VIETNAM CASUALTIES

Your story of May 16 concerning a Harvard physician's eye-witness report of the shocking civilian casualties in Vietnam helped to confirm statistics which many of us have known for some time. By conservative reckoning, we can estimate that 750 thousand civilians have been killed and 1.5 million wounded (probably half of them children) through the end of 1966. And this does not include the thousands afflicted by malnutrition and often starvation, due to normally bad conditions which have been immeasurably worsened by scorched-earth warfare.

Members of the university community, it seems to me, ought to respond by channeling cash to such groups as the "Committee of Responsibility," 131 State St., Boston. This is a tax-exempt national organization which is bringing some of the more seriously injured Vietnamese children to this country for surgery. Although many of us are convinced that the Vietnam situation calls for much more radical steps than hospital action. I think that all of us ought to be willing at least to do that much. The Rev. H. Paul Santmire   Lutheran Chaplain, Harvard-Radcliffe