In Memoriam:

...It was a fortunate day for the United States when this man, then hardly more than a mere lad, came here because he had seen what tyranny is like...

...But if a man's work can be considered as part of him...

...Ours is the responsibility of conserving, transmitting, rectifying and expanding the heritage of values we have received, that those who come after us may receive it more solid and secure, more widely accessible and more generously shared than we have received it...

...Patience before disbelief, patience before incredulity, patience before historical ignorance...

...Our loss is measured by what Sol Levitas meant to people...

...With virtually no money available, he published regularly one of the most stimulating and valuable magazines of our day, The New Leader, a magazine which he made a free forum for every variety of democratic opinion...

...Such a faith has always been implicitly the common faith of mankind...

...Here are all the elements for a religious faith that shall not be confined to sect, class or race...

...SAMUEL M. LEVITAS "Sol" Levitas, as he was known to thousands, worked a weekly miracle for many years...

...He never became hardened to misery...

...It suggests a humanistic and ethical approach to the perennial task of making ordinary life less unhappy in a social world which is less unjust...

...He asked nothing for himself except what would make it possible for him through The New Leader to struggle more effectively...

...One trusted his feeling and his good judgment even when his arguments were unconvincing...

...Every exile from tyranny was his friend...

...On New Years Day last I finally completed a review long overdue...

...He could disarm them with a quizzical glance and an incisive historical reminder...

...Even fanatics liked him despite themselves...

...But he set himself the persistent task of combating illusions...

...Sol Levitas had still another kind of courage...

...It would hardly be an exaggeration to say that Sol Levitas built The New Leader at the cost of his nerves and heart's blood...

...The one sure thing all its contributors had in common was this relation to Sol, their belief that the human values they shared with him were a genuine working basis for a better and freer world...

...It was the courage of patience...

...It was no ordinary courage, for it was moral courage, the moral courage to speak up for freedom, if necessary to stand alone, to speak the truth when the truth was not popular, whether it was about the illusions of isolationism, indifference to the Nazi's climb to power, the deceptions of the Popular Front, the grotesqueries of the Moscow trials, the glorifications of the Soviet Union as a democratic ally during World War II, or the conditions of peace after it...

...The New Leader was a clarion call which he bore into a battle stranger than any our nation has known...

...It was rooted in the fact that he could always find a common human interest, a common idea, value or enthusiasm, a shared experience with others, which promised to be much more important than apparent differences...

...They had to give up seeing him in order to prevent the constraining integument of their dogmas from dissolving under his charming and insinuatingly human criticism...

...The things in civilization we most prize are not of ourselves...

...They were drawn up in hostile alignment throughout America...

...It had room for socialists and theologians, for men and women who were conservative, as well as for others holding the flaming views of reformers...

...He shouldered too much of the responsibility for his own good and for that of his devoted wife, Fiera, whose sacrificial care and love kept him alive during many difficult years...

...By Sidney Hook A FEW DAYS AGO, all unsuspecting of the gravity of his condition, I had my last talk with Sol Levitas...

...But is not this recollection a very dear and priceless thing...

...On occasion he would wryly observe to me, "The New Leader prevents me from being a better husband...

...Alas...

...His physical difficulties always became accentuated when he had to meet the weekly burden of payroll and bills...

...They exist by the grace of the doings and sufferings of the continuous human community in which we are links...

...We who now live are parts of a humanity that extends into the remote past, a humanity that has interacted with nature...

...He had seen it used as a pretext for the superfluous cruelties that fed the totalitarian hunger for power...

...I, who believe in the resurrection of the dead, will not pray here for him, but for myself and all of us, that while keeping his memory green, we shall remain in some measure worthy of the friendship to which he committed us...

...Sol Levitas was a man of great faith...

...Yes, this one can say gratefully...

...He was kind, of course—kind to a fault...

...so long as the memory of his radiant sympathy is fresh in the minds of his friends, his spirit continues...

...I remember his bewilderment when he heard that some American students believed that the Bolsheviks had overthrown Tsarism instead of a regime which they themselves declared at the time to be the freest in the world...

...It is no secret that this was the secret of The New Leader which was Sol Levitas' life work...

...He suspected easy talk about the stern necessities of history...

...But in all his talk about issues and problems, he spoke about people, always about people, and the impact of events upon their personal lives...

...Possibly it was because for 12 years I had striven to edit a weekly with some integrity that I could in a measure appreciate what he was trying to accomplish in that heroic effort which siphoned off the treasury of the Rand School and the Tamiment Institute, and which he somehow fused with the whole truly liberal spirit of the country...

...But before all these and above all these, he was a human being of vibrant feeling who had a sense not so much for history as for what happened to people in history...

...No human being to Sol Levitas was merely one of a crowd, a group, a class, a nation...

...It had just gone to the mailbox when the news of his departure came...

...The tireless labor that went into this weekly feat can only be imagined...

...To say that one cared deeply enough for integrity to give one's life to it and for it was to conjure up peril upon oneself, peril of contumely, of ostracism, of the corrosion of the atmosphere in which one lived...

...It was not specially mysterious beyond the mystery of all human fellowship...

...As you know, he came to early manhood during the stormy days of the Russian Revolution and had to flee for his life when the Bolsheviks established their dictatorship...

...His faith was expressed in words written by John Dewey, whom Sol had won as a frequent contributor to The New Leader, and whose social idealism fuses the best of the Old World and New: "The ideal ends to which we attach our faith are not shadowy and wavering...

...This was the faith of Sol Levitas...

...In this sense, Sol Levitas built more firmly than he knew...

...Without being a bore or a fanatic, without losing his sense of humor and irony and his capacity to smile at himself, he was a totally dedicated man...

...And it is also, despite our sadness and the ache in our hearts, a notable day, too, when we can honor him here, because not only we, but all his countrymen, owe him more than any poor words could indicate...

...He spoke of many things—of the demoralization of the British Labor party, of the disaffection of the French intellectuals, of the Socialist movement in Germany and Italy, of his vain attempt to visit Milovan Djilas in his Yugoslav jail, of events in Africa, of his hopes and fears concerning the new Administration, and of The New Leader, which had become the international organ of those who refused to dissociate the struggle for peace from the struggle for freedom...

...The truly extraordinary thing about him was the affection he inspired among those who explicitly disagreed with him on one thing or another, and who nonetheless sought to cooperate with him despite the risks to their doctrinal consistency...

...IN MEMORIAM: S. M. LEVITAS Following are two of the memorial addresses delivered at the services for S. M. Levitas, executive editor of The New Leader, who died on January 3. Sidney Hook, long a close personal friend of Mr...

...George N. Shuster, also a close friend and regular contributor, recently resigned as President of Hunter College and is now with the Fund for the Republic...

...Those who knew Sol Levitas personally know what I mean when I say that the quality which endeared him to others was more than the quality of kindness...

...There was another outstanding trait of Sol Levitas' character...

...He judged politics by what it did to people and for people...

...In a memoir I wrote about 20 years of activity in New York education, I have outlined my personal indebtedness to Sol Levitas...

...Events have fully and sadly vindicated the stand taken by Sol Levitas and the small band of men who rallied around The New Leader during World War II and its aftermath...

...His political life and judgment were distinguished by the fact that he never forgot that the ultimate purpose of all political and social action was a world in which human beings could live better lives as persons—in their multiple private worlds of joy and friendship and creation...

...Those who pay no attention to an alarm until it is too late often end up by believing that somehow it is he who sounded the alarm who creates the danger...

...But in a world in which all grandiose ideologies have proved irrelevant, in which so many of the ideals laid out by the founding fathers of socialism have either been sterile or borne fruit which have set their children's teeth on edge, Sol's life work is the source of nourishing hope...

...But he did not permit himself the luxury of discouragement even though the task daily grew more difficult...

...Without the slightest tincture of sentimentalism, he never lost his feeling of compassion and tenderness for a human being in distress...

...Sol Levitas in life made no preparation for his death...

...Those who have loved Sol Levitas and worked with him feel today that a piece of us has died with him...

...Here, however, I shall say only a few words in summary of his achievements...

...Sol Levitas' personality was the real clue to his politics—and it is of his personality that I, his friend and comrade of many years, wish to speak...

...Yet Sol Levitas made The New Leader a forum in which all the noblest virtues of the liberal spirit could find a haven...

...He was no systematic theoretician, no economist, no program builder...

...By George Shuster FRIENDS, AS WE KEEP watch for an hour beside what is mortal of our dear friend from which the deathless spirit so precipitously departed, we cannot but be deeply grateful for the affection he always so generously gave, and sorrowful because henceforth we shall have only the memory of him...

...Only those who were close to Sol Levitas knew how difficult physically and psychologically that task was...

...In the end, a man's personality is defined by his set of values...

...There is still lacking a sufficient recognition of the role he played...

...He recognized that there was a will to illusion in men and that often the greater the danger men face, the more persistent is their illusion...

...Sol Levitas impressed not only those to whom he was kind...

...Precisely because Sol Levitas' politics could never be dissociated from human beings, he perceived the face of the totalitarian enemy under all its guises and gave the alarm...

...Perhaps this was due first of all to what was so gentle, humorous, warmly human about his spirit—due to all that which had bubbled up from the deep well within him, and which we have each one so greatly cherished...

...And I cannot begin to say how badly I should now feel if that chore had not got done...

...This we can all say, too, with all our hearts, about Sol Levitas...

...It was then so easy for the average man to keep only two catalogues of minds...

...He had been carved out of Jewry deep in the heart of Russia, and I was of the warp and woof of the Catholic West...

...He was on the side of reasonableness, of mercy, of fellow feeling for the unlucky and victimized...

...Nothing they subsequently did really surprised him, for he had seen them cut the root which bound the politics of socialism to the politics of humanity and freedom...

...Before Sol Levitas was struck down by his recurrent sickness and often, even during his sickness, when he was free from pain, there was a quality about him—call it radiance, call it charm, perhaps radiant charm—that few could resist...

...He loved Pushkin as I did Dante...

...then so long as the monument he builds continues to stand, his life continues...

...How precious this nevertheless was...

...And he impressed not only those who agreed with his specific social and political views...

...I remember his sense of moral outrage when he observed the reception the American business community gave to Khrushchev a few short years after the events in Hungary...

...so long as the flame of freedom still burns anywhere in the world in defiance of despotic power, his ideals will continue...

...Intentions, hopes and ambitions—all derive their moral quality from these values, not as they are professed in words but revealed in actions...

...But they were all honest because they were free...

...In the final analysis, the best tribute anyone can pay to our friend and his company of journalists and co-workers is that freedom surged through their spirits like wine, but at the same time cleansed their minds of mirages...

...Yet it was above all due to the fruit of the passion of his purpose—and of this The New Leader was almost the perfect image...

...In the end, the long-suffering creditors of The New Leader were the only group that developed an immunity to his charm...

...It was amazing that a weekly so alive, so inflexibly honest and so gloriously free could be published without paying those who wrote for it anything more than Sol Levitas' gratitude...

...Outwardly, we had very little in common...

...He never lost his sense of moral indignation...

...He was known to the world as a public and political figure—as a Socialist, a democrat, a liberal...

...The life of an alarm ringer is hard...

...It was from her and the family that he stole the precious hours of private life to pursue a contributor or solicit a contribution...

...It was Fiera who made Sol's political life possible...

...They seldom went away without some aid and encouragement...

...This was so because it was itself liberal...

...His office and his home were open to all the stray and anguished spirits who had been wounded or crushed by historical misfortune...

...I remember his mournful assessment of the political scene at our Sunday meetings...

...That was his courage...

...For doing it was, as always, for everyone who sent in the copy he asked for, some kind of reaffirmation that what he was doing was immensely worthwhile...

...That task was keeping The New Leader alive and extending its influence...

...Levitas and a veteran contributor to these pages, is Chairman of the Graduate Department of Philosophy at New York University...

...I first came to know him when, during the aftermath of the Spanish Civil War, an action was undertaken to aid many whom that conflict had driven into exile...

...For there were roundabout not only battalions of unreason, but forces grown more powerful with each day which blended that unreason with calculated dishonesty...

...They assume concrete form in our understanding of our relations to one another and the values contained in these relations...

...His death makes the American publishing field a much poorer place, and his friends can only hope that ways and means can be found to continue the magazine whose substantial contribution to American life was Levitas' great achievement.—New York Times, January 5, 1961...

...But from that time it was as if we had been cast in the same mold...

...One who loved Franz Kafka said of him, "His whole behavior, down to the smallest detail, is based on the belief that there is, as a premise taken for granted without discussion, a mode of life which is right, thorough, clean and unshakeably natural...

...But his friends could see on every occasion how devoted this warm and vibrant man was to the concept of a free market place of ideas...

...It remains to make it explicit and militant...

...He had a remarkable sense for what was individual in each person whom he knew—and his insight almost always enkindled an answering sympathetic response...

...I could not find time to write half of what he wished me to, and shall confess that my conscience often ached badly as a result, even as it now does...

...Sometimes it was uncanny...

...It would have meant to him a preparation to withdraw from the fight for freedom, a breaking of faith with that ideal community of which he felt himself a part...

...One could be assigned to either nonchalantly, but there one was...

...He was just back from abroad where he had attended a series of meetings...