Terror in the Streets

Sir: Your cover story on urban terrorism [Nov. 2] was a welcome analysis of a subject that has thrust its ugly head to the fore. Perhaps it will serve to open the eyes and the minds of all those who scream for law and justice in one place while openly applauding terrorism and lawlessness in another, and of those who fear a creeping octopus of crime in their own backyard, yet applaud Communist-supported and fascist-like anarchy and murder in others.

Truly, we're all in it together.

MATTHEW MAIBAUM Los Angeles

Sir: You quoted several remarks of mine concerning "the new terror" in the U.S. You did not, however, quote my diagnosis of the phenomenon: that it is the result of the political system's inability to reform itself from within. I would like your readers to know that, in my view, this violence will continue until America makes the choice between a radical social transformation and neofascist repression. Terrorism is symptomatic of anarchic social conditions created by the inability of the present corporate state to solve the people's problems. Until the corporate state becomes a people's state there will be no peace in America.

RICHARD E. RUBENSTEIN Roosevelt University Chicago

Sir: In the 'teens they prized autos that could chug along at barely one-mile-an-hour so they could flirt with walking girls. In the '20s they flaunted hip flasks, wore raccoon coats, necked in rumble seats, and said, "excuse my dust." In the '30s they sat on flagpoles, danced marathons, leaned on WPA shovels and attended Pink meetings. In the '40s they ate live goldfish and carried books to avoid carrying rifles. In the '50s they staged panty raids, crowded 18 into five-passenger cars, burned rubber and played chicken. In the '60s they let their hair grow, smoked pot, read poetry in the rain, went nude. In the '70s, to top their forebears and get attention, they could only throw bombs.

GRADY JOHNSON Santa Eulalia, Ibiza, Spain

Gaining Consciousness

Sir: Too bad you missed the point of Charles Reich's The Greening of America [Nov. 2] and misinterpreted much of what he says. It is true that some of his writing reeks with "incense," and some of the points he chooses to dwell upon are all too obvious. Unfortunately they are obvious only to some of us. Professor Reich has managed to put many things in proper perspective for those of us who feel that our objectives have all too often been empty or off the track, and who cannot feel that achieving these objectives has been rewarding in any true sense of the word.

MRS. ROBERT LONGMAN Woodbury, N.Y.

Sir: Mr. Reich could have saved me much confusion if he had written Greening sooner. Consciousness III is not easy for one of my age (41) to get to, but well worth the effort. Consciousness IIIs smile a lot, hold doors, say hello, don't get frantic, and have an inner love and sense of humor that is delightful. They have, in short, found themselves. Obviously your reviewer has not reached this state.

(MRS.) JEAN C. HOWE Philadelphia

Sir: Your description of Reich's book was quite apt. Consciousness III appears to be quite unconscionable. He fails to explain adequately the downfall of civilizations such as Greece that may have become top-heavy with Consciousness III subcultures. While some childlike qualities are desirable, neither children nor a society characterized as childlike are capable of self-sufficiency or of being ever-renewing.

RICHARD A. SALITERMAN Columbia Law School Manhattan

Sir: TIME and Reich are both wrong. The Consciousness III generation is naturally childlike, since the preceding generation pressed upon it the spoils of the grossest self-consciousness and social unconsciousness that any generation has ever manifested; the "natural piety" TIME sees youth struggling for is simply the fear of growing up. TIME errs, however, in ridiculing the assumption that man is inherently good until corrupted by society; in a world in which some unscientific assumptions must still be made, man's basic goodness is possibly the most positive and urgent of them all. If we cannot believe that, given generally decent surroundings, man can behave in a generally decent manner, why go on?

WILLIAM BUTLER Weybridge, Surrey England

Reckless Suspension?

Sir: The photo "Frisking Quebec Girl" [Nov. 2] should be mailed to everyone howling about suppression of civil rights by the War Measures Act in Canada. The soldier appears more embarrassed and intimidated than the victim, who manages to look more relaxed, charming and feminine than Raquel Welch in the same issue. Reckless and arbitrary suspension of civil rights? My ascot.

DR. HANS F. NORBERT Toronto

Guarded Optimism

Sir: Your Chile story [Nov. 2] has an alarmist and overall negative slant that obscures the solidarity, caution and inner confidence that General Schneider's assassination tested and seemingly proved. It is a time for maximum sensitivity and understanding from the North. The potential for growth of a democracy in Latin America is much more momentous than the foreseeable dangers of repressive leftism. A bumper sticker here says: "Ser Libre Es Participar [to be free is to participate]." This is what most of us believe in here, where I find in informed (non-American) sources guarded optimism and new purpose. All Americans need to learn more about change with peace and peace with change.

BARKLIE HENRY Santiago, Chile

Genesis of the Claim

Sir: Your story "The Malpractice Mess" [Nov. 2] wasn't your usual incisive approach but rather a superficial paste job. To begin with, you lifted a casethe one about Mrs. Louisa Alvarofrom my book The Negligent Doctor without realizing that although the story was true enough, her name was fictitious. But most important, the article recites all the cliches advanced by the American Medical Association without taking the trouble to check them out.

And whether the number of malpractice cases is few or many, or whether doctors' insurance premiums are high or low, is not nearly as important as what kind of care the American public is fitting. After all, the genesis of any such claim is the quality of treatment that is being rendered. To find the answer to this question, had you checked the superb in-depth study on medicine you did in your issue of Feb. 21, 1969, you would have found that "for 25%, care is either inexcusably bad, given in humiliating circumstances, or nonexistent."

CHARLES KRAMER Manhattan

Sir: It may be of small comfort to modern physicians affected by the malpractice mess to learn that their ancient counterparts suffered physical rather than financial reprisals at times.

According to the principle of lex talionis, or "an eye for an eye," Law 218 of Hammurabi's Law Code (18th century B.C.) stipulates that:

"If a physician performed a major operation on a citizen with a bronze lancet and has caused the citizen's death, or he opened up the eye socket of a citizen and has destroyed the citizen's eye, they shall cut off his hand."

On the other hand, if the physician had been successful, he would have received ten shekels of silver, or what amounted to ten months' wages for the average workingman. Of course, the fact that medical fees have always been high is of small comfort to the modern patient.

EDWIN M. YAMAUCHI Associate Professor of History Miami University Oxford, Ohio

Sir: You suggest that the contingent fee is what allows poor people to sue. Is it not closer to the truth that such a fee allows poor lawyers to get rich? There are no penalties for malicious litigiousness, no deterrents to the nuisance lawsuit. The game of trying for the fast buck has no risk for the indifferent lawyer or the greedy client. The medical malpractice mess means only that a greed for gain and a fear of death and disease have been maximated into the neat game of a free lottery. And as a result, the shortage of doctors will increase, not decrease.

SIDNEY VERNON, M.D. Willimantic, Conn.

Meet Dr. Leonard

Sir: The article on John Leonard of the New York Times [Nov. 2] was most interesting. As a longtime fan, I could only be pleased at this public recognition of his talents.

However, I must confess great sympathy for frustrated Women's Lib groups when an article attempting to encapsule a writer's background makes no mention that his wife is quite a person in her own right. No simpering housewife, Christiana Leonard was graduated cum laude from Radcliffe, holds a doctorate from M.I.T., and is now engaged in teaching and research in her field of physiological psychology at Rockefeller University. As I happen to know full well, her contributions to her husband's success have been incalculableand her own success in the scientific worldparticularly in view of her sexmerits at least a word or two.

(Mrs.) RUTH W. SMITH (Dr. Christiana Leonard's mother-in-law) Lakewood, Calif.

Salvation from the Future

Sir: Bravo for Prime Minister Lynden O. Pindling [Oct. 19], who has the guts to try to preserve the Bahamas from the pending ecological disaster that we "progressive" nations have ignorantly overdeveloped for ourselves and our world.

He is trying to save his country, and his independent, self-respecting countrymen from what would be their obvious futureoccupational servitude to the well-heeled, thoughtless "guests" inundating the islands, demanding services and luxurious comforts.

(MRS.) ELEANOR R. LARSON Wayzata, Minn.

Good News Is News

Sir: You say in "American Notes" [Nov. 2] that Saturday Review tried a "good news" section in the early '50s, but it folded for lack of easy access to material. No doubt true, but Editor Norman Cousins' judgment in 1949 still stands today: "If news is not really news unless it is bad news, then it may be difficult to claim we are an informed nation." As an A.P. bureau chief for 40 years I had similar failures, but recently some of us started a syndicated good-news column. We have 200 reporters and writers pouring in good stuff and 40 subscribing major newspapers and radio stations.

The news-reading public is thirsting for good news. There is plenty of it around, and the press just may be coming abreast of a new wave of good-news reporting.

HUBBARD KEAVY South Laguna, Calif.

The Way to Break In

Sir: Those affected by "The New Face of Unemployment" [Nov. 2] deserve our sympathy. My sympathy is restrained, however, with regard to the recent male graduate of Columbia College whom you describe as forlorn because his $45-a-week unemployment compensation is running out. He is forced to live with his mother in order to meet car payments, and after 100 interviews for positions in journalism, advertising or public relations, he is still jobless. I suggest he take a typing and shorthand course and seek a job as a secretary. Female college graduates have been told for decades that the way to break into business is through secretarial work. And I can personally assure the young man in your story that the sting of humiliation deadens after the first five years with no promotion.

HETTIE ALBO VENEZIANO Pittsburgh

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