‘Hatchet Victims’

Thank you for your editorial, describing Administration ax-wielding in foreign aid development funds and U.N. programs.

As I read the article, I wondered if part of the problem doesn’t lie in the use of the term “foreign” to describe such assistance to the world’s poor. “Foreign” implies not belonging, being on the outside. Even if we try to maintain the delusion that what happens to the world’s poorest peoples is “outside” of our concern, is not a problem that “belongs” to us, the instability that hunger breeds and the attendant population problems will teach us otherwise.

If we are to have any hope of preventing such inevitabilities, we must address the problem of hunger in the world on a governmental level. Perhaps we should replace the term foreign aid with human aid .

We often hear that President Reagan enjoys chopping wood. An experienced woodsman knows how to trim out the dead wood of a tree or the suckers that sap its strength; he does not go after feeder roots or the producing branches. Trimming the military aid that saps billions of dollars, and nourishing effective programs that eliminate the plague of hunger and disease will strengthen U.S. and world stability. This is not “foreign” aid--this is survival for the human tree of which we are a part.

JEANNE SURBER

Santa Barbara