Letters: May 23, 1969

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The War Over Here

Sir: I am perplexed. One year ago the youth of America cried, "Peace!" "Don't let our boys die needlessly in Viet Nam!" "Make love, not war!" Today colleges are virtual battlegrounds. Either we are confronted by a generation of neurotics or we are permitting a few malcontents to disrupt our entire educational system. Like thousands of other G.I.s, I am looking forward to a college education after my discharge from the Army. More than anyone, I believe, we truly value the chance for self-improvement that a college offers. It would be a shame if we returned to the U.S. only to find piles of rubble where universities once stood.

SP/4 KARL F. MADEO U.S.A.

A.P.O., San Francisco

Sir: The youthful activists on our campuses are seeing through the hypocrisy of the juxtaposition of "higher learning" and death and war research. Their attack on the expansion of the military may finally bring a review of what this country stands for. If we spent as much time and money on human injustice as we do on war preparation, the blacks might not have to use guns, and students could use the university for its intended purposes. If the taxpayers refuse to support the universities, as you suggest [May 9], then a double loss will be incurred. First, education will be stifled. Second, an important source of protest against the ills we've all been made aware of will be shut off. Right now, the best tax bargain for my money is all that is spent for education at all levels.

WALTER F. SWANSON

Whitewater, Wis.

Sir: What kind of man is Cornell President James Perkins? He wants to negotiate when they spit at him, when he is kicked and robbed. Truly, this is obscene. Is there not a courageous man left in this country, somewhere? I hunger for the sight of a moral man, a man of integrity, principle and reason. But all we meet are squeaking sponges and hardened arteries. Capitulation is called negotiation; absence of all principle, reason. Irrational whim is youthful idealism, the hairy savage a student with commitment. But the professors and administrators, who have fed and reared the monster by compromise after compromise, make for a spectacle that is even more disgusting.

FLORIAN VON IMHOF, '69

University of Illinois

Chicago

Sir: Hurray for Cornell's James Perkins! If Mr. Perkins had been at Cambridge, Harvard would probably not have known violence and strikes. When will it be realized that the principle, "never budging under pressure," is often not worth the consequences of repression, which invariably only leads to more violence?

KATHLEEN WILCOX

Sao Paulo, Brazil