Dear Editor
DEAR EDITOR MAU MAU Kieth Irvine's review of Robert Ruark's Something of Value [NL, May 2] was very good. However, I do not believe the influence of Jomo Kenyatta should be slurred over...
...Unless I am mistaken, their theory of "moral imperialism," as he calls it—I should call it a theory of universal morality—is closer to your own position than Professor Bell's "moral pluralism" and relativism...
...I greatly esteem the fact that it seems to be interested in the problems of Asia as well as the world...
...Is that so much more amazing (considering also all that India had to gain by remaining within the Commonwealth) than the fact that the Philippine representatives at the Bandung Conference were outspokenly proAmerican...
...These refugees included the democratic leaders of Germany, Austria and Hungary: Holland, Belgium and Poland...
...Both these German Social-Democratic leaders were seized by Hitler's agents in Marseilles in the summer of 1940...
...This protection was continued until our obligations to the refugees were fulfilled...
...would learn to appreciate Big Brother's superior wisdom...
...Breitscheid was a man of striking appearance, being tall and with a shock of snow-white hair which would attract anyone's attention on the street...
...Healey himself calls "the revolt against white domination...
...It was the Americans who helped save Iran from a Communist coup d'etat, and who were finally able to persuade Britain and Iran to reach a settlement...
...The facts concerning the loss of these two outstanding democratic leaders have never been published...
...As a person who speaks Persian fluently and who has lived in that country for many years, I feel I know whereof I speak...
...On the night they were to leave to become stowaways on a French freighter, sailing from Marseilles to Oran, neither of them made a move to save himself...
...Under stress he was as calm and cool as ever a man could be...
...FRANK BOHN BRITAIN & U. S. In your April 18 "Dear Editor" column, J. Herbert Carter, praising Denis Healey's "Britain and the Far East" [NL, April 11], says his "presentation of the British view on the Far East is eminently sensible—so sensible, in fact, that it should become the American view...
...NL, April 181...
...History has not yet proved that the Geneva Conference was such a great "success...
...So both were lost to us...
...However, I do not believe the influence of Jomo Kenyatta should be slurred over by reference to Ruark's inventing "dubious Russian spies.'' Only an intelligent Kikuyu with years of London anthropological studies and Moscow Communist training could have created the Mau Mau...
...Irvine's comment that the East Africans are not likely to be pleased by the fact that, at Mr...
...Indeed, the history of the refugees in France in 1940-41 has never been written...
...Italy, Yugoslavia and Czechoslovakia...
...But when you say Hegel, smile...
...Irvine concludes, is "that it is considered bad strategy for the U.S...
...Of the outstanding leaders, during the summer and autumn of 1940, only Breitscheid and Hilferding were lost to us...
...Healey, we lose friends because we do not follow Big Brother's advice—but in Africa, at least, we seem to be losing them because we do...
...New York City ROBERT L. ALLEN REPLY Mr...
...But I must say that 1 did not find Mr...
...As the truth should be known, I must add that this was due, primarily, to their own weakness and surrender...
...In both Tanganyika and Kenya, it would seem, Britain has not yet got around to understanding what Mr...
...I had made complete arrangements for their escape, but they would not avail themselves of these plans...
...I am willing to admit that we have made many blunders in our foreign policy, and that we may be wrong in our present stand on Quemoy and Matsu...
...I don't speak for Aristotle, who takes care of himself, but 1 do not like accusations even by implication that I am a Hegelian...
...Call me an SOB—or even a political scientist, if you don't like my film criticism...
...It has no parallel in the whole history of colonialism, and this lesson in Communist tactics, we can be sure, will be applied in the utilization of such things as voodoo in the West Indies and the Brazilian backlands...
...He went on to say that he was enjoying himself where he was...
...Dulles's insistence...
...Hilferding, in everything, followed Breitscheid...
...We hold these truths to be self-evident...
...Roger Herrod [NL, May 16] dislikes one sentence in my May 9 article, and a dedicated writer cannot find solace even in overwhelming percentages...
...Both men, had they kept their nerve, would have been of great value to the cause of democracy in Germany and Europe...
...I found Mr...
...Healey (unintentionally) gives himself: "Britain's own strategic weakness in the Far East...
...To lose the one was to lose the other...
...Herrod's pounce upon this sentence amusing—with much of the laugh turned on myself...
...Healey's article was but another example of the smug British assumption that their point of view is naturally right, and that things would be so much better if only the U.S...
...As the city was blacked out at night we could move them about at will after sundown...
...Certainly few Iranians would ever subscribe to the idea that Britain ?unlike America ?understands "the way in which most Asians see the issues...
...Buffalo C. I. CLAFLIN KUDOS I thank you very much for The New Leader, which you so kindly donated me...
...Healey adds that the British understand the Asians and we do not...
...His working out of details in organization and management was, in large degree, responsible for the success we were able to find in the long run...
...New York City MARTIN S. DWORKIN MORAL IMPERIALISM It seems a pity that Power Through Purpose, by Thomas I. Cook and Malcolm Moos, did not find in your pages a more sympathetic reviewer than Professor Philip W. Bell [NL, May 9...
...Here I must pause to emphasize the work of the German leader Fritz Heine...
...He was the most perfect group commandant I have ever come upon during my numerous periods of service in Europe and elsewhere...
...Let us take, then, the case of the Iranians...
...None of us knows what tortures they suffered before they were released by a merciful death...
...One wonders whether the reason Britain has recognized this revolt in Asia may not be the very one Mr...
...When I found him sitting in front of a cafe amid a passing crowd of people and told him to go back to his lodgings he replied: "I am a fatalist...
...Breitscheid and Hilferding would neither obey orders nor take suggestions...
...returned to Germany, and murdered...
...Healey's attention to Mr...
...Now, fifteen years afterward, Mr...
...I want to preserve it as material for study at the Faculty of Politics and Economics of my university, after I have read it...
...Healey also claims that "Britain's own Strategic weakness in the Far East has made it easier for her to recognize that, until the West can win the minds of Asia's millions, it will be impossible to defend their bodies...
...Chicago JOHN SWITALSKI SOCIALISTS' DEATH In his article "Forced Repatriation and the Austrian Treaty" [NL, May 9], Mark Vishniak mentions the strange case of Rudolf Hilferding and Rudolf Breitscheid...
...Both men had, apparently, suffered from weakness because of their experiences under Hitler and in exile...
...That its inert weight was by design, to sardonically imply the theoretical density of the film under discussion, is poor extenuation, if the device didn't work...
...When the Chief of the Surete of the Rhone District sent a messenger to me to warn me about Breitscheid's carelessness, the poor man refused to be warned...
...Healey notes that "India decided of her own free will to remain a member of the Commonwealth...
...Breitscheid had been party leader in the Reichstag...
...Our failure to rescue them may have been due, in part, to my not making...
...With two centuries' experience of Asia behind her, she sees irresistible forces sweeping the continent, to which outsiders must adapt their policies: the revolt against white domination and the revolt against poverty...
...to jeopardize British colonial interests, even with regard to what is not British but UN Trust Territory...
...Perhaps Mr...
...To me, Mr...
...Herrod's intrusion of Aristotle and Hegel amusing—although a funny business, to be sure...
...In any event, there can be no doubt about which is closer to the position of Thomas Jefferson...
...It was the Americans who warned the British of the tremendous hostility toward the AngloIranian Oil Company that was building up in Iran shortly before the oil wells were nationalized—a warning which the British did not heed, with disastrous consequences...
...Healey does not consider the people of the Philippines proper Asians, since they also live on "off-shore islands...
...Of course, all well-known refugees must be hidden by day...
...The reason for this change of heart, Mr...
...In any case, one might also say that Geneva was the price America paid for getting Britain to join SEATO...
...As proof of the correctness of Britain's policies, Mr...
...and that this explains our differences in foreign policy and outlook...
...The sentence did have the specific gravity of lead, but it was clear enough in its context...
...Today I remember his work with an extraordinary feeling of gratitude...
...During repeated visits to Vichy I found its Minister of Police most willing to give us the fullest protection of the French Surete...
...May I urge him to read Keith Irvine's "Tomorrow's Tanganyika: Colonial or Free...
...Mason Sears has backed down from his original stand that a target date be set for Tanganyikan selfgovernment...
...Hiroshima, Japan TATSUO MORITO President, Hiroshima University...
...I would like, however, to bring Mr...
...Blue Ridge Summit, Pa...
...Healey says that "SEATO was the price Britain paid America for allowing the Geneva Conference to succeed"—with the tacit assumption, it would seem, that the Conference was so very wise...
...Vishniak's reference to their arrest by the Hitler agents and their murder by the Hitler gangsters in Germany, brings sadly to mind, once again, the tragedies of that period...
...Our organization as Marseilles, which was sponsored by the American labor movement, was efficiently staffed by leading refugees...
...In passing, let me take my hat off to William Henry Chamberlin for his April 18 column, in which he shows that those who would give away Quemoy and Matsu "do not learn from history") I am not willing to admit, however, that the British have a monopoly on "understanding" the Asians...
...a more strenuous effort to bring them out...
...Britain is not weak in Africa, therefore she does not see the irresistible forces there...
...I should like to register a dissenting opinion...
...According to Mr...
...Hilferding had been Minister of Finance in the Weimar Republic...
...Their case was hopeless...
Vol. 38 • May 1955 • No. 22
