Dear Editor
DEAR EDITOR LAUREL AT BAY I subscribe to your magazine but cannot respect it when you classify under the heading of "Laurel" (NL, April 4) Malcolm Cowley's review of Leslie Fiedler's Love and...
...If Berle would like the universities to speak up he must first change the atmosphere within the universities...
...I earnestly hope and pray that come next January our new president will give us the kind of leadership called for by your editorial writer and which we so desperately need...
...In his article, "Education: Key to America's Future" (NL, March 28), Adolf Berle calls upon universities everywhere to "concern themselves with a moral order...
...Your writers and editors—and most particularly William Bohn—are people I would like to know . . . as, indeed, I feel I do...
...Part of the answer is that the Government is corrupt and hypocritical, that highway interests are stronger than slum dwellers, that elections are not fought on the question of housing alone, etc...
...Between the New Deal and today, with the hot and cold wars, the fading of ideologies, and the loss of meaning which we used to find in so many slogans and movements, liberals as a group have lost their character . . . except in THE NEW LEADER...
...If their moral values were indeed different than those of society, why would so many of them be choosing jobs where the salary is bigger, rather than remaining in the university where, presumably, the work is more important...
...So are churches and corporations...
...USSR, unless unlimited inspection rights Nor should any objective judge of the Soviet record of respecting international agreements have to search far for the evidence...
...Is not such a risk magnified when a GM vice president sits on the board of trustees...
...New York City ADOLPHE J. WARNER LEADERSHIP Congratulations to the author of the "Between Issues" column in your 21 March issue...
...second, to take these conclusions out of the realm of the ideal and to achieve them...
...The USSR has, on that record, rejected each and every serious proposal for effective inspection for 13 years and, only recently in Geneva, refused out of hand even to consider any realistic inspection scheme by insisting on prior "complete disarmament"—a propaganda farce unlikely to deceive any but those who desire to be deceived...
...in practice he is likely to choose an Oldsmobile and insist that the Government help drive it...
...However, it leaves unanswered the "who-what-whom...
...Governments, whether democratic or totalitarian, are easily infected by the same human lust for energy and power...
...How can the university bite the hand that feeds it...
...You have managed to retain a tough-minded-ness which is worthy of unqualified respect with a basic decency toward the human condition which I would call "idealism," if that word weren't so badly tarnished...
...Edward Teller's awareness of the mortal danger of any slipshod nuclear inspection system—agreed on for the mere sake of agreement—is by now shared by an impressive number of technically qualified observers, including the panel appointed by the Science Advisory Committee of the U.S...
...If Harrington is too naive to see that the Soviet Government's effort, apart from its propagandistic appeal to immature and fuzzy minds, is merely designed to bring about the West's unilateral disarmament in order to subject it the more effectively to nuclear blackmail, he is badly in need of pondering the elementary facts so tellingly expounded by Chamberlin...
...But another part of the answer is, I am afraid, to be found in the contradiction between men's rational values and their less rational wishes...
...And even at the affluent schools this is likely to happen only rarely...
...and boards of trustees are increasingly made up of men from big business whose influence is helpful in obtaining corporate funds and whose personal fortunes are seen as potential endowment...
...The problem is, first, to decide which goals should have precedence, and in what degree...
...Though industry does not give nearly enough to education, nevertheless higher education relies more and more for its non-tuition income on corporations and individuals high up in the corporate structure...
...In the second place, university professors, Berle's "best brains," are products of the society in which they were reared, and too many of them may find nothing immoral in planned obsolescence...
...Princeton, N. J. HERBERT STURZ EDUCATION THE KEY...
...What is there for them to say that hasn't already been said—to little avail—by John Ruskin, Karl Mannheim, Lewis Mumford and many others...
...DEAR EDITOR LAUREL AT BAY I subscribe to your magazine but cannot respect it when you classify under the heading of "Laurel" (NL, April 4) Malcolm Cowley's review of Leslie Fiedler's Love and Death in the American Novel...
...What is relevant is that you have deliberately and cynically distorted Cowley's thesis...
...No matter what we would like to believe, professors are no better than anybody else when it comes to courage and values—we, too, have hardly any...
...Colorado Springs J. M. LANE Adolf Berle feels that university professors are letting us down because they don't "concern themselves with a moral order...
...Harrington accuses Chamberlin of "having made no effort to discover whether the Soviet Union is willing to permit verification of disarmament...
...I expect a cheap tabloid to quote out of context in order to further either its pets, projects or itself...
...Moreover, there is so little moral indignation about events within the ivory tower that there is none to spare for the world outside...
...Chamberlin's article cites specific reasons for his belief that any such agreement, while being scrupulously honored by the United States, is almost certain to be violated by the (called espionage by the Soviets) are granted...
...Does 'Berle have in mind a professional elite, an informed group which understands the forces of history, acting as a ruling or directing elite...
...Since the quantity of power CONTINUED ON NEXT PAGE DEAR EDITOR available is increasing, we must therefore expect that the world will grow less and less concerned with values...
...Port Washington, N. Y. FRANCIS S. PIERCE KUDOS During the eight years that I have been a NEW LEADER SUBSCRIBER, it has become my most valued periodical...
...But I find that I really read THE NEW LEADER, usually in a single sitting...
...First of all, if a university says clearly, loudly and publicly that planned obsolescence of refrigerators and automobiles is a colossal waste, it may find its scholarships and unrestricted grants from General Motors suddenly ceased...
...Berle's level of discourse only obscures the real problem, which is the relation between values and society...
...Except at universities such as Columbia, where Berle teaches, and other "well-heeled" and thus independent institutions, this is not likely to happen...
...Or, at least it would seem to have reasonable grounds for a fear that this may happen...
...Everybody agrees, for example, that we need more houses rather than more automobiles...
...THE NEW LEADER is unique, I think, in sustaining the liberal outlook in terms which are both consistent and realistic in a period which has been very difficult for liberals...
...It is irrelevant that I happen to agree—that you apparently disagree—with Cowley's analysis of the basic destructiveness and weakness of Fiedler's approach to literature...
...The world is insane, but it is led by men who are not devoid of moral values...
...New York City J. H. DAVIS DISARMAMENT The Reverend Donald S. Harrington's attack (NL, March 28) on that astute analyst of today's foreign scene, William H. Chamberlin, more than vindicates the Air Force's recent— and unjustly maligned—exposure of how far fellow travelers and their dupes have infiltrated our Protestant churches...
...the same jockeying for position and for favor that is considered amoral if not immoral in our business society...
...Abstractly, no doubt, he prefers the house...
...Then why does the Government allot so much more money to highway building than to slum clearance...
...Bethlehem, Pa...
...What, after all, can the average man do with a house except sleep in it...
...I read other magazines, of course, skim others, and pick and choose...
...RICHARD W. MURPHY...
...When university money is so hard to come by and is so badly needed, why should the risk be run...
...EUGENE VASILEW Adolf Berle's presentation is cogent, and in the main many of us concur...
...Within the university there exists THE NEW LEADER welcomes comment and criticism on any of its features, but letters should not exceed 300 words...
...question— just who is to decide what is good for whom...
...Professors, he says, "must be saying with bluntness what things are first and first rate . . . and what are discreditable and due to be discarded...
...It is simply not true to say that "planning a democratic economy, at bottom, is a straightforward matter...
...Such an effort would be patently futile...
...It should be the keynote of the forthcoming election campaign...
...Arlington, Va...
...His statement is one of the most stirring calls for leadership that I have seen and heard in recent years...
...Government...
...If anyone doubts this, let him look at the advertisements for engineers —of whom Berle says we have too few...
Vol. 43 • April 1960 • No. 16
