Dear Editor
DEAR EDITOR JAN MASARYK I have read in your March 10 issue the article by Dr. Edward Taborsky, "Jan Masaryk As I Knew Him." I happened to be one of Jan Masaryk's personal collaborators, and I must...
...I did say that he "made a brilliant, unsurpassed roving ambassador of good will" and I think I also gave due credit to his popularity both at home and abroad...
...I happened to be one of Jan Masaryk's personal collaborators, and I must say I was puzzled as to the purpose of this article...
...Then I attended the Friday afternoon concerts at Carnegie Hall...
...Taborsky is not only a colleague of mine but also ci friend, I sent copies of the article to scores of people, and briefly the result is that there are now very many puzzled people...
...business organizations develop with amazing speed that no one will suppose that TV has reached its climax...
...Bunker also raises the question of reliability of troops...
...Bunker also exaggerates the amount of native resistance to the Chinese Communist regime, trying to show that the insignificant activities of a few malcontents is paralyzing Communist authorities...
...Now we have two1 or three dove-tailed as though they were the main show...
...Celler should be opposed to experimentation with such an important public facility as television...
...If this can only be done at the expense of military expediency, the loss must be chalked up to the fortunes of war...
...I fail to understand, however, why Bunker presents his case from a purely military viewpoint rather than from the broader and more important socio-political viewpoint...
...It is my belief that the unhappy propaganda consequences of this situation far outbalance any short-range military advantages that may or may not accrue from such testing...
...In short, the need for suspending atomic testing does not stem from, nor can it be explained by, military strategy...
...In the light of these few facts, I think it goes without saying that the article you published was neither fair, complete nor factual...
...He judges the present and potential military strength of a regime that has been in power for decade on the basis of a military adventure that it undertook only two years after its rule began...
...Equally plain is the necessity for reappraising and revitalizing our foreign policy, which has hit a new low in sterility and unimaginativeness...
...We are so used to seeing our mechanisms and...
...Let's be more precise and compare the U.S...
...His letter in The Neiv Leader on April 21 interests me very much, but does not reduce my puzzlement...
...One of Sir Robert's books is an intimate and very successful biography called Jan Masaryk...
...What surprises me are the remarks of the younger people that I overhear during intermissions nowadays...
...An edict of August 7, 1932, published in Izvestia on August 8, 1932, decided "to employ as a measure of legal repression of thieving from kolkhoz and cooperative property the supreme measure of socialist defense— execution by shooting—with confiscation of property" and "Not to extend any clemency to criminals convicted of theft front "kolkhoz and cooperative property...
...The 1947 penalty was 7 to 10 years, and even up to 25 years, of penal servitude...
...However, to remain outside personal controversy I should like to quote from a letter I received from Sir Robert Bruce Lockhart, former deputy Under Secretary for Foreign Affairs, wartime Director of the Political Warfare executive, former Minister to Czechoslovakia and author...
...The danger which Communist China presents deserves greater appreciation...
...This just isn't so...
...As Dr...
...Television is a very recent addition to our means of communication and entertainment...
...Then there are the countless station breaks...
...People naturally think of our present stage as the beginning rather than the end...
...There is, of course, some truth in the somewhat gloomy picture which he draws...
...There is little to be added to this well-tempered postscript offering understanding both for the author of your article and for his object...
...Moreover, Communist and free-world lines are not firmly drawn and more people seem to be falling into the Eastern camp than out of it...
...Worcester, Mass...
...Formerly we had one ad of a cigarette or constipation cure every few minutes...
...Now Congressman Celler is telling the American people that things must always be like this, that our TV performances must never be improved, that the American genius for improvement must be hobbled by law...
...Without Benes, Jan might never have come to the front in politics, but Jan was also a most useful and necessary assistant to the President...
...I still can't understand why a fine, public-spirited, ultra-democratic congressman like Mr...
...Wolfville, N. S. "Watson Kirkconnell ENDING NUCLEAR TESTS I should like to comment on Ernest Bunker's letter of May 5. To begin with, I agree that nuclear tests should be ended and that the U.S...
...Taborsky replies: The article tells the truth about Jan Masaryk as I see it on the basis of my long years of close observation of his work and behavior...
...Bunker also dismisses the military threat of the Chinese Communists much too lightly...
...I, too, "wonder what has happened to Leonard Bernstein's musical judgment...
...This is all the Communists need to achieve their goal of world domination...
...Millions of Americans who are pleased with the mechanical performance of TV receiving sets are violently discontented with the way in which these magic moving-pictures are sent over the air...
...policy must be radically overhauled...
...regularly during the war...
...The English-speaking world had great confidence in him, and in this respect both Benes and his country owe much to him...
...Brooklyn Grace S. Reynolds...
...These were years of many happy times and much pleasure...
...We are already engaged in World War III: a ' war of propaganda...
...and France with the USSR and Poland (who together have a population of 228 million) ; the edge, as the figures show, shifts...
...I should think it would be just as easy to prevent by law the sale of bread or meat...
...If Bunker's five-point program were adopted, it would go a long way toward improving our position...
...William E. Bohn SOVIET LAW In your issue of May 5, Vladimir Gsovski cites an edict of 1947 on the theft of public and private property as providing "much harsher punishment for this crime than that previously established by the Criminal Codes...
...He proposes, in fact, to have a law passed which would prevent anyone from offering TV programs on a pay basis...
...I do not believe that one can prove the wisdom of suspending A-bomb tests on the basis of military strategy...
...The number of them which intrude upon the performances is constantly increasing...
...FITZGERALD Your Spring Book Number was interesting and entertaining, and I was particularly pleased to see the fatuous over-praise of Ernest Jones's Freud biography deflated by Bruno Bettelheim...
...From 1932 to 1947, however, the penalty for the theft of state property was still sterner...
...It shows how pathetically little the priests of the cult have to work with...
...London J. Josten Dr...
...More than once there were minor misunderstandings and Roosevelt or Eden would send for Jan, and all would be well...
...Then those sponsoring it and investing in it will lose their money...
...That he was loved by the Czechoslovak people I had many opportunities of proving, not the least occasion being his triumph at the meeting at Munich in May 1947, when the great crowd, bored by the speeches of Slansky and other Communists, cheered and mobbed him for half-an-hour after the meeting was over...
...If the impression, was created that I overlook his great qualities as a diplomat, I sincerely regret it, for that has not been my intention...
...Hindus's attempt to elevate Fitzgerald above Faulkner and Hemingway by virtue of some fuzzy and undefinable quality which he calls "centrality" (the italics, God knows, are his) is laughable...
...On the other hand, I think that Edward Taborsky overlooks or does not understand Jan's great qualities as a diplomat...
...If we are to win it—which so far we have not been doing—we must fight with weapons similar to those the enemy is using...
...The sane and astringent note struck in this review, however, was canceled out by the schoolgirl gushing of Milton Hindus over F. Scott Fitzgerald...
...Indeed, beside the Uzbekian soldier who is fanatically dedicated to Communism, the ideologically indifferent Western mercenary appears very insignificant...
...even if we do have some kind of meaningless statistical advantage, we may very well see it wiped out before long...
...Neville Cardus wrote recently in the Manchester Guardian that « person educated before 1914 cannot understand the mathematical music of this scientific age...
...Only on the grounds of socio-political strategy and, even more important, on moral grounds can the abandonment of A-bomb development be justified...
...However, since I dealt with Jan Masaryk primarily as a statesman, it would not have been honest to conceal his weaknesses in that respect...
...Anyone who speaks of Fitzgerald's thin and erratic talent as "great" must be at a total loss for words to describe the authentic giants of literature...
...If a man produces TV programs to sell and I want to buy them, who can prevent the transaction...
...He then compares the combined population of the U.S...
...It is no secret to state that Benes was not at his best with the British and Americans, partly because he was not very fluent in English...
...This was the Soviet law on even petty theft for the next fifteen years...
...He writes: "I have read Edward Taborsky's article on Jan Masaryk...
...If there had ever been a democratic successor to Benes in the Presidency, it would have been Masaryk...
...We cannot afford one propaganda shellacking after another for the sake of nebulous "reasons of military necessity" which, in the long run, aren't so necessary...
...And Senator Richard Neuberger observed: "If pay-television is so evil, obviously it will be failure...
...In the Senate recently Senator Russell B. Long asked: "If pay-television is as bad as the Columbia Broadcasting System and the National Broadcasting Company say it is, why are they afraid to let the public look at it...
...This is legitimate, but who can say whether the armies of NATO or the Warsaw Pact powers will prove the more reliable...
...PAY-TELEVISION From the beginning of the discussion of pay-TV, I have been puzzled by Congressman Emanuel Celler's attitude...
...It has developed with amazing speed and has already become an important feature of our national life...
...Bunker says that numerically the free world is equal in strength to the Communists...
...Much of their music is played too fast and too loud...
...and France (215 million) with that of the USSR (200 million...
...It may be taken as an axiom that a passion for the writings of Scott Fitzgerald is an infallible sign of an arrested literary taste...
...they have the same opinions that I have...
...For the moment, let us leave the argument there...
...But I just wish to state that Masaryk was elected the first President of the World Federation of the United Nations Associations and he was, indeed, the most popular man in Czechoslovak politics...
...The composers of today should be listened to earnestly, but the old masters deserve to be played with love...
...Hastings-on-Hudson, N. Y. Robert Manners Jr...
...It is quite clear that our continuing atomic tests have cost us considerable prestige abroad at a. time when we can least afford it...
...I began attending concerts when a student at the University of Berlin, in 1906-7...
...What use is mastery of the military front if it requires giving the communists free rein on the political and ideological fronts...
...In the first place, they object to the commercials...
...He was devoted to President Benes, and Jan was certainly not a politician in the sense that Benes was...
...Erik E. Stenmark MUSIC I agree with Hihbard James's comments on the New York Philharmonic (NL, May 5...
...I saw him...
...Taborsky is u. serious man...
...Only on rare occasions do we have a play or some special musical performance which is free of such crude interruptions—just to remind us how fine and satisfactory television can be when it is not jerked to a halt every little while...
...In 191112 we had seats at the Philharmonic, which then played in Brooklyn on Sunday afternoons...
Vol. 41 • June 1958 • No. 22
