HISTORIAN CHALLENGES CHAMBERLIN ON WORLD GOVERNMENT PROSPECTS
Guerard, Albert
Historian Challenges Chamberlin On World Government Prospects From ALBERT GUEtMD THERE ARE TWO POINTS in William Henry Chamberlin's article on World Government that I am ready to endorse. The...
...Whose Mother...
...England, the mother of India...
...The denials of civil liberties in this country excuse ten million slave laborers in Russia...
...The shock with which what we mean to try to do in the world was thrown back in our faces disillusions us with regard to The New Leader's policy and your own brand of liberalism...
...TinWorld Government would not interfere with our home affairs...
...This is certainly writing history with a pen wrapped in the folds of the Union Jack...
...What are Catholics to think when a whole college policy such as ours, directed in harmony with the Pope's encyclicals toward an effective liberalism in harmony also with other liberals, is so ignored and twisted by your writer as to make it appear that we are the potential enemy of liberalism and at best 'only temporarily harmless nonentities when we keep our mouths shut and act "like Protestants...
...Lowell would have me say but because it is an overconcentration in form and harmonic structure—Chopin broke with the tradition of the heroic-tragic autobiographical statement which Was handed clown by Beethoven and Schubert and continued by Schumann and later by Liszt...
...New York, N. Y. Dear Editor The Sew Leader encourages all letters, irrfepoctiv* of subject or point of view...
...From PAUL HAYES YoUR CORRESPONDENT Robert Weltsch in an article (Netv Leader, May 21) eulogizing the British Empire, writes as follows: "According to the Prime Minister's agreement, the old imperial Commonwealth is to be reconstructed in a manner which will permit India— about to declare itself an Independent republic—to associate on equal terms with the mother country...
...Pacifist Views Show Need for Psycho-Analysis from WALTER R. STOREY 1/WIGHT MACDONALD'S experience with pacifists at CCNY (New Leader, May 7) is an illustration of a peculiar psychological and sociological phenomen of our time...
...Thomas find it hard to understand...
...the second, that it is Utopian to expect a World Government, in the present state of our civilization, to have direct auhority over individuals...
...In his zeal to portray a dethroned and mediocre Chopin, our reviewer makes some extraordinary statements...
...We can imagine reactionaries attacking us (with much more reason than Messrs...
...Kurt List Replies From FREDERICK E. LOWELL WRITERS OF BOOK REVIEWS should criticize an author's handling of material rather than distort facts...
...College Teacher Says Catholics Must Be Liberals From HERBERT SLUSSER My STUDENTS AND I at The College of St...
...After the slaughter of millions of Jews and other "inferior" groups by the Nazis, it is difficult to offer a rational explanation of pacifist non-violent "resistance" to totalitarian Communism...
...But developments which have come slowli do come to maturity at last...
...It is up to us to correct them...
...I am afraid that Chopin was not quite the person to inspire political feelings, although some of his music shows unmistakable signs of greatness...
...Over a year ago, both pacifists and Communists were predicting that the Marshall Plan would be used to prevent nationalization of industry in Britain and other countries...
...If he is thinking of "disparity" in terms of religion, India has all creeds, high and low, and is making a success of its government...
...MR...
...unrealistically, is closing his eyes to obvious facts...
...Neither did I try to give the impression that Chopin was a mediocrity because he wrote piano miniatures...
...Bonn and Landaucr) for dogmatic liberalism Out of our midst we have sent to Congress Eugene Mc Carthy, one of the most promising of the new libeials in the House...
...The UN has revealed patent weaknesses, which might well be fatal if they are not corrected...
...Philadelphia, Pa...
...State Department and a section of the American capitalist class seem to realize that the only people in Western Europe they can work with under E.R.P...
...NoW what in the name of...
...New York, N. Y. A Reply From KURT LIST M R. LOWELL undoubtedly misunderstood the intention of my review...
...are Socialists and left-ofcenter elements...
...A task force of social anthropologists, sociologists and psychiatrists would find a survey of the above-described mental illness quite fruitful...
...in the hope of the common people, was meant to be "a federal government with powers limited, but adequate to assure peace," and not a mere debating society...
...List carefully avoids mentioning...
...List emphasizes Chopin's failure to take up arms in defense of his native land, but does not add that the musician was advised against doing it because of poor health...
...He is a devoted anti-Communist, intolerant even of fellow-travelers: as such he is vigorously opposed to his fellow Americans W. Z. Poster and Henry Wallace, and at one with Chiang Kai Shek, Franco, de Gasperi and Winston Churchill...
...fair criticism does that mean...
...Our "refusal to be outvoted" would argue that we arc insincere when we are reproaching Russia for the use of the veto...
...We proceed on the belief that on principle we are commited to liberalism...
...Then why not attack the book for these defects instead of defaming a great, though eccentric, composer so beloved by everyone for the inspired beauty of his music...
...But when he mentions as an insuperable obstacle "the tremendous disparity between the peoples of the world in standards of living, literacy and educational developments," then it is ne who...
...However, in reviewing Chopin, the Man and His Music, by Herbert Weinstock, in your April 16 issue, Kurt List digress freely Ifprn bis subject in order to give a most unfavorable and altogether misleading impression of the great composer...
...As to the Rei;olutio7iary Etude there is quite some doubt whether it was actually written under the impression of Poland's fight for freedom or whether the title was appended later, and possibly not even by Chopin himself...
...This is your department...
...Do you impose a liberalism based dogmatically on your absolutism of no dogma...
...I have met tlie extremes Mr...
...And what about the famous Revolutionary Etude which Mr...
...In pointing out Chopin's failure to take up arms I was not excoriating Chopin but those who tiled to make a revolutionary hero of him...
...Chamberlin mentions: destitution and luxury, the n.ost primitive mode of life and the most refined, abysmal pre-Christian idolatry and the delicate generous humanism of an Alfonso Reyes: yet Mexico has 3 government...
...The truth in both instances is that Chopin was always disinclined to fight physically for Poland (the Vienna incident to which I referred took place when Chopin was 20, long before any signs of his fatal illness were noticeable), and that by wrting the piano miniature—and miniature it is not because it is not "revolutionary" as Mr...
...But within the framework of a World Commonwealth...
...If pacifists want to scourge themselves through' Stalinist appeasement, the methods of the Marquis de Sade, and not those of the political arena, are heartily recommended to them by the writer...
...Another Reader comes to Rescue Of Chopin...
...If he alludes to political and social ideologies, France possesses them all...
...Are his ballads to be considered as "withdrawals to the piano miniature...
...from Maurras to Thorez...
...Revolutionary" inspiration in music stems largely from the thoughts the inspired person connects with either the text of the music or the figure of the composer...
...No doubt, Polish exiles can be inspired by Chopin's music—but not because it is good music, which I think it is, but because they choose to be inspired by it just as American soldiers chose to be inspired by Irving Berlin's music...
...Yet, the U.S...
...G THE UN...
...The first is that it is impossible to create a World Government without Russia...
...Paul, Minn...
...in the international field, we are committed to the respect of international law...
...May I add that the Committee to Frame a World Constitution emphasizes the need for "strong regional groupings of like-minded nations...
...CHAMBERLIN himself is an admirable example (with Reinhold Niebuhr) of "the considerable cement of shared experience and common ideals in the world...
...I have traveled extensively in Mexico...
...Thomas found in "The Home Front" quotations from Professor Landauer's letter in your April 30 number a gross stupidity that seemed to us shockingly unfortunate...
...One ceuld grant that in the long run pacifist attitudes and tactics might prevail except for their past prophecies, which have been contradicted by political realities...
...In a World parliament, he would vote according to his ideology, not according to his nationality...
...Herbert Weinstock's book may well be, as Kurt List says, a dull repetition of well known facts...
...How your man can equate freedom of eon science and our obedience to conscience with totalitarian denial of it and of minority rights, we students and faculty at St...
...Now, many pacifists seem to be expressing a sense of personal guilt in opposing the North Atlantic Pact and its arms program...
...I completely agree with him that "a Federated Europe is the most important immcdi ate objective...
...At any rate it has always been my aesthetic creed not to demand political slogans from music nor the politically "correct" attitude from composers...
...Because this country is far from perfect, or certain of its allies are guilty of colonialism, thesepeople oppose effective supplementation of E.R.P...
...It did take centuries for the necessity of a world government to impose itself upon the world...
...Chopin, too frail to march or carry a gun, eloquently expressed his despair over Poland's loss of independence in a musical masterpiece which undoubtedly a source of inspiration to Polish exiles today...
...let's hoar from you...
...In choosing the piano as a solo instrument, Chopin demonstrated its unexplored possibilities...
...He says that the composer "retired to the intimate, private sphere of the piano miniature...
...The world dreamed of aviation for thousands ol years, and experimented unsuccessfully for nearly a century...
...through the Pact...
...So that w* can print the greatest number of divergent opinions on divers* subjects, we request you limit your letters to ISO words or less...
...Come, come—let us have men of good will recognize each other's good will...
Vol. 32 • June 1949 • No. 23
