Under the Umbrella
Sir: Re "The Great Missile Debate" [March 14]: A parched world groans with hunger, our cities broil in the hatreds of the dispossessed, and the Pentagon wants us all to sit under a multibillion-dollar ABM umbrella! And lo, the umbrella is full of holes! So is our national conscience and sense of stewardship.
To paraphrase the late President Kennedy, "Ask not what your country can do for your security, but what you can do for your country's sanity." The former is no longer even theoretically attainable—and that ought to be a liberating realization. The latter, God help us, may yet be salvaged, and our children's unguaranteeable future humanized.
DAVID S. WARREN Madison, N.J.
Sir: Be he black, red, white or yellow, Democrat, Republican or Socialist, every man, woman and child in these United States owes a solemn duty to the freedom he or she enjoys in this country to unequivocally back the critical conclusions of our President, who is ipso facto commander in chief in military matters. Virulent dissent asserted by politically minded doves in the U.S. Congress will do irreparable harm to the international strength of America, as it struggles for even a morsel of indication from North Viet Nam that an honorable peace is possible. Half a million men on Asian soil are bleeding and dying for a united America. We owe them nothing less than a united America.
Let God give the members of Congress the strength to place patriotism above selfish interest. Let the voice of freedom ring in America, as well as in the paddyfields of Viet Nam.
FRANK B. ELLIS Former Director of U.S. Office of Emergency Planning Pasadena, Calif.
Sir: Does anyone really believe that if Russia wanted to attack us she would start shooting from far-off Europe, giving us ample time to detect the attack and return it, as well as giving us a good opportunity to knock down her missiles?
Isn't it far more likely that she would sneak her missiles right up to our shores on her many hundreds of submarines, merchant ships, and fishing trawlers and knock us out before any $400 billion ABM system could detect the attack, much less block it?
So where's the likelihood of the 40-minute warning and the high missile trajectory that alone can give sense to the ABM expenditure?
ROBERT S. ALVAREZ Pleasant Hill, Calif.
Last Chapter
Sir: After reading your story on the fate of Poland's remaining Jews [March 14], I thank God for having successfully managed to get my parents and sister out of that country recently.
What is taking place in Poland today is the last tragic chapter in the noble history of Polish Jewry. From early in the 12th century, when German Jews sought new homes there because of persecution by the Crusaders, to the present day,' Jews have contributed much to the economic development and culture of that country. Their only reward has been a life of suffering at the hands of Poland's infamously anti-Semitic population.
ALEX RADEN Norwich, Conn.