Letters: May 31, 1968

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Campaign Posters

Sir: It seems fitting that you should have Robert Kennedy as your cover subject [May 24] one week following your analysis of poverty in America. Senator Kennedy is a man who has not sought to ignore the poor but rather to give them new hope. He has done this through identification with minorities. As the one candidate to be accepted completely by Negroes, he best offers the solution to America's most distressing domestic problems—racial unrest and urban decay.

GEORGE M. ELLIOTT

Monrovia, Calif.

Sir: Hubert Humphrey first proposed or was largely responsible for the passage of important progressive programs that are now part of our way of life. They include Medicare, Food for Peace, the Peace Corps, the Disarmament Agency, the Job Corps, aid to college students, and key advances in civil rights. Kennedy has pioneered no single successful advance. He now tells us we must "move this nation in a different direction." But exhortations do not make change. Although these two candidates have essentially similar progressive views, only one has shown the ingenuity and political competence to bring about positive change. Humphrey will never stand for the status quo.

FRANK P. DIPRIMA

Plainfield, NJ.

Sir: Humphrey's giddy "happy" politics is superficial and disgusting. Eugene McCarthy's attempt is gallant but impractical. Kennedy seems to be the only Democratic candidate who has heard the nation's heartbeat, eloquently expressed its melancholy, and injected a note of hope tempered with pragmatic realism.

STEVE SAVAGE

Nashville, Tenn.

Sir: If the Governor of Indiana had recalled his Kipling, he might have paraphrased about Bobby:

Some fools there were

And they made their prayer

To two million bucks

And a hank of hair.

C. W. TREICHLER

Glenside, Pa.

Colts on the Campus

Sir: Youth is fulminating all over the landscape, in walkouts, sit-ins, and other forms of exhibitionism. Seventy-five years ago, I inspired a walkout and was temporarily suspended. There has been no psychological change in youth in these 75 years. I know—I have lived with them. The colt in the pasture sometimes kicks a hole in the fence. He will probably mature into a very fine horse. If he is to be trained it sometimes requires a tight rein and sometimes a flip of the whip on the buttocks. Most of these youngsters of ours will mature into substantial citizens and will add much to the social order of their day. But one thing they must learn now—that the frustration of the law means tyranny.

ERNEST W. TOWNE

Wollaston, Mass.

Sir: I was a part of the "silent generation," stuttering in apathy with signs of decadence all around campus and submissive suffering on the faces of my fellow students. We shook our heads, walked away, and paid our dues for four years. But these student activists are getting things done—congratulations.

PAUL KACER

Moline, Ill.

Price of Poverty