Dear Editor:
Well, the Westerner certainly stuck its foot in its mouth on the very day that peace was announced. I refer, of course, to that block of ugly insinuations appearing on the cover of your January 23 issue. Though it may have been numerically correct, two more items that should have appeared were missing. They are as follows: "It has been 88 days since Le Due Tho and Madame Vinh also announced that peace is at hand," and "It has been 88 days since Le Due Tho and Madame Vinh made some outrageous demand that ruined a prospective agreement for peace in Southeast Asia."

Thus it has been ever since the Paris peace talks began. The North Vietnamese and Cong make no budge from their position. They are impossible to bargain with. And all the while, here sits the Westerner smugly making anti-American statements which question the competence of such great and learned men as Dr. Henry Kissinger and Richard M. Nixon (He's the president of the United States, in case you've forgotten).

And speaking of the presidency, what would your dear Senator McGovern have done? Withdraw all American troops from foreign soil without becoming isolationists? Give every man, woman, and child in the U.S.A. $1,000 without raising taxes? Or maybe walk on water? President Nixon has handled the situation realistically. He has secured the safe return of all Americans being held prisoner in Southeast Asia. He has secured the rights of freedom for the free people of South Vietnam. They now can choose their own destiny. Long before the agreements were drawn up, he had drastically reduced the number of American troops in Southeast Asia. Those who remained saw little or no combat as the President had started the Vietnamese on the road to self-help

Richard Glitz

Dear Editor:
Recently, the Westerner printed a statement "It has been 88 days since Henry Kissinger said that peace is at hand." In many classes I heard the criticism on the grounds that the statement is cynical.

Why shouldn't there be a cause for cynicism? Did the 88 days and bloodbath which ensued in North Viet Nam provide the United States with honor? For that matter, were the four years of war under Mr. Nixon worth it?

Countless Americans lost their lives for "Honorable peace." Death for the terms the United States got hardly seems worth it. If cynicism is bad at this point, perhaps we are terribly confused.

Name Withheld By Request