Letters: Feb. 26, 1965

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Vietnam's New Phase

Sir: General Westmoreland [Cover, Feb. 19] is a soldier's soldier. Give him the 82nd and 101st Airborne Divisions and you'll see an end to this nonsense. HARRY W. ROSENTHAL Captain, Army of the U.S. (ret.) Millburn, N.J.

Sir: I was encouraged to hear on a shortwave broadcast that the U.S. had retaliated for a Viet Cong attack. However, the rest of the day the Voice of America appeared to be making excuses and apologies. Do we have to beg pardon every time we take action? Are the Viet Cong the enemy or not? Let's stop kidding ourselves, because we are not fooling anyone else!

CHARLES R. KAMM Lima, Peru

Sir: I am sorry to hear that some of my countrymen have been U.S.-embassy-demonstrating. What these people, along with many others in the world, fail to realize is that Viet Nam is not merely a local civil war, but a particularly violent symptom of the worldwide fight against Communism.

W.F.C. TAYLOR Christchurch, N.Z.

Sir: The American boys in Viet Nam are fighting not to protect a duly constituted and popular government from outside aggression, but on the side of a hated minority in a civil war.

NANCY E. FEDERMAN Waltham, Mass.

Sir: The eagle in the air and the whale in the sea cannot conquer the elephant in the jungle. Our overwhelming air and naval supremacy, even our bomb, cannot prevail over China's 700 million people. China warns it will not sit idly by if we attack, and made good a similar threat in Korea in 1952. Must we risk World War ITI to settle a pint-sized civil war in a feudal enclave 7,000 miles away?

TAYLOR ADAMS New York City

Sir: Prior to November, anyone who advocated bombing North Viet Nam was labeled "impulsive," "trigger-happy," "living in the 18th century," or "warmonger"; now it's called statesmanship.

JON LUNDGREN

Milwaukee

Sir: R. M. Chapin Jr.'s map of escalation in Viet Nam explains many things not made clear from news reports—especially how Viet Cong troops were in a position to attack our base at Pleiku.

DAVID W. FLUKE Sussex, N.J.

Sir: Your cover picture of General Westmoreland makes him look like an ostrich.

JEAN HALLIBURTON Greenville, S.C.

Profits & Motives

Sir: Your brilliant story on Libermanism [Cover, Feb. 12] ought to disabuse many Americans of the pleasant dream that use of a profit system for state enterprises puts the Soviet Union on the road toward a free society. The Russians adopted this technique to beat us at our own game. It will not make them free-enterprisers or lead to lasting greater freedom for the individual. The seeming decentralization of decision making will not last—as you correctly quoted me and some unnamed State Department experts as saying.

ROGER A. FREEMAN The Hoover Institution on War, Revolution and Peace Stanford, Calif.

Sir: Creeping Capitalism?

JOHN CHARLES POOL Boulder, Colo.

Safe Riding