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Sir: The U.S.S. Scorpion tragedy [June 7] will certainly bring about a plethora of conjectures, investigations, proposals, charges and defenses. I fail to comprehend why there cannot be installed on the exterior of all submarines a relatively unsophisticated detection system that would automatically release and float to the surface if some function were not performed periodically within the submarine. The system might include such devices as moored and unmoored floats, dye markers, automatic radio transmitters, gauges indicating the depth at the point of release, and some equivalent of an aircraft flight recorder. Such devices might enable a timely rescue to be made, facilitate search efforts and provide invaluable answers to otherwise unanswerable questions.
ALAN J. PREIS
Atlantic City, NJ.
Progress v. Stagnation
Sir: The notion that many dissenters ignore history [May 31] is rather incredible in view of the fact that dissent is often the result of history and that pacifism is the logical result of the cold war's reality. The argument that if dissenters "only understood how much conditions have improved since the Great Depression, they would be less dyspeptic today" is tantamount to saying that they would also be less "dyspeptic" in understanding how much conditions have changed since the Boston Tea Party or Attila's rape of Europe. C'mon fellows, you surely know that progress is no excuse for stagnation.
PAUL F. MILLER
Niagara Falls
Anarchy Defended
Sir: Few anarchists [May 24] want purposeless disorder; rather, order without control is their aim. This is essentially similar to Lenin's hopes for Communism: that the dictatorship of the proletariat would gradually fade away, leaving an ordered but not oppressed people. Democratic capitalists also envision that order without control will result from their rule, given universal education and moral responsibility. Traditional anarchism has believed that the first step is to eliminate control rather than to achieve order, showing a different value orientation. Obviously, both Communism and democratic capitalism have devoted such energy to industrial and national growth, which pace could be accelerated by control, that they let the vision drift to barely a theoretical wish. This dichotomy of means and ends has led college students both to disillusionment and to worldwide action reawakening the desire for freedom. They now serve as a natural and important spur to end the negligence and forgetfulness of established government, reminding it that its goal is to work itself out of business as quickly as possible.
STEWARD K. EASTMAN
Zenoian Anarchist Party
Sarasota, Fla.