Letters: Apr. 5, 1968

Blazes on the Trail

Sir: Senator Eugene McCarthy [March 22] has brought back the virtue Hope to the American political scene. Regrettably, the Senator's antiwar campaign is also based on hope, not reality. The Senator hopes that if we stop the bombing there will be peace—as if events had not cast even the slightest discredit upon such fatuous wishing. Until the Communists show an interest in a just peace that does not involve simple N.L.F. takeover, a bombing halt would be merely a quixotic exercise in futility.

JEFFREY LAURENTI, 71

Harvard College Cambridge, Mass.

Sir: It's in the air! You can smell it! The mood of the country has shifted toward a real abhorrence of our involvement in Viet Nam. Should McCarthy or Kennedy unseat Johnson, many of us Republicans will go to the polls to cast a resounding vote for the peace candidate. MARY C. SUNDBLOM Evanston, Ill.

Sir: What McCarthy has done already is fantastic: to mobilize formerly desperate college students and give them the one thing that has alienated them from society for so long—namely, faith in the American democratic process, hope from despair. Eugene McCarthy can do the same for the country if we support him. JOHN WOODWARD

Northport, N.Y.

Sir: I think McCarthy is full of mashed potatoes. I'm sticking with the older generation and with L.B.J.

JEROLD JEFFE, '71 U.C.L.A.

Inglewood, Calif.

Sir-Senator McCarthy offers some parallels with Barry Goldwater: he presents the politics of honesty and morality. But unlike the Senator from Arizona, McCarthy's intelligence gives vision to his honesty and takes the rasping edge of self-righteousness off his morality. He is a true successor to Adlai Stevenson.

ROBERT E. WOOD Associate Professor

Saint Joseph's College

Rensselaer, Ind.

Sir: Senator Kennedy's offer to save the nation from disaster amused me for its consummate conceit, disturbed me because his proposals are nothing more than an offer of surrender to Hanoi and Communism. Perhaps the Senator would do well to curtail his efforts to embarrass our President and spend some time studying contemporary history, vis a vis what results from a freely elected government's invitation to the local Communist party to join a coalition government. It is unfortunate that this very minor talent is so totally blinded by personal ambition.

CHRISTOPHER L. HENRIKSON JR. Chief Yeoman, U.S.N. A.P.O., San Francisco

Sir: Robert Kennedy offers us not only the pride of promise now but the promise of pride in the future.

DANIEL I. GOLDSTEIN

Syracuse

Sir: How awful to imagine that the flagrant, repeated opportunism of Robert Kennedy may be rewarded with the Democratic nomination. How can a nation of people searching for a rebirth of an idealism we once knew briefly believe, even momentarily, in a man who waits for someone else to test the bridge before walking across? It is cruel and tragic that McCarthy, a man of proven moral and intellectual values, a man who can and did stand firm in the face of possible disaster, may be defeated by the so-called magic of the Kennedy name and the synthetic charm of young Mr. Kennedy's smile. One wonders whom and what R.F.K. will be willing to sell out next.

BARBARA HARRISON