DESTROY TO SAVE

To the Editors of the CRIMSON:

In the February 7 AP dispatch from Ben Tre, describing its 45-85% destruction, a U.S. major says "it became necessary to destroy the town to save it." This sums up our war-policy more succinctly than its most eloquent critics and indicates how far we have travelled in the realms of hypocritical self-justification. We are close to the famous words of the bishop at the siege of Beziers, who was asked how to distinguish loyal citizens from Albigensian heretics: "Kill them all, God will know his own." Torquemada, weeping for the souls of unbelievers he had saved by burning their bodies at the stake, recalls our President's portrait of himself kneeling in prayer.

Until the last few days we have exercised some restraint about civilian deaths, With morality-rates after single raids in the hundreds rather than the hundreds of thousands. But recent events suggest that we have reached the kind of turning-point that occurred sometime in 1942, when a secret policy-decision was made to abandon traditional restraints against large urban populations. As ordinary citizens, we may never know when or how such a turning point is reached, as the British Air Command continued to deny any policy-change even after the destruction of Dresden.

What further fatal steps have already been planned we cannot know, but the senses, to some recognition that our present military acitons are unjustifiable on any grounds. Whether we blame our leaders or our own passive complicity, we are all "honorable murderers" or "serviceable villains" until we protest these actions. Each must choose his own individual form of protest, from a private non serviam to public support for Dr. Spock, Senator McCarthy, and other courageous men who have steadfastly opposed our present military policy. Sanford Gifford, M.D.   Assistant Clinical Professor of Psychiatry   Harvard medical School