Dear Editor,

This references “Military, academia debate selective service”, Feb 25. When I was close to my graduation from college in the spring of 1955, I was not among those deemed competent for graduate school, and being subject to the draft and a relatively clever fellow, I outwitted the system and enlisted in the Army.

The draft, in experience, led to a democratization of the enlisted corps of the Army, there having been many college graduates among my fellow soldiers at the Army Language School, many of whom went on to distinguished careers after their service. My present view is that there should be some form of selective service in which everyone, men and women alike, have to put in at least a couple of years of service, either in the military or in civilian spheres of service.

Since General Steele mentioned the question of values and since I am at the moment going through the most recent moral education textbooks from the People’s Republic of China, it is clear that patriotism, or in Chinese, literally, “love of country”  is a major value being taught and that studying and working hard to achieve for the purpose of contributing  to the development of China is  presented as being a manifestation of the virtue of love of country.

-Charles P. Ridley ’73, Graduate in Chinese Studies