(3 of 4)
Any communal enterprise requires work, discipline and ideology. American students tend to refuse the first two (of course, the Protestant ethic is dead) and cannot understand the third. Rebellion becomes non-cerebral, sensate, lacking the ideal of the continental student. Everybody talks at once, tries to épater la bourgeoisie with obscenities and refuses "work" courses, where reading replaces talk off the tops of many heads. McLuhan says we're postliterate anyway, so why read and write? Even hippiedom is huckstered. In short, white liberals are too busy feeling and emoting to change much of anything. Even their rebellious life styles feed the affluent pop consumer culture. Perhaps the blacks, being hungrier, can discipline themselves a bit better and do us all some good.
ANDREW R. SISSON Henniker, N.H.
Faith Restored
Sir: I read your article about Geel and its mental asylum [March 14] with great interest. I was in custody of the asylum at the age of two in 1938 and placed with a foster family in Geel. When Germany overran Belgium, I was forced to hide. A few months later, my younger sister joined the same household. Though the whole town knew of our Jewish origin, we lived through the entire war years without any harm, at the constant risk of many peo ple's lives. Never again have I known such love and care.
When I read of all the inhumanity that exists today, I need the knowledge of Geel and its compassionate citizens to restore my faith in mankind.
ROBERT A. Kiss Manhattan
Sir: Your story recalls an incident that occurred during my visit there eight years ago. Late one afternoon, I saw a poster announcing that the film to be shown that night was Psycho—Alfred Hitchcock's shockingly violent story of a maniacal killer. I envisioned the awful effects on Geel's paranoids and schizophrenics who dutifully attended the weekly shows.
I mounted my bicycle and pedaled rapidly along the cobblestone streets to alert Dr. Hadelin Rademaekers, the medical director. The 74-year-old psychiatrist smiled, patted my arm and told me not to worry. "My malades are not so sick they cannot distinguish between a mere film and reality," he assured me. Still worried, I hung around outside the theater that night. Finally, the people emerged—laughing and giggling as though they had seen a comedy. The old gent was right: his sick ones were too sane to be fooled by Hollywood's make-believe.
ROLAND H. BERG Science and Medicine Editor Look Magazine Manhattan
Nursery School
Sir: In your article "The Wild Flowers of Thought" [March 14], you mention a Russian proverb that according to you runs like this: "With seven nurses, the child goes blind." Obviously you had in mind the following Russian proverb:
Y C6MM HHH6K IJMTfl 663 TJiasy .
It can indeed be literally translated as "With seven nurses the child has no eye." However, it does not mean at all that the child in question goes blind, even in one eye. Rather it simply indicates that the child is without proper supervision, since no nurse keeps an eye on him, relying in that respect on other nurses.
WALTER BOND Syracuse, N.Y.
As Ye Sow ...