LETTERS TO THE EDITOR

Taupo Times, Volume XIV, Issue 51, 1 July 1965, Page 10

LETTERS TO THE EDITOR

THE AGE OF REASON Sir, Imagine a horde of naked brown bodies sweltering in the heat, cutting a canal. There is no equipment except muscles, mattocks, hammers and chisels. Babylonian slaves cut the Hillah canal in this way„ diverting the Euphrates. Fabulous Borobudur was also built in this way by Javanese peasants. Gelignite, bulldozers and conveyor belts would shift in minute's the rocks which took weeks to chisel and break. But these people would never have believed that you were disinterested if you had offered them the equipment. The canal and the temple were their canal and their temple, something they did not owe to the money-lenders who had held whole generations in pawn. They would have considered the offer an other device of the money-lend-ers. The Vietcong movement originated in South Vietnam and is directed against the feudal landlords in that area. Fifty per cent of the riceland in South Vietnam is still owned by a . few landlords, mostly absentee landlords. Soldiers have been used by these landlords to collect rents and there is evidence that, on occasions, the equivalent of three years harvest has been demanded in rent. Conscription exists in South Vietnam, but the rate of desertion is so high that the present Prime Minister recently stated that all de-

serters would be shot. The Prime Minister. also stated that the wives of soldiers killed in battle must cease earning their livelihood by prostitution. Black marketing, prostitution and corruption is rampant in Saigon today. Let the Vietnamese build their own canal. It is their fulfiiment. Give them food and medicine, but not guns. The ideas of nationality and the rights of man are the predominant ideas in Asia today. A full belly is the best defence against communism in Vietnam and national pride is the second best defence. Yours, etc.,

SCORPIO.