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Show CHRONICLE MAILBOX nounced formally in the Deseret News the people of the Mormon Church should not sign the petition which proposes to place the liquor issue on the ballot where it belongs. Though not a Mormon myself, in general, I have been very pleased with the progress which has developed devel-oped in their concern for the outside out-side gentile world and the democratic demo-cratic process. Why does President McKay now feel the ways of democracies demo-cracies can no longer work? Why does he now feel citizens should not even be allowed to vote for the proposal and use their "free agency?" Does the leader of the LDS Church feel his peoples are too weak to deal with their own beliefs without the laboratory conditions that now exist in Utah? I can remember hearing an LDS teaching explaining before we came to this earth there were two plans suggested to God. One presented by evil forces offered to have everything every-thing planned out in this life. The other offered by good forces would allow man to chose his own path in the return to heaven. It appears this teaching fits easily into my life as non-LDS but only when convenient in the lives of Mormons. Scott Robertson Editor: Why is everybody just thanking John Kesler? I have worked in and around ASUU for a helluva long time and I know that probably only 1 per cent of the work is actually actu-ally done by the president. I think it very proper to send a thank you to the National Student Association thanking them for the ideas the provided. It might also be a good time to let Cannon, Oswald, and Henderson, (the real Workers) know that the students are grateful for the extra time they put in student stu-dent government to make it a successful suc-cessful year. "THANKS STARS" ! ! (Name Withheld) 87557 Editor: Re: Harry R. Balle, Jr's letter published May 7th. Are you the Harry Balle from Columbia (Utah not Univ.)? The young lad whose well educated father, and good friend of mine, allowed al-lowed him to do and think pretty well any darned thing he wanted to as he was growing up? It didn't dawn on me why you were carrying on so about the military mili-tary services until I realized who you were and how perhaps you had been taught little about authority as a lad. I don't hope to change your mind about anything because obviously it is so closed on this subject that , not even the military could cause you to understand, and they are experts. ex-perts. I do hope to explain a few things to you, however, so that in your continued diatribes everyone will at least know these things have been pointed out to you and that you don't seem to understand either perhaps because you don't want to understand, or perhaps because of your upbringing you are not capable cap-able of understanding. Granted, war is wrong, granted there are certain unthinking brutalities bru-talities in military life, granted some "bright" young men have to take orders from sergeants only educated through the tenth grade. Not granted that there are not sometimes good and just causes for these conditions. When men, not spoiled children, are called on to defend their country, coun-try, their own lives and the lives of their comrades frequently depends de-pends on whether they can take an order and carry it out even though their every emotion and thought is crying out for them to hide, or run, or do nothing. Doers Not Talkers As you know, Harry, at another time and in another place I was i in battle conditions and I'll share a little secret with you. At such times, I'd prefer to have a tenth grade educated leader who .was brave enough to carry out orders, without qeustion, leading me than a "budding young genius" who wanted to sit down and argue with authority before each order is carried car-ried out. If you will take the time to read the book, "By Quentin Reynolds" by Quentin Reynolds you will discover dis-cover that as the people of Paris could hear the invading German guns at the beginning of World War H many of them stood around at cocktail parties discussing the rights and wrongs of the war and the German invasion. On the other hand, when the same reporter covered the attempted invasion in-vasion of Leningrad he noticed a rather unusual thing. Only the very young and the very old remained in the city. Everyone else (men and women, healthy and unhealthy) were out doing something about the enemy. While you can draw your own conclusions about the results, where-in Paris fell for the umpteenth ump-teenth time and for the first time the German Blitzkrieg was fought to a standstill, I don't think you can miss the relative value of talkers talk-ers and doers to a nation in peril. Discipline, Not Brutality I'm not downgrading intelligence (when it is real intelligence and not merely "mouth"), nor the need to question, nor the fact that at times a person must think for himself. All I am saying is that the job of the military is to create within a majority of the soldiers the ability to take the right action when the right time comes, and that sometimes some-times the only way to change boys into men is to be less than considerate. consider-ate. I think you have proven clearly, clear-ly, by your own actions, that this doesn't always work. But there is equal evidence that in more cases than not, it does work. Few intelligent in-telligent young Americans come out of the service as bitter as you seem to be. I don't for one moment think that just because your voice is a minority minor-ity voice it is wrong, but that it is wrong because you dodge the prime issue : Is brutality in any form ever justifiable? If your answer is "No!',' then I expect henceforth and forever you will become a vegetarian, vege-tarian, or that you will cease your hypocritical denouncements of others who participate in allowing brutality when life and death of humans rather than animals are at stake. Let me close by advising you that your friend (and my brother) Bill is now in Officers Candidate School in Fort Benning. Considering that in Vietnam the highest single casualty rate (percentage-wise) is 2nd Lieutenants, what would you honestly advise him to do to protect his own life and the life of his men when they come face to face with the enemy? When the mortars start dropping in, or the sniper rounds begin should your friend insist on blind obedience, or gather his group into a circle and debate the injustice of calling a coward accused of desertion deser-tion before a court martial, "set up with a senior officer of the battalion battal-ion or group presiding over the court . . ." Fred M. Civish, Jr. P.S. Do you think there is any correlation cor-relation between the policy of permissive per-missive parenthood espoused by Dr. Spock (the pacifist and progeny pamperer) and your own seeming hostility toward any authority you aren't in agreement with? Editor: t ... Last Saturday the president of the LDS Church, David O. McKay, an- |