The Evening Sun from Baltimore, Maryland • 28

THE EVENING SUN Tlte ForUm: Letters to the EditJ Tour Will, Life and Health Insurance Are in Good Order, Enjoy the Convention In the Middle BALTIMORE, WEDNESDAY, JULY 5, 1972 The Korean Surprise Patuxent Decision income bracket." I ask why not? Is it not true that the main source of for. our cjty, state and country is derived from the niillions of people who constitute the middle-income Am as a taxpayer, homeowner and person average means expected to relinquish my tangible assets which I have worked so diligently" to" attain? Since I am divorcedi and raising three children, I must work. My problem "is 'further complicated by the fact that my left leg was damaged as a result; of polio. Consequently, I run. a high risk of causing permanent damage and per-.

manent disability. JhaVe no choice but to take immediate action -to correct the existing situations I am seeking neither, sympathy nor The vicissi- tudes "encountered in one's life are many. I am merely one pea in a vast multitude of pods, so to speak. My problem is of" ar minute nature compared to the "countless number of others confronted with difficulties of a more profound nature. Speaking not only for myself.

but for many middle-: income people, bewildered such as I am, I ask Wiere or to whom does the average American citizen turn? BARBARA KEEGAN. SIR: I wish to point out to you what I consider to be a glaring inequity in the vari--ous assistance programs in this state. I am bewildered and feel greatly aggrieved that there is no program or agency to aid the middle-income taxpayer. Unfortunately, we are not immune to maladies. In January of 1971 I fell; shattering my right knee -cap.

This required surgery and many months of extensive therapy. I was unable to work for seven months. Since I was not receiving salary during this period, I delved into ways of receiving financial aid but all attempts proved to be futile. Somehow, I managed to make it through this very try- ing time. Now, once again, due to a breakdown in the "repair of the knee I am faced with more surgery and removal of the knee cap.

Again, it will require many months of extensive therapy. Again, I will be without benefit of a salary, I have contacted the Social Security Administration, Maryland state government claims information, sick claims and the offices of unemployment. I also contacted Emergency Social Services. I literally have had the door slammed in my face. I am not eligible for benefits from any of these organizations.

One woman told me, "unfor? tunately, there is no program set up to aid the mid- Reaction of State Department officials to the detente between North and South Korea expressed in such terms as "amazing," and "unbelievable" is one measure of the extent to which the two Koreas have seized the initiative on their own. Despite South Korea's role as something of an American client state, Washington was obviously uninformed about the negotiations. Apparently the same holds true of North Korea in its relations with China and Russia. Both North Snd South are obviously saying that the time lias come for them to begin shaping their iwn future. emphasis belongs on "begin." Officials Pyongyang and Seoul make no claims for having moved much further than this.

As "fine South Korean official puts it, they are moving "from confrontation without dialogue "id confrontation with dialogue." They will talk and negotiate, something they have not done since that unhappy day in June more than two decades ago when northern troops crossed the border in a full-scale invasion of the South. But even this has enormous -rimplications. It means that both are now formally committed not only to nonagression but to preventing any incidents in the con- Jinuing confrontation from flaring up into military action. The hot line rather than the howitzer will be the method of response. Beyond this, very little is yet certain.

South Korea is not prepared to ask for the withdrawal of the United Nations Command or even of the 43,000 American troops stationed there. In fact it foresees a possible United School No. 139 Tom "Wicker 5 Nations role in supervision of any future all-Korean elections, distant as that prospect The Democratic Crazies: The Regulars In ordering Maryland to release Edward Lee McNeil, the Supreme Court did not scrap the Defective Delinquency Law which held him in that unique place, the Patuxent Institution. It merely said that the state had missed a necessary step in administering the law. Under the statute, this prisoner was referred to Patuxent by a judge after being convicted and sentenced to five years for two assaults.

The court ordered that he be examined for possible intellectual deficiency or emotional unbalance which might make him a demonstrable danger to society. If the examination had produced such a finding and the finding were upheld when challenged before another judge or jury, the prisoner would have been given psychiatric treatment to correct this problem. Unless and until the treatment proved effective, he would have been confined to Patuxent. But no determination was ever made that this prisoner was or was not a defective delinquent: he refused to undergo examination. His refusal persisted for six years one year beyond his original sentence.

The state, contesting his petition for release, argued that his refusal to follow the court order for an examination was analogous to contempt of court. In that event, the court said in what appears to be the core of its decision, "due process requires a hearing to determine whether petitioner has in fact behaved in manner that amounts to contempt." Such a hearing would also be the appropriate occasion to consider a key point raised by the prisoner, the court added. The point is whether his refusal to be examined falls within his Fifth Amendment protection against self-incrimination. But without the necessary step of a contempt hearing or other court procedure, the prisoner cannot be confined past the expiration of his original term. The recidivism rate of 37 per cent for paroled Patuxent inmates after completing treatment is about half that of the general, prison population.

One researcher translates this into evidence that Patuxent has prevented the commission of about 1,500 serious crimes in its first 11 years of operation. However accurate that estimate might be, Patuxent has clearly demonstrated some value and even greater potential for coping with the problem of the defective delinquent. That value and potential ought not to be diminished by the failure of state officials to take the necessary step indicated by the Supreme Court when prisoners willfully re- sist examination. A Good Gun Bill A bill just approved by the Senate Judiciary. Committee would, if it becomes law, ban the sale and manufacture in the United States of cheap, short-barrelled pistols.

These are the type which figure in most of the 21,000 gun killings that occur each year in this country; They are known as the "Saturday night specials." Committee approval of the bill, introduced by Senator Bayh, is reportedly Congress's way of reacting to the shooting of George Wallace. That reaction will produce other gun control legislation. Bills are being offered in the House and Senate of varying severity. Some will require registration of all handguns, some licensing of all gun owners. The gun lobby, no doubt, is girding to resist.

Registration and licensing would be desirable, though perhaps not feasible at this point in time. For that reason, gun control backers would do well to organize behind the Bayh bill. It is a simple, direct control which could, over a period of time, significantly reduce the number "of handguns in circulation, thereby reducing the incidence of gun killings. Also, the Bayh bill is aimed exclusively at the kinds of guns most criminals use, not at the sportsman's weapon. for the summer.

I. would' personally like to thank and say three cheers for all the teachers of Charles Carroll of Car-rollton No. 139, to the cipal, Thomas Wheaden, vice principal Sedonia vMerritt, and teachers Betty Green, Arilla- Morgan, Jacqueline Schemith, Robert Pouitz and many thanks to Mrs. Linda Richardson who worked with her. class after school hours to teach them sewing, things they would otherwise have nevef learned until they entered high school.

Air parents we ow'e' our teachers all the support we can give them. BESSIE PELZER. Baltimore." SIR: Speaking as a parent and one who works hand in hand with teachers, I would like to say that they deserve and earn every dollar they: receive, and should be given more without question. The teachers of this generation have a big job to do, for they have to deal with children from all walks of life, each with a personality of his own. The children spend almost as much time in school as they do at home.

Therefore the teachers have to be a substitute parent, friend and psychologist all these things in a day's work. Like any profession there are teachers who are dedicated and those who are only interested in the pay check. With the closing of. school seems now. Both North and South will remain dependent upon outside assistance for support of their armed forces.

Neither capital pretends that it is ready to negotiate a mutual reduction of forces. But these are long-term goals. The encouraging fact is that' the two Koreas have taken the first step toward -4hem after years of implacable hostility. They are moving from the position of being purely clients of the great powers to more independence in setting their own course henceforward. The Chess War It's hard to avoid the impression that Bobby Fischer and Boris Spassky have learned something from Muhammad Ali and Joe Frazier.

What they've learned is how to behave in a way to rivet international attention on their imminent contest for the world chess championship. Spassky is being Frazier taciturn, confident, the champion. And they have to be laid at the door of the party regulars, not the supposedly wild-eyed McGovern reformers. The California decision was particular madness because if sustained by the convention it could be the means of denying McGovern the nomination, when that could have been done in no other' way; and that, no matter what he then did, would guarantee the disaffection of the most organized and enthusiastic and probably the best-financed faction the Democrats have. Nor should anyone believe that even the draft of Ted Kennedy, if that were possible, could put the party back together in such an event, which would virtually guarantee Nixon's re-election through the alienation of the McGovernites.

MIAMI BEACH. 'T'HE Democrats open their here Monday. If they want to go on to the defeat of President Nixon, their first order of business will have to be the reversal of the party regulars cynical decision to deprive George McGovern of more than half of his fairly won California delegation. To call that decision of the Credentials Committee cynical, and a straight power grab, is not to deny the irony that the McGovern "reformers" in this instance were fighting against their own reform principles; nor is it to suggest that there is any good reason why California should be allowed what amounts to a "unit rule" when virtually every other state has had to abolish such procedures. Fighting Alcoholism George McGovern at any cost at all.

So once again the so-called Democratic pros, the regulars who are supposed to be willing to moderate their differences for the good of the party, are showing selves to be the real irfecon-cilables, those who in fact put their own interest ahead of the party's. In 1968, for example, amid all the exhortation to Eugene McCarthy and his followers to support the Humphrey-Muskie ticket, not a single gesture of conciliation was made by the so-called "regulars" until September 30, when Humphrey in his Salt Lake City speech finally edged away from Lyndon Johnson and his ill-fated war policy. Four years later, just as McGovern appeared to be trying to take those steps toward the center that had been piously urged upon him, many of those same regulars of 1968 rewarded him with the California challenge. If there is a suicidal instinct within the Democratic party, as Meany among others has suggested, it must belong to precisely those party regulars who want everybody else to compromise with them, for them, and under them. The first fruit of their 1972 folly was the further decision of the Credentials Committee to throw out Mayor Daley and his Chicago delegation.

Had the California challenge not so enraged the McGovernites, it is at least possible that McGovern might have led them into a compromise on the Daley issue and, in fact, he had indicated his willingness and his hope to do just that. These two decisions are nothing short of disasters. alcoholism and aid -those who are afflicted: I believe that many: future alcoholics could be prevented from "becoming victims of this terrible tragedy if we developed an educational program in mr- public schools that would help to emphasize the dangers of alcoholism. Many divorces, auto accidents, premature deaths and-job dismissals could be prevented by such a Such a program might be costly, but our; failure to have such a program would cost us far more in the long-run. SIR: Your reporter, Jon -Franklin, deserves to be highly commended for his excellent series of articles.

For too long now other drugs have taken most of the attention in the news media. However, as Franklin's articles clearly pointed alcoholism is by far the most dangerous and costly problem in our society today. It is my hope that The Eve-, ning Sun will continue to have -many more additional articles-published on this issue! Perhaps then more of us, especially1 our elected representatives, will be encouraged to support measures that will help, prevent the problem of is Ali: petulant, elusive, provocative. The site of their clash is to be Reykjavik, Ice-land, a gloomy, cloud-covered city, perfectly suited to the cloudy temperament of these two chess titans. At last report, the match has been postponed again, for two days this time, until Mr.

Spassky recovers from the pain of insult inflicted upon him by Mr. Fischer, who has been responsible for most of the delays until this one. And yet there is little doubt the contest will be held. Neither Spassky nor Fischer 'could leave Reykjavik without having met the other across the chess board and be able to live peacefully with himself. Mr.

Fischer's entire life is chess. There is nothing he wants more than to be recognized as the world's greatest chess player. Mr. Spassky already enjoys that recognition. He's in Reykjavik to hold on to it.

Chess is a game that requires inexhaustible patience, by the watcher as well as the watched. Those now impatiently urging Spassky and Fischer to get on with it are missing the point. They should percieve that the game has already begun, for what else are all these delays, insults and counter delays but ploys in a war of nerves. LEON SHAPIRO. Even if the convention restores the California delegates and McGovern is then nominated, neither he nor his supporters are likely again to be as conciliatory toward the so-called regulars as they had appeared to be before the challenge; and that could affect numerous vital decisionsthe question of a vice presidential running mate, for instance.

Above all, however, how could the McGovernites conceivably be persuaded to help reinstate Daley, under any compromise formula, unless the California delegates were first restored to them? And while a convention without the Mayor and his men might be George McGovern well knows that an election without them would suit no one so well as Richard M. Nixon. Mew York Times Newi Service Nevertheless, no one raised any serious question before the California primary about its validity; and had Hubert Humphrey won there, neither he nor George Meany nor Edmund Muskie would have raised the so-called "California challenge." The fact is that the challenge was put together by an incipient stop-McGovern coalition that included all these men, as well as the still-lingering George Wallace. The challenge, moreover, was pushed through despite numerous indications by McGovern and his supporters his Southern tour, for example, and their cooperative and moderate behavior in the Platform Committee that they were willing to compromise and conciliate. There simply can be no denying that the California challenge was a naked attempt to stop Baltimore.

The Training School President Nixon's Strategy on Pot May Go up in Smoke Was the: hiring of additional guards-this more than half a year after the promise' was made. -Today the Governor again made promises to secure additional employees to help with "the- problems" taking place at the juvenile institutions. Too little, too late. The real problem is what to do with the" juveniles being thrust intothe juvenile services lap without adequate facilities to care for them. KATHLEEN S.

NAYLOR. Baltimore. Misplaced Children SIR: Sue Miller's article in the June .5 Evening Sun, "Hundreds Test High, Mis- placed in ought to be balanced against the more pessimistic fact that some schools in Baltimore simply wink-at the emotionally disturbed and mentally retarded children disrupting their classrooms. FRED R. MacFADDEN, Jr.

Baltimore. THE EVENING SUN J.lWiM Xvtrr Weekday By THE A. S. ABELL COMPANY PnamiOT 501 N. CALVERT SB BALTIMORE, MD.

21203 TELEPHONE: 539-7744 PAID CIRCULATION a MONTHS ENDED 33172 309,880 Sunday 348.553 Jfoil ai QuUHt Balttmort SIR: Recently, employees of the Maryland Department of Juvenile Services rehabilita--tion centers and training schools went to Governor Mandel requesting more guards and employee protection at the various institutions housing juvenile offenders Many of these uncontrollables are sent to Maryland Training-School for Boys in Baltimore county. On a TV interview, Ernest Crowfoot, AFL-CIO leader, said the employees are spend-, ing most of their time keeping order instead of working with the boys toward rehabilitation, which is what the training school was all about until, a few years ago. Now it is just a holding camp, and an ineffective one at that. It has been learned that some of the boys (16-18 year old young men) are awaiting waiver hearings to adult court for more serious crimes and the majority of these boys are too difficult to handle for an institution such as Maryland Training School. Last summer, selected residents of the community surrounding the Md.

Training School along with Sen. John Bishop, held a meeting with Governor. Mandel, at which time he promised to hire additional guards, to immediately build a 100 bed maximum security institution to house hard core juveniles and not to send such juvenile offenders to the Maryland Training School. To date, residents have only seen one of these promises carried out and that: attitudes, follow a moral code first handed down by the Puritans. In this view most of us know what sin is, are opposed to it, and are determined to prevent our fellow Americans from enjoying its forbidden fruit.

Thus, according to Jack Anderson, Nixon is going to ignore the recommendations of his Commission on Marijuana and Drug Abuse and instead push this summer for even tougher marijuana laws. Such action will make pot an Issue in the campaign; since the common wisdom has it that four out of five Americans disapprove of marijuana, Nixon will benefit. The Republicans are licking their lips at the prospect of forcing McGovern onto the defensive. They have visions of the Democratic candidate putting forth statement after statement in an attempt to clarify his position on-marijuana. But he will never convince the anti-pot people that he is one of them, while he just might muddy the waters so badly that the pro-pot forces will quit his campaign in disgust It could turn out differently, for it just might be that Nixon and Humphrey are wrong about their basic assumptions.

First, the mere fact that marijuana is an issue would have been unthinkable even four years ago. Now that one of the major party candidates has, more or less, come out for legislation it would seem obvious that within the decade marijuana will be legal. It may very well be that Nixon and Humphrey, not McGovern, are swimming against the tide. The President's Commission estimated that 20 million Americans are blowing dope, but that was at best a wild guess. The figure could be much higher.

Nixon is undoubtedly correct in asserting that our college youth, and the 18-year-old vote in general, is not radical kids across the nation split over the issues about the same way as their elders. But given an opportunity to vote, in effect, for legalized marijuana, how many otherwise conservative young people who use pot would vote for unhappy, and why, and how can McGovern get the dissatisfied to organize and work and vote for him? these are the key questions. Humphrey and the Democratic managers are convinced that appealing to specific minority groups in the face of seemingly overwhelming majority disapproval is the sure road to oblivion. Humphrey, Muskie, et al, are devoting their energies to forcing McGovern to soften his stance on minority-related issues; Humphrey warned the other day that if McGovern didn't take a strong stand against the legalization of marijuana, millions of Democratic voters would support Nixon in November. He has issued similar warnings with regard to defense spending, abortion, and other issues.

We won't know until November whether Humphrey is right or not; the polls won't be much help because this will not be a traditional campaign. Like Humphrey, Nixon is acting on the assumption that- most Americans, at least in their public By STEPHEN AMBROSE TJOW many people in this country feel oppressed? George McGovern's chances of becoming the President of the United States would seem to depend on the answer to that question. Most if not all the smug and -satisified are to join the big money boys behind Nixon; the President also figures to pick up support from an unexpected source, the intellectuals whose chief concern is foreign policy and who have for decades now tried unsuccessfully to get Democratic Presidents to make the moves Nixon has carried out in China and in Moscow. Indeed, aside from getting out of Vietnam, Nixon has done so much that McGovern has not made a single significant proposal for a switch in foreign policy. Even with regard to Vietnam it is difficult to see how McGovern could go much farther than Nixon has in his promise to pull out of Indochina completely within four months of a cease-fire.

So, how many of us are McGovern? And it is not just the kids who indulge any longer. The pot revolution began in the early sixties; there are now hundreds of thousands of 30-year-olds and up who use the stuff. Breaking the law may have been a thrill to them while they were in college, but now they have a lot to lose and feel threatened by the drug laws. They want their drug to be as legal as alcohol, and they want it badly. Chances are they will work hard for McGovern, which brings up the question: Are the anti-marijuana forces as determined as the users? Can the advocates of criminal penalties arouse as much enthusiasm among themselves as the pro-pot forces will for legalization? The same general principles apply to gay people, Women's Liberation, abortion, and similar issues.

Again the mere fact that these questions have been raised as serious issues indicates that the trend in our society is towards more and more individual freedom, especially with regard to sin. It could be a mistake, however, to so quickly write off McGovern as the Bryan of the '70s, for not all the dissatisfied groups in America are as narrowly based as, say, the gay liberation people. Everything we know indicates that the vast majority feel oppressed by ever-rising taxes; meanwhile the realization is growing that the only place to save money is on defense. Nixon's arms-limitation treaty in Moscow seemed to be a good start on cutting the cost of defense, hut Secretary Laird's insistence that because of the treaty we will now have to spend even more on offensive weapons has put the Nixon Administration in the position of carrying water on both shoulders. McGovern's defense proposals, could, bring him an upset victory, for how many Americans really believe any longer that our security depends on being able to destroy Russia ten or twenty times over? We will find out in November.

Afr. Ambrose is a professor of history at Louisiana State University. 1 month IJ.75 11.75 month mm I15.00 eoond-cliM Doit tit Mid Bi Mtmbmr at thm -Th AfiacUtvd Prut tntttlef neta. Hvly to th rnubllotloo illltnT 1.