to choose between gasoline at a higher price with no waiting and no bribes, or gasoline at 900 per gal. in one-to two-hour lines two to three times a week, I will choose the former.
Andrew MacDonald Fanwood, N.J.
Constant Reminder I have to say to you, Reader Bob Mauger [June 25]: If you really have to allude to World War II to talk about excessive oil waste and ask what country started that mess, I could as well ask you now what country it was that wasted a great deal of oil in a useless war more than 20 years after the one you mentioned. But it's not the past that counts, but the present and the future. And the fact is that fewer than 250 million Americans spend more than one-third of the world's oil resources.
Roland Pabst Schnaittach, West Germany Yes, They Are Necessary In answer to Lance Morrow's question, "Are Vacations Really Necessary?"
[June 25] -- they certainly are for some of us. They provide an opportunity for breaking through the small-town syn drome, with its inherent parochial and provincialisms.
There really is a big exciting world out there, and in a sense, the vacation of fers the only true frontier remaining for those who hear the beat of the drum as each summer approaches.
Melville Hopkins Espy, Pa.
Agony of the Boat People How insensitive and cruel you make the countries of Southeast Asia look when you report that they are re fusing to accept refugees and even expel them [July 2]. These countries are al ready overpopulated with citizens leading economically substandard lives. Why doesn't the U.S., the greatest and richest nation in the world, accept all of the refugees?
Horacio Severino Houston Why should the rest of the free world be forced to take in Vietnamese refugees when the Vietnamese government is making money from this human cargo? Where is human compassion?
William Lim Arawa, Papua New Guinea What the U.S. and other countries can do about the refugees is simple -- help them. And damn the bureaucracy!
Gene Pomiak Campbell, Calif.
Your picture of the Cambodian youth tied to the cross as a punishment for stealing food [June 25] is particularly moving during this International Year of the Child. I hope it moves us to work for the rights of these children.
(Mrs.) Loretta Cody Sea Girt, N.J.
Restoring the Voice In your article "Speaking Again" [June 25], you refer to an iceman who accidentally regained his voice when he plunged an ice pick into his throat. The Chicagoan was not an iceman but a patient of mine who was a shochet, or ritual slaughterer of kosher chicken. He used the ice pick heated red-hot because he thought it would bring his voice back, not to attempt suicide.
Astounded by the phenomenal voice restoration, I utilized an electric needle to effect the same result in a number of my laryngectomized patients, who subsequently were shown in the first medical talking movie made, which is now in the Smithsonian.
M. Reese Gunman, M.D.
Chicago Fraternal Union I am appalled at the way you pre judged the marriage of a brother and sister who had been separated for most of their lives [July 2]. With the exception of genetic irregularities in reproduction, which a vasectomy would prevent, marriage of consenting adults should be their personal affair.
Steven Hammer Northbrook, Ill.
The ancient prohibition against brother-sister marriages arose from ob servation of what "generally" happens to the offspring when, the genetic pool is lim ited by close inbreeding. Since folk observations tend to mark and remember the bad rather than the good, the myth of the inevitability of the "imbecile child" took root.
Cleopatra was no imbecile child, even though she was reputed to have been the 14th generation of progeny of brother-sister marriages.
Jean H. Harrison Columbia, S.C.
If the children of Adam and Eve were permitted to do it, why couldn't Victoria and her brother? After all. God didn't create two Adams and two Eves.
Rita Wang Donato Mons, Belgium
Healers and the Holocaust
On reading "Doctors of the Death Camps" [June 25], I am reminded of how we condone in the name of science the torture and murder of thousands of monkeys, rats, etc.. every year and never blink an eye.
Mary Henderson Mission, Kans.
It is very simple to convince oneself that it is O.K. to cause suffering and death in other species, other races, other ethnic ;roups, or early periods of gestation. Every individual seems to draw the distinctions in his own mind of who belongs in the protected group and who is in the O.K.-for-abuse (Out) group.
Sue Hoell Missoula, Mom.
I realize the Nazis thought of Jews as being somewhat less than human, but the atrocities committed in the Holocaust cannot be easily rationalized away. They show the depravity possible in a particular political system and should 'be a constant reminder to us that under certain circumstances, we are all capable of the most heinous of crimes.
Be a Chigos San Mateo, Calif.
Every nation has thousands of people with more or less hidden sadistic instincts. They are eagerly used by various dictators (Hitler's Gestapo, Stalin's NKVD, the Shah's SAVAK, Pinochet's DINA, etc.) and carry out their new duties with sadistic pleasure. Some of them may happen to be M.D.s.
Aleksander Kreglewski College Station, Texas
The Duke's Legend Lives On
Recent travels have shown me that John Wayne's popularity is global [June 25]. In Australia, a farmer asks when the next John Wayne film will come out. In Burma, the Duke's picture hangs in a corner restaurant. An Afghani shop owner, addressing my question of how life has changed under the new pro-Soviet regime, replies that the John Wayne movies have gone. In eastern Turkey, when I tell a nomad I am from America, he reaches to his side in a mock draw and with a big grin exclaims. "John Wayne!" Now. back in the U.S.. a South African tourist asks me if I know that John Wayne is dead. He heard the news from a Frenchman.
Charles W. Millet, Si. Louis
In All Haste
I greatly enjoyed your article on procrastination [June 10. 1974]. It was a fine in-depth analysis of a problem we Americans must learn to deal with. I was going to write you somewhat earlier, but I have been extremely busy of late.
Peter Nonacs Louisville
TIME is pleased to print Reader Nonacs' tardy comments, which reached us a few weeks ago.
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