Dear Editor
DEAR EDITOR BERLIN The New Leader generally carries articles which are very good indeed, but the one by Richard C. Hottelet, the first of three articles on Berlin ("Khrushchev's Strategy," NL,...
...The parochial and private schools are restrictive and exclusive...
...New York City Arnold Beichman If Professor Morgenthau uses the word "intellectual" to mean one who is "rather sure of himself," believes that "anything goes that is presented cleverly and with assurance," and engages in "that innocuous and frequently irrelevant pastime which we call pretentiously the academic dialogue," he is free to do so...
...O'Toole fails to elaborate on another point...
...But the test of an idea lies in its application, and the stature of an intellectual may be measured by how well his ideas satisfy this test...
...The Morgenthau-Fulbright thesis has only a surface plausibility even if the Communist challenge is regarded as purely military...
...If Morgenthau directed his criticism to performance rather than to academic origin, his views would gain clarity and relevance...
...it seems to me that, except for a fringe of anti-Semites (representing about one hundreth of one per cent of the population), this nation was united as it had never been united before...
...or the prevention of the Colombian forces from suppressing the uprising in Panama in 1903...
...And I don't think it is Soviet Premier Nikita Krush* chev's intention that we should ever be tempted to make such an effort...
...I suspect that, in the words of Mr...
...Some Catholic families, in fact, refuse to send children to parochial schools because they do not accurately reflect the religious, racial and economic composition of our society...
...It is difficult not to wonder how large a group is represented by Jacobs' "we...
...From a purely military standpoint, Laos is a trifling bit of real estate and Cuba is perhaps, a little more than trifling...
...or the occupation of the Republic of Haiti in 1915...
...or the invasion of Spain's Florida province in 1818 before we forced the sale of that peninsula...
...Obviously, no nation or group of nations doomed to a defensive posture can guard every spot on earth against Soviet intervention...
...The Morgenthau-Fulbright doctrine has a Cartesian, rationalistic ring of irrefutability, but, as Ortega y Gasset once said, "pure reason cannot supplant life...
...or the "punitive expedition" to Nicaragua...
...Surely President Kennedy need not be criticized for attracting intellectuals to government...
...But it is truth by his definition only, and is politically meaningless...
...Indeed, they have no more ideas than the practical, anti-egghead politicians of the Eisenhower Administration...
...Laos is indefensible, and it follows that Southeast Asia and beyond may also be indefensible...
...The public school is open for all to attend, including Catholics...
...While we are certain about the eventual overthrow of fascist tyrants or Western colonialist regimes, we have been conditioned to regard as imThe New Leader welcomes comment and criticism on any of its features, but letters should not exceed 300 words...
...Newsweek recently reported about a suggestion that the West Germans build another Berlin (for $2 billion), donate the present Berlin to East German Communist chief Walter Ulbricht and thus avoid the risk of war in the defense of indefensible and non-essential positions...
...No one, as far as I know, has described the problem of Berlin as exactly and adequately as Hottelet has done...
...But if Communist antagonism is regarded as emerging from some pseudo-ideological platform based on the revealed truths of Leninism-Stalinism, then it becomes quite difficult, on the basis of Communist rhetoric, to define the "indefensible," the "nonessential," the "important" and the "crucial...
...made virtually the same point...
...Morgenthau urges the "liquidation of overextended commitments," adding: "That is to say, the United States, if it does not want to risk war in the defense of indefensible and at best non-essential positions, must retreat from these positions...
...If South Vietnam is nearing the "non-essential," then Thailand and Malaya are already part of the expanding universe of nonessentiality...
...What has trapped the free world is some kind of wide private acceptance of the Sino-Soviet offensive with its irridentist ideology as congruent with "the revolution of our time," the wave of the future...
...The Paris of the East is hardly worth a mass...
...Many, however, do see the maintenance of such a system as a threat to their own religious freedom and thus rebel against the idea of providing public funds to sustain such a threat...
...And why, and by what standard, did Britain's cause in 1940 become America's cause when quite obviously the British Isles were militarily indefensible...
...This belief, despite OToole's arguments to the contrary, has nothing to do with liberal or conservative thinking but has a great deal to do with basic American democracy...
...mutable the wilfulness of Sino-Soviet imperialism and its many conquests...
...Isn't it time for the free world to declare its own offensive against this new imperialism, to announce that freedom has its own irridentist claims against this new Holy Alliance...
...Isn't it time for the free world to uncover what Moscow and Peking regard as indefensible and non-essential...
...This is not only crucial to the whole question, but it defies logical and practical application...
...The U.S., he indicated, should avoid peripheral, contests, such as Cuba or Laos...
...Perhaps individual Catholics will, but will the Catholic Hierarchy...
...A few weeks ago, Senator J. William Fulbright (D.-Ark...
...And this despite the uprisings in East Germany, Hungary and Poland...
...W. E. Chilton III PAUL JACOBS "A combination of factors caused a fundamental feeling of distrust for many of us about the nature of World War II—a war we never really accepted as ours in the same way we accepted the Spanish Civil War...
...DEAR EDITOR BERLIN The New Leader generally carries articles which are very good indeed, but the one by Richard C. Hottelet, the first of three articles on Berlin ("Khrushchev's Strategy," NL, June 26), impressed me so deeply that I must let you know...
...Charleston, W. Va...
...state education issue is often a. bone of contention...
...Communism in that time has enslaved almost 900 million people...
...The workers in Budapest, in Poznan, in East Berlin and, perhaps, even in Tiflis, had such a vision...
...After all if Hitler was allowed to swallow the Rhineland, Austria, the Sudetenland and finally Czechoslovakia, anyone of which could have been defined as "crucial," to panic over the patently "indefensible" Danzig was absurd...
...In bemoaning "our really grave mistakes in Cuba" before Fidel Castro came to power, Edsall does not state what they were nor how they could have been avoided if there were any, without the very kind of a military attack and occupation that he himself deplores...
...The War Over the Danzig Corridor, now known as World War II, if one accepts the revisionist thesis of A. J. P. Taylor, was initiated over an "important" but not a "crucial" issue...
...Fogarty, it could caucus in a telephone booth...
...This is what most Catholics do not understand or will not understand...
...This current political casuistry is due to an unspoken acceptance that the tide of history, Communist version, is irreversible...
...We regard as inevitable that before too long Algeria, Angola...
...Please convey to him my warmest thanks and gratitude for his article, and especially for his complete understanding of the situation...
...The chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee argued the necessity of distinguishing what is "crucial" to United States foreign policy from what is "merely important...
...unfortunately, they lacked armaments against what was a real counterrevolutionary invasion and, most of all, they lacked the free world's support...
...I suspect that Morgenthau is committed to what, for want of a better term, may be called the intellectualistic fallacy: i.e., that ideas may be good in theory and bad in practice...
...I am awaiting future articles in The New Leader on Berlin, and possibly I will write you again...
...Catholics themselves," declares O'Toole, "will reject any formula of public aid so subtantial as to give the Government crucial power over private school education...
...Thus Paul Jacobs in his article, "Eichmann and Jewish Identity" (NL, July 3-10...
...If he means that some intellectuals behave in this way, then his criticism does not apply to those intellectuals who do not...
...I think he has given the final, definitive word on the problems that divide East and West...
...He presents the issues in real and logical form...
...Has Edsall heard about the military attack on Mexico over acentury ago...
...Brooklyn, N. Y. Arthur Youncer AID TO EDUCATION In Thomas J. OToole's article presenting the case for "Aiding Non-Public Schools" (NL, July 17-24) several important aspects of this divisive issue are overlooked...
...If there is to be Federal aid to education for private and parochial schools, for example, where precisely would O'Toole draw the line...
...New York City James Henle CASTRO'S CUBA In John T. Edsall's apology for signing the "Open Letter to President Kennedy" on Castro's Cuba ("Dear Editor," NL, June 26), I was astonished and depressed to read that "it has been basic to our policy that we do not launch military attacks against other nations, especially small nations...
...it is that they have given no evidence of capacity to generate new ideas...
...If he means that all intellectuals behave in this way, then his criticism is extravagant and untenable...
...The West in the past 20 years has freed 800 million people from foreign domination...
...In those nations where the Catholic Church is dominant the state underwrites most of the costs of a Catholic education and does not seriously interfere with what is taught, for obvious reasons...
...If the West abandons Berlin then all of Europe would be lost, and gradually, maybe all the world...
...New York City George S. Schuyler...
...As a regular reader of your publication I very, much appreciate your stand in the present world situation...
...It is not that his intellectuals are accustomed to ideas that merits criticism...
...Like other powers, we have militarily invaded other nations when it suited our national purpose to do so, our moral professions notwithstanding...
...or the border "troubles" of 1916 during which we "chased Villa" several hundreds of miles within the Mexican border...
...Nor, one must add, can it sustain the values of a free society, at bay if you will, but still free...
...or the suppression of the young Philippine nation after the defeat of Spain...
...Morgenthau faults his argument when he says that modern totalitarian "regimes cannot he overthrown by counterrevolutionary invasions, but only by the vision of a realizable social order superior to that of the status quo...
...No one forces Catholics to send their children to parochial schools, yet he would have those who—rightly or wrongly—regard Catholicism as theological tyranny support Catholic educational efforts...
...Mozambique, Kenya and the Rhodesias will be free, but we assume, as an enduring fact of life, that the new colonialism over Eastern Europe is forever...
...No one in this nation can legitimately question the right of Catholics to maintain an educational system in competition with the public school system...
...If, however, the Sino-Soviet political offensive is definable as one without ~ palpable terminal point and, indeed, an appetency for world dominion, then it is no longer a matter of, say, Louis XIV's designation of his grandson as the King of Spain...
...The question then is, who controls the definitions...
...Certainly Jacobs' confession that be regarded General Franco as a greater threat to human freedom than Corporal Hitler is highly interesting, but if The New Leader publishes many articles of this type, it will run into stiff competition from another valuable periodical—the Journal of Abnormal Psychology...
...At almost the very beginning of our national history, the United States had solemn treaties with several sovereign American Indian tribes and nations which subsequently we not only attacked militarily but removed to distant areas in a manner not unlike that of Stalinist Russia toward the various "autonomous republics" after World War II...
...If we regard present Soviet expansionism as something which stems from 18th or 19th century territorial and national rivalries, then quite clearly traditional diplomacy requires that there be intelligent definition as to what is important or crucial and we should behave accordingly...
...If we are going to argue over what is defensible or indefensible whenever Khrushchev announces his latest quarry, it is a matter of time before India or Turkey, now defensible and essential, become non-essential to American foreign policy...
...And does not this call for open political warfare against Sino-Soviet domination of peoples and countries, rather than the retreat which Morgenthau suggests and Fulbright implies...
...Why not...
...My recollection of World War II is fairly clear...
...I should like to deal with one of these questions, since it is the heart of the free world's dilemma as it confronts Sino-Soviet imperialism...
...The ultimate conclusion to be drawn from the Morgenthau-Fulbright thesis is that we should void the SEATO and CENTO agreements, since their continuance would mean our involvement if South Vietnam were overrun...
...I should think that Hitler would have taught us the lesson that a. highly organized dictatorship, with or without a well-defined ideology, has - unilateral and an unappeasable capacity for definition of its "essential" interests...
...Nevertheless, even in Catholicdominated countries, the church vs...
...Belgrade, Yugoslavia name withheld MORGENTHAU Hans J. Morgenthau's critique, "Kennedy's Foreign Policy: Failure and Challenge" (NL July 3-10) dealt with formidable problems but it left unanswered a series of even more formidable questions...
Vol. 44 • August 1961 • No. 30
