Letters: Dec. 22, 1967

(4 of 4)

(MRS.) CAROLYN AMBROSE

Westbury, N.Y.

Sir: I don't think TIME should even have a Man of the Year for 1967. The state of the world shouldn't really be blamed on one man, should it?

PEGGY MCGREEVY, '71 reighton University Omaha

To the C.O.R.

Sir: While serving in the Army as a medical officer, I was assigned to Kien Tuong

Provincial Hospital. I met with several of the members of the Committee of Responsibility who toured our hospital in search of children who could not be treated in these "woefully inadequate hospitals." Let me say that any children with congenital defects, of which there are many more than war injuries, any non-war-injured, and any war-injured children above 14, such as one 15-year-old boy blinded and with both hands amputated because he inadvertently lifted a mine, could "not be considered" by the committee. Such selection of patients shows sheer hypocrisy to me: a truly humanitarian group would not "select" one patient and ignore another. Why must the selection be limited only to those with war injuries, which, I may add, in our province and, I suspect, in other provinces as well, were caused by mines set up by the V.C. in nearly 90% of the cases. The committee's feelings of humanitarianism to me are a shield for get-out-of-Viet-Nam-at-any-cost propaganda.

Rather than bring the children and their families to the U.S., wouldn't it make more sense to set up a modern semi-sophisticated adjunct to the already present Saigon Medical School, where we presently have volunteer U.S. physicians, coordinated through the A.M.A., teaching at regular intervals? If there is to be a selection of only 30 patients a month as stated, how much easier and what a tremendously needed benefit to the Vietnamese physicians and medical students in Saigon it would be if such facilities were located in their native land.

CHARLES J. EGGERSTEDT, M.D. Ventura, Calif.

"Buddha America"

Sir: Deo gratias for your article on Cardinal Spellman [Dec. 8]. Perhaps now people will realize that it is men like Cardinal Spellman who are representative of the Roman Catholic priesthood, not men like Groppi and Kavanaugh.

MARY GORMAN Chicago

Sir: On a flight to Tokyo a couple of years ago, a Japanese passenger tried to make conversation. He spoke no English and communication was limited. All of a sudden a man stood up in front and the Japanese man proudly showed his knowledge of people by pointing to the man and saying: "Buddha, America." It was the late Cardinal Spellman, on his way to visit our boys in Korea and Viet Nam, as he did every year. Ever since, he remains in my memory as the Buddha, U.S.A.

(MRS.) AVA BROWNLEY Chicago