Dear Editor
DEAR EDITOR 'WHITE GUARDS' For Salvador de Madariaga I have heretofore felt only high respect. The central concept of his articles (NL. July 4-11, July 18-25) on the inevitability of eventual...
...Not so...
...Is the reading public gagging on a surfeit of Josephine Herbst or Mark Harris or Edward Hoagland...
...Kovacs, himself a product of the Hungarian Populist writers group, does not, in my opinion, have a correct view of the nature of the Revolution nor of the role played by a considerable number of Communist party members...
...I agree the Authority is trying to solve its racial problem, and I understand at least as well as Starr the problem's painful complexity...
...CURTIN WINSOR INTEGRATED HOUSING Bernard Roshco's article ("The Integration Problem and Public Housing...
...Roshco is apparently incensed at the New York City Housing Authority because it is trying to achieve non-segregated living patterns in its projects in the face of all the forces that promote segregation in this big, diverse and divided city...
...But this is precisely opposed to being an opportunist...
...The sentence, unhappily, does not make clear which is to he considered THE NEW LEADER welcomes comment and criticism on any of its features, but letters should not exceed 300 words, the prime sin, the benevolence or the autocratic manner...
...In short, is the literary situation so nearly perfect that we can cavil, for such a reason, at the appearance of a serious magazine...
...According to him, Aczel changed his name in 1945, from "Auspitz to Aczel, which in Hungarian means what Stalin does in Russian—steel...
...On what grounds...
...This is completely unjustifiable...
...It is regrettable that Kovacs blames Aczel and Meray without knowing what he is talking about...
...He then goes on to attack The Noble Savage for printing previously published writers: "Why is it necessary to have still another periodical for these writers...
...It would seem to me that the prime bureaucratic sin has been the tendency of administrators to construe their responsibility narrowly and rigidly...
...As for the name of the periodical, surely it is at least as appropriate as that of THE NEW LEADER But this is not a point for serious discussion, and I find it odd that Sale—who is, after all, interested in essentials—should open with a salvo against the title and what he calls the "slick purple" cover, which is contrasted with poor Lippincott's "ghastly orange and green...
...Although Kovacs recognizes some merits in the writing, for him "all this is only an intellectual Potemkin facade behind which they [Aczel and Meray] hide their own errors and those of their associates...
...He claims that "one of the prime sins" of such an institution as the Authority is its "undertaking to act as a benevolent autocracy...
...It is good to see it revived, and the contents of No...
...Personalities I shall deal with quickly...
...NL, July 4-11) is a fascinating example of how hard a writer will strive to construct a scandal where none exists...
...Citizens' Housing and Planning Council of New York Bernard Roshco replies: Roger Starr devotes almost as much of his letter to attacking my motives as to dealing with the questions I raised...
...Apparently he is unaware of the Authority's recent admissions and self-contradictions...
...as for personalities, they concern me only insofar as they impinge on questions of a more general nature...
...Did not many speak over the radio and was not, in fact, the last Radio Kossuth broadcast an appeal to the world by the Writers' Association, the responsibility for which was later attributed to playwright Gyula Hay...
...The role of the Communist writers in these developments—documented in so lively and convincing a fashion in Aczel and Meray's book—cannot be underestimated...
...LITERARY WARDENS There is no better proof of the almost worldwide authority and respect enjoyed by THE NEW LEADER among the non-Communist left than the number of letters sent to me concerning Imre Kovacs' review of Tamas Aczel and Tibor Meray's The Revolt of the Mind (NL, April 25...
...What I regret in Kovacs' review is that it should have so little to say about the book itself...
...July 4-11, July 18-25) on the inevitability of eventual World Government provokes further respect...
...One has only to run down the list of [Communist] intellectuals imprisoned for their activities during and after the Revolution...
...Starr and the Housing Authority should both learn to look before they leap...
...Starr's justification of the Authority's methods seems to be that any action is better than no action...
...Moreover, there are new, young writers in The Noble Savage 1, and there will be more in The Noble Savage 2. Would it not have been better to have waited for two or three issues before talking of tendencies, of lack of hospitality toward new work, and rather to have used the space to discuss more of the contents of the issue in hand...
...But he said the Authority's new program of racial integration had not been made public because "it might be misunderstood.'" Yet Starr claims the Authority has "encouraged" what he describes as "discussions, debates and public disclosures," which I pointed out were deliberate efforts to mask the Authority's actual program...
...In the field of housing, they have tended to think of themselves as builders and landlords, and to remain indifferent to the patterns of racial segregation which their projects would freeze for generations to come...
...New York City ROGER STARR Executive Director...
...The Authority has proved it cannot solve the problem through subterfuge and in secrecy...
...Right after the war, in 1945, during elections everyone agrees were free, the Communist party received about 17 per cent of the votes...
...The Petofi Circle, the Writers' Association and its journal, Irodalmi Ujsag, became the bastions of intellectual resistance...
...Kovacs writes about the Communist intellectuals, "And when the Revolution broke out anyway, they disappeared in a matter of days...
...Can you visualize this international street-cleaning brigade dropping unarmed to face the Congo or Iraq mobs, or Castro's strong men in Havana...
...The New York City Housing Authority's unwillingness to take this easy escape from the consequences of its building activities should, I think, entitle it to praise, not censure, in your columns...
...That's why I believe the interested public ought to know what is being done...
...This is unanimously recognized by all who lived in Hungary during that period...
...As the Times revealed in the same report: "Mr...
...Reid [the Authority chairman] denied Mr...
...Such a brigade dropped in Budapest during Hungary's hours of agony, far from making "the outcome of that struggle quite different," would have lasted a matter of minutes against the Soviet tanks...
...I have verified this detail and can assure you that Kovacs' information is incorrect...
...Roshco's statement that apartments were held vacant waiting for white tenants...
...In a country under a "dictatorship of the proletariat...
...The quotes around "new young writers" in the first paragraph imply that The Noble Savage thus describes its contributing editors...
...He writes, "If the Revolt of 1956 had its storm birds, they were the Populist writers . . . who, since the 1930s, had looked for a Hungarian solution between the deadly doctrines of Fascism and Communism...
...Philadelphia, Pa...
...More unfair even than Roshco's charges against the Housing Authority in particular is his general statement about bureaucracy in a democratic society...
...Upon further questioning by this newspaper of Madison S. Jones...
...in order to recognize the patriotism of a [Populist] Laszlo Nemeth or of a Gyula Illyes...
...Madariaga had best stick to the noble generalities in which he excels lest he dredge up recollections of the slaughter of St...
...To begin at the beginning: The price of The Noble Savage is $1.50 per issue, not $1.65...
...Bobbins, vice chairman of the Authority, said that vacant apartments were held for white tenants—'but not for long.' " The Housing Authority still had not settled on one story several days later, as indicated by New York's leading Negro newspaper, the Amsterdam News, in its July 9 issue: "In exclusive comments to The Amsterdam News, CHA chairman William Reid charged that the article was filled with 'misstatements, half-truths, innuendoes and misleading assertions.' " 'The conclusions drawn by the author are without foundation,' Reid declared...
...Subsequently, above all at the beginning of 1956 and particularly after the 20th Congress of the CPSU, it was still in the core of the Party and in the organizations it controlled that protests were raised with the greatest vehemence...
...Starr's defense of the housing authority boils down to two words: They're trying...
...only Party members enjoy a relative freedom of speech and association...
...Do we sicken when we see Ralph Ellison or Harvey Swados on the front cover of a magazine...
...With that backlog you don't have time to hold anything vacant.' "Mr...
...No doubt the Populist writers have among them great artists and remarkable thinkers, and their influence has profoundly marked Hungarian youth . . . but there is no need to minimize the importance of the role played by [Communists] Dery, Hay, etc...
...Okay...
...Or, for that matter, in Sewanee or Kenyon...
...In assembling his alleged scandal, Roshco intimates that non-needy persons are admitted into public housing projects in order to achieve racial objectives (not true), and that the Authority's racial program has somehow been carried on in secret to avoid "the possibility that either its objectives or its methods might have to be revised in the light of public analysis and debate...
...Did not Party members, such as novelist Tibor Dery, poet Laszlo Benjamin, writer Gyorgy Paloczi-Horvath, poets Lajos Tamasi, Karoly Jobbagy, and many-others, contribute to the famous November 2 issue of Irodalmi Ujsag which was published in the midst of the Revolution...
...Any objective reader will recognize that this book is one of the best constructed and richest in striking new details of any of the books written about the crisis of intellectuals in the Communist world...
...What I do object to is Sale's use of it as a club...
...I hardly blame Starr for having been misled, since the Authority can't get its own story straight...
...We have a backlog of 60,000 families, white and non-white, who want to get into public housing,' he said...
...New York City AARON ASHER Editor, Meridian Books...
...Sale's next paragraph is straight criticism...
...This usually hypocritical disavowal of leadership responsibility has been used to justify the continuation of segregation in education, in the armed forces and in every part of American life where it has been the customary pattern...
...Ursula and her virgins from the mysticism of the Middle Ages...
...But when he descends to particulars and urges the formation of an unarmed international police force of ''White Guards," parachuting by the thousands, by orders of the "World Government...
...Aczel and Meray, each in his own way, have been Communists of the kind one calls fanatic— on this almost all who knew them in Hungary agree...
...into geographical areas of world tension, "stopping advancing armies by refusing to move from roads, railways or airfields...
...The future Stalin Prize-winner was born in 1921 as Aczel...
...But if it was so strong, it was precisely because it came from Party members, themselves repelled and disgusted by Stalinist practices, who became the spokesmen of the entire nation...
...This decision has often proved fatal to those who jumped out of windows before checking if the nets were in place...
...But in either case, Roshco simply restates, in negative form, a familiar excuse given by public officials for avoiding action on racial problems : that they have no clear mandate for integration from the electorate...
...And this is one of the reasons which prompted me to intervene...
...Was not Gyorgy Lukacs minister in Imre Nagy's revolutionary Government...
...I have nothing against New World Writing...
...Starr tries to refute only the charge of deceit...
...15,000-a-year Director of Intergroup Relations for the Authority and former NAACP housing specialist, Jones admitted that 'in some instances we are encouraging white families in projects, and there have been instances where we have held apartments for a reasonable time in order to assist in our integration attempts.' " It doesn't even require the ability to understand what benevolent autocracy means to detect that—perhaps Starr prefers a more distinguished writer's figure of speech—something is rotten in the state of Denmark...
...The latter concerns me because it involves a general judgment of the nature of the Hungarian Revolution...
...the sublime plummets to the ridiculous...
...After Imre Nagy's rise to power in 1953—which was marked by some "liberalization" of the regime —and while the general populace still dared not raise its voice (living as it was under the terror), some Party members began publicly to criticize the heritage of Stalinism at cell meetings...
...The truth, I believe, is infinitely more complex...
...Among these were surely some opportunists, but also a large number who believed that the Party, then preaching internal and external peaceful coexistence, would be the safest bulwark against a rebirth of fascism...
...I suggest another look at the table of contents...
...He shows them as two unprincipled arrivistes...
...As though in rebuttal of the latter charge, Roshco himself cites some of the discussions, debates and public disclosures that the Authority has encouraged...
...Certainly, the repression struck "heretical" Communist intellectuals far harder than any others...
...Neuilly-sur-Seine FRANCOIS FEJTO NEW WRITING I have several dissenting remarks about J. Kirk Sale's review of The Noble Savage and New World Writing #16, "New Worlds and Old Writers," (NL, August 1-8...
...For example, on July 4 the New York Times reported this response to my article from the Authority: "Ira S. Robbins, vice chairman of the Authority, also denied such discrimination...
...My principal charges against the New York City Housing Authority's racial integration program were that it is (1) obviously deceitful, (2) probably illegal and (3) largely unsuccessful...
...So much for general problems...
...Kovacs' review raises a number of personal and historical questions with which I would like to deal...
...16 are stimulating and often excellent...
...How many of these writers appear in The New Yorker or Esquire...
...For my part, I have more faith in his motives than his knowledge, and prefer, therefore, to concern myself with questions of substance...
Vol. 43 • August 1960 • No. 33
