Backsliders

Sir: Thank you, thank you, thank you for "America the Inefficient" [March 23]. I am rushing a complimentary copy to my contractor, who managed to install five large glass sliding doors to slide the wrong way. We have one of those Monday cars too.

MRS. WILLIAM BRAUNAGEL Honolulu

Sir: What do you mean by inefficiency in America? We had better label what you described ethical irresponsibility. You also report a U.S. Senator taking money on the side to represent a special-interest group, farms destroying food when we have hungry people, and now a Senator proclaims that we need to fill a Supreme Court vacancy with a judge who will render justice to the mediocre. We are in serious trouble when we must label our greed and selfish lust for power as mere inefficiencies.

R. L. WHITENER Hinsdale, Ill.

Sir: Your reference to Murphy's Law touches on only part of that ancient Irish potentate's laws. Tradition has it that Finn Cool Murphy was the prosperous sovereign of a happy people. He had charm, deep wisdom, was cultured and a poet. His set of the laws of life refer with circularity to nothing, everything and anything. They are: 1) nothing is as easy as it looks; 2) everything takes longer than you think it will; and 3) if anything can go wrong, it will.

DANIEL C. MCCARTHY Manhattan

Sir: The Bay Area Rapid Transit project itself can hardly suffer from the publication of your cover article, but your readers can --if they are inefficiently informed.

It would be tragic if the untrue impression were formed that construction of the 75-mile BART network is not turning out well. In design it will be even better than originally planned. Admittedly, earlier delays were experienced in acquiring the necessary agreements from all official parties, and by additional cost inflation problems (experienced by everyone).

But the marvel is that a project of this magnitude could be accomplished at all by a metropolitan region of so many communities and separate governmental entities. Yet our transit cars are now in production, and we are due to start initial passenger service next year. The entire transit system will be completed in mid-1972, only a year behind the original schedule.

Oh, by the way, those supposedly lost historical lampposts were carefully removed and stored away during subway construction to await the eventual restoration and beautification of San Francisco's Market Street. All are still definitely accounted for.

The erroneous newspaper story--disproved several months ago--stemmed from observance of a similar lamppost in a suburbanite's backyard patio.

B. R. STOKES

General Manager BART San Francisco

Sir: I have been trying to contact you to determine the areas of inefficiency in the U.S. I tried to call you but the phone didn't work; I tried to write a letter to you but the mails don't work: I tried to take a taxi to your office but I couldn't find an empty one.

I walked this letter in.

Is inefficiency really a serious problem?

LEWIS HARRIS Manhattan

Everyman an Addict

Sir: Whom are we trying to fool? We don't mind if our kids take drugs [March 16]. We help teach them. We use TV to orient them at an early age to the rigors of American life, tension headaches, nervous stomachs, sleeplessness, etc. Then we tell them how to cure these ailments: a pill to go to sleep, a pill to wake up, a pill to calm you down, a pill to pep you up. We tell them that a tension headache will develop if we hurry to meet a deadline, but no sweat: take a pill. We get up in the morning screaming for a cup of coffee or a cigarette so we can begin the day. Even the vitamin pill fits into our little scheme. Give the kid his daily vitamin requirement in one pill to get his mind off good food that will enhance his physical wellbeing; soon he won't have much regard for his body.

Let's face it, we are all addicts of some sort, and the only time our apathy is shook is when or if we find out our own kid is hooked.

(ScT) ROD BLISSETT U.S.A.F. Columbus, Ohio

Sir: Your article on heroin addiction is the usual detached, sterile report. You told us of the methadone maintenance program and loaded us with facts and figures. But did you give any substantial reasons for why "I wanted to get stoned"? The average person today is offered a prefabricated life where creativity and originality tend to be stifled by technology. All too often that offer is taken, and nothing more is asked from life.

The real need is not necessarily ". . . someone to talk to, somewhere to turn." It's learning once again to use one's own creative abilities and finding the desire to demand more of life than just wanting to get stoned.

WILLIAM R. ANDERSON Mountain View, Calif.

Sir: How ironic that parents who profess to have given their children "everything" apparently did not see the need to instill in them a sense of independence. How much easier it would have been then for these young addicts to have resisted their friends' persuasive arguments that "everybody's doing it."

CHERYL LYNNE ROSSON Rockledge, Pa.

Sir: Might it be in order to suggest that for those convicted a second time of pushing hard drugs, the death penalty be automatically applied? Such a step might be done on a federal level, doing away with the discrepancies existing between various state laws, and it might be more effective than light sentences or fines.

JOHN R. CRAWFORD Greer, S.C.

Department of the Dog

Sir: Your PEOPLE section quotes President Truman as saying: "I wouldn't appoint John L. Lewis dogcatcher" [March 23]. Perhaps forgotten is the even more pungent Lewis retort: "He [Truman] could ill afford to do this because he would have more brains in the department of the dog than in the State Department" (or words to that effect).

Actually, Lewis and Truman were rather fond of one another.

JOHN H. GULLET Washington, D.C.

Price of Democracy

Sir: Why have the Jews been singled out as the molders of U.S. foreign policy toward Israel [March 16]? Hasn't it occurred to you that many other Americans realize that here lies the final bastion of freedom in the Middle East? The price to uphold democracy in the Middle East isn't half as costly as that which has accrued in the Asian corner of the world. These Americans realize that. Why can't we all?

FRANCINE PACKER Lawrence, N.Y.

Sir: The logic in the statement that Israel is a "stabilizing force" in the Middle East escapes me. Since Israel was established, three major wars have broken out there, millions have been uprooted from their homes, the Suez Canal has been closed, the great-power relationships have been altered and are presently changing daily, and there is no settlement in sight.

Just how the existence of Israel has benefited the interests of the U.S. is another point that eludes me. Two billion dollars have left our country to support that tiny nation. Moreover, while our political influence and our economic and military positions have diminished, the position of the Soviet Union has greatly improved in the Middle East. It seems to me that if Israel were to "fall," it would be a tragedy for Soviet foreign policy and a boon to world peace.

S.M. SARICH Chicago

Not Necessarily So

Sir: The view that "war is the inevitable adjunct ... of civilization" attributed to me by implication in "The Case for War" [March 9] seriously distorts my position. While war has, to be sure, served some useful social purposes in the past at fearful cost, most of these have become obsolete or can now be achieved by other means.

Furthermore, because there have always been wars does not mean that there always will be wars. As conditions of life make war increasingly anachronistic and deadly, if we can defer a nuclear catastrophe long enough, war will probably disappear. Other age-old, universally prevalent institutions, such as slavery or human religious sacrifices, did so when they had outlived their original functions. Surely if humans had the capacity to invent war, they have the capacity to invent substitutes for it.

JEROME D. FRANK, M.D. Department of Psychiatry and Behavioral Sciences The Johns Hopkins University

School of Medicine Baltimore

Ecological Echo

Sir: Echoes of ECO [March 16]! Ecology students at the University of British Columbia anticipated Secretary Hickel's move months ago, when they formed Environmental Crisis Operation (ECO). Coincidence, or a case of eco-sensory perception? I'll know for sure if Secretary Hickel starts quoting ECO's latest button slogan, "Make Love Not Babies."

WREN Q. GREEN Vancouver, B.C.

Ray of Light

Sir: Re "Marilyn at the Met" [March 16]: what a pleasant surprise to find, in an issue full of violence and murder, heroin and Laos, the beautiful remark that the blending of voices "fleetingly suggested that the shaky conspiracy called civilization may actually be worth all the trouble." Thank you for this ray of sunshine.

ALBERT H. KIRCHEIS Islington, Ont.

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