LETTERS TO THE EDITOR
Dealing with kidnappers
Sir: Your recent editorial approv- ing the strong stand taken by the Canadian government against the FLQ was appreciated here. It is always nice to be approved by the world at large, even for the wrong reasons. The suggestion that, faced with similar circumstances, your own government should .take the same sort of action is, however, one you should reconsider. Regrettably, the official response to the kidnappings of Mr Cross and Pierre La Porte was ill advised and incompetently handled. This is not easily mid, but it ought to be said in defence of other pro- spective kidnap victims. We do not know that the FLQ would have bargained in bad faith; we do know that the Canadian govern- ment bargained in bad faith, haggling over the number of hostages it might release while at the same time proclaiming that there could be no compromise. Canada would be no Brazil, where - bargains could be made with criminals! But all four men kid- napped in Brazil were returned alive. Pierre La Porte is dead and Mr Cross is no nearer to being rescued than he was two weeks ago, When the news media announced excitedly the calling out of troops intense military activity directed againt suspected FLQ sympa- thisers in Quebec, and followed this up with the proclamation of the War Measures Act, the public response here was apprehensive: if the government really knew of an imminent insurrection, and if it knew the kidnappers and needed only enougn men and time to catch them, perhaps this extreme action was necessary. But he said, there iS no hope now for the kidnap victims because there is no longer any reason for the FLQ to keep them alive.
Almost immediately Mr La Porte's murder was announced. It could not have been otherwise, and the futility of it all is evident now in the government's acknow- ledgement that there was in fact no specific information to go on, nothing to justify the military measures. no way to force the kidnappers then or now to release their victims.
Mr La Porte is being called a martyr, and so he was, not to insurrection, however, but to the tragically mistaken notion that military crash-actions can succeed against political kidnappings. If, ; gentlemen, you should have the misfortune to face such circum- stances in England, remember to bargain for human life first, before you call out the troops.
D. 0. Spettigue Associate Professor Department of English, Queen's University, King- ston. Ontario
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