NEW YORK: So-Called Civilized

Well-tamed New Yorkers have long since learned that to stray beyond the floodlights in the city parks at night is to invite a holdup, a mugging or worse. But Columbia University Professor Karl H. Menges, 52, who has seen some wild places in his time, thought he was in a civilized country as he took his evening walk one night last week past Morningside Park, which borders the Columbia campus. Half a dozen teen-agers stopped him, asked for a match, then as he hesitated beat him over the head with a heavy board and knocked him bleeding to the ground. Professor Menges got to his feet, whacked out with his walking stick and sent them running.

Next morning he whacked out just as resoundingly at the city that lets such things happen. "I have traveled alone, unarmed, all through the Caucasus, Turkey, Russian Turkistan, Persia, occasionally among primitive tribes supposed to be hostile to white men," said Central Asian Language Specialist Menges. "I have also gone among bandits in such places and never been molested. But here in a so-called civilized city, in the evening on a lighted street near a large university, I am attacked by jungle beasts. I do not think such things should be tolerated."