Those Chicago Cops
Sir: Liberty and the Democratic Party died today on the streets of Chicago.
MR. AND MRS. MELVIN J. DAVID Encino, Calif.
Sir: The Gestapo has been reborn as blue-helmeted Chicago policemen.
PALMER B. RAWLEY JR. Albuquerque
Sir: The public beating of any man is a terrifying example of what must happen to individuals in the hands of the police. The glimpses of law and order we saw in Chicago must not be tolerated.
JAMES KANE Cleveland
Brutality and Hysteria
Sir: The invasion of Czechoslovakia [Aug. 30] further demonstrates the brutality and treachery of which the Soviet leaders are capable. We've been painfully aware of these traits for some time. What I had not realized was the state of mind of these men. They have sacrificed improved Soviet-U.S. relations, dealt the antiwar faction in the U.S. a severe blow, lessened the chances for a peaceful end to the Viet Nam war, and even blackened themselves in the eyes of other Communists, all to smash a growth of freedom that was in no way a threat to Russia's security. The invasion was conceived in panic and carried out in hysteria. The hope for peaceful coexistence rested in the good sense and rationality of the Soviet leaders, but men controlled by fear have neither.
NIKKI PATRICK Pittsburg, Kans.
Sir: I am a 20-year-old university student who watched with great hope and anticipation while a man I never had heard of, in a country never spoken of, built carefully, step by step, that intangible but priceless object—freedom. Then came the familiar rumbling of iron tanks. Bitterly, I look to my leaders to find them afraid of intervening, yet ever anxious to send more and more troops to a corner in Southeast Asia, where they care about neither Communism nor freedom. I turn to the United Nations and find them playing a game that they can never win. And most bitterly of all I turn to face the hippies, the beatniks and all the other dropouts who profess to be lost souls, wandering in search of something to believe in. Yet all the time that lost ideal has been shining brightly in front of them.
JOHN MILLER Huntington, W. Va.
Sir: Behold how quickly doth the bubble burst! Too bad there had to be a sacrificial lamb to point out the inevitable, but better Czechoslovakia now than us later. Conservatives are profoundly entitled to utter the loudest "We told you so" of the decade.
JOHN H. DREW Milton, Wis.
Sir: Senators McCarthy and McGovern state that our capacity to protest the events in Czechoslovakia has been weakened because of our involvement in Viet Nam. I suggest that besides withdrawing from Viet Nam, we could further strengthen our capacity to protest by withdrawing all U.S. forces from Europe and Asia. If our protests still prove to be ineffective in preventing more Czechoslovakias we could escalate our protesting capacity by unilateral disarmament.
A. SCHNORE Scotia, N.Y.
Sir: On a visit to Prague, an elderly man gave me the text of an anonymous old German song that he felt reflects the gallant spirit of his compatriots:
Thoughts are free
Who can guess them?
They fly past
Like evening shadows
No man can know them:
One thing is sure:
Thoughts are free.
I think what I will
And what rejoices me: