Israel Stands Alone
Sir / As the events in Austria and those of Saturday, Oct. 6, clearly show, for the Jew there are no allies. We stand alone.
SARA PTASCHNIK
New York City
Sir / There can be no surrender or compromise with Arab oil. We cannot, dare not, become an Arab lackey licking the oil off their feet.
The security of a strong Israel is vital to our own security and way of life. We must have the clear vision and courage to understand this fact and pursue it.
HERMAN SINNET
New York City
Sir / How easy it is to submit to blackmail when you give away the rights of other people! I nominate Bruno Kreisky for Poltroon of the Year.
CHARLES JEFFERSON
San Antonio
Sir / It took just two Arabs to make Austria surrender.
Let us all cheer the valor and glory of this courageous little country!
JOSEPH R. ABRAHAMSON, M.D.
La Jolla, Calif.
Outdoor Pruitt-lgoes
Sir / In your special section, "The Land Boom" [Oct. 1], you show the usual suffocating arrogance of land planning's tyrannical advocates who decide what is good for the rest of us.
Cluster housing should not be the rule. It makes a rural slum, bringing the evils of noise and crowding. Man needs space, privacy, a territory. All that open space is no one's land, and so it goes to hell and is wasted. Meantime, back at the cluster, no one has anything worth a dime—no place for pets or horses or a garden, no fence, nothing but a fancy, outdoor Pruitt-Igoe.
The only reason to buy land is to keep your neighbor and his noise and nose at a distance, and to keep you off his back in turn. Better ten people with an acre each than ten people sharing ten acres. I would not give you cave-dwelling slaves in New York 5¢ for the best cluster house ever built. It is a developmental inferno.
RITA ATKINS
Professor
Shimer College
Mount Carroll, Ill.
Sir / One begins to appreciate that Henry George was quite right—a hundred years ago—in advocating a 100% tax on profits on land transactions.
EUGENE V. KOSSO
Reno
Sir / In justifiably lambasting unscrupulous developers, you failed to point out that many organizations are approaching the problems with genuine attention to environmental and ecological factors.
You completely negate any good intentions for those who seek to preserve local control of growth. It is totally unrealistic to expect the same limitations that must be placed on areas of large populations to be applicable to smaller communities. Contrary to your insinuations, those of us who are active in local planning are not all bigots or insensitive profiteers. In fact, it is often the socially aware developer who spearheads local planning efforts in a sincere desire to see that our natural resources are protected.
ROBERT T. COLGAN
Executive Vice President
Colorado Land & Cattle Company
Durango, Colo.
Sir / I did something of a double take on reading that "land, as a physical quantity, seems almost changeless, altering shape only after aeons."