Dear Editor
DEAR EDITOR ALGERIA Congratulations on Philip Williams' brilliant article, Algeria in Focus (NL, February 13). Naturally, in an article of such heroic length and scope, there are points here...
...New York City Frank R. Crosswaith POLAND AND GERMANY Referring to H. C. Wolfe's rather misleading article, Solution for the Oder-Neisse, (NL, February 6), which connected the forthcoming negotiations between West Germany and Poland with the possibility of territorial changes between the two countries, I would like to make the following comments: There is no real similarity between the population problems of Pakistan and Afganistan and Poland and Germany...
...It would help to stimulate our economy by increasing purchasing power among people who spend their money promptly because they have to in order to meet their needs...
...I realize that the renouncement of these territories requires some courage on the part of German leaders, but it is a necessary step...
...We could help the Germans to take this step by making it clear that we do not plan to support their revisionism at any future peace conference...
...Once the evacuation of Germans was agreed upon by the great powers and carried out, the Polish administration of these territories had to be considered permanent...
...Erhard's words), the first step in this direction should be to establish normal diplomatic relations with Poland without questioning her territorial integrity...
...I doubt, however, that many German refugees, who are doing very well in West Germany, would actually return to the place of their birth...
...One cannot expect Russia to return Poland her former eastern territories voluntarily...
...Perhaps let few thousand German refugees return to Poland, and arrange for mutual use of the large Oder river...
...Many of these employees are Negroes who badly need an increase in their pay...
...The New Leader, which has been so trail-blazing and so refreshingly unhackneyed on so many other important issues, but dead wrong on North Africa...
...Nearly all the people who would be affected by the law are engaged in service trades like laundries, retailing, food processing and dispensing—not in producing goods for export...
...If the Germans really "want, indeed long for, peaceful neighborliness with Poland" (Dr...
...When Lincoln arrived at the Chicago Wigwam . . . convention members from the East were quickly won to his cause...
...The overwhelming desire of the average Algerian Moslem, I still think, is for peace—a quietus to the interminable and intolerable terrorism— and then for dignity, preferably in the closest of feasible bonds with a strong and (at last) genuinely sympathetic France...
...Michael I. Zawadzki FACTS ON LINCOLN "The Home Front" column on Lincoln as a man of mystery (NL, February 20) was written with William E. Bonn's customary clarity and sensitivity...
...That is not so...
...Los Angeles, Calif...
...Bohn writes of the appeal of Lincoln's personality as it affected the delegates to the Chicago convention in 1860...
...It did, however, contain two erroneous statements which may be worth correcting...
...But the sum of Williams' exposition is plainly masterful—the best job I have seen anywhere on the subject in any language...
...The defense of Poland's frontier on the Oder-Neisse line is now the one thing which unites the Poles all over the world, whether Communists or anti-Communists...
...As Wolfe admits, territorial changes brought about by World War II decreased Poland's area by 20 per cent...
...The Poles got these territories—now an integral and vital part of Poland's economy—on the basis of the Potsdam agreement...
...It is significant that the Southern Senators and Congressmen who are opposed to strengthening the minimum wage law are also usually opposed to stronger civil rights measures...
...There, alas, it has most of the time taken the line of Irving Brown and of correspondents like Lorna Hahn and Sal Tas, with their simplifications of massive complexities, their division of North Africa into colonialist bad guys and rebel good guys, and their persistent insinuation that in Algeria the FLN is the one and valid spokesman of a tormented people...
...It is, therefore, the simple instinct for selfpreservation and not an exaggerated nationalism that makes the Poles adamant in this matter...
...More than 7,000,000 Poles now live in the territory between the Oder-Neisse line and Poland's 1939 frontier...
...Let's be realistic...
...Both President George Meany of the AFLCIO and Roy Wilkins of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People, as well as the leaders of Negro labor organizations such as the Negro Labor Committee and the Negro American Labor Council, strongly back this measure...
...Lincoln did not appear at the convention, remaining at home in Springfield throughout...
...Bohn further speaks of how Lincoln's campaign "revealed him to be an extraordinary combination of practical politician and statesman . .' In keeping with the tradition of that time, Lincoln made no campaign...
...The use of the Oder river can now be discussed only between the Poles and East Germany...
...New York City Hal Lehrman MINIMUM WAGE The opponents of President Kennedy's proposal for rise in the minimum wage and a broadening of the coverage are arguing that it would hurt us by damaging our export trade and thus increasing the pressure against the dollar...
...Aside from few informal greetings to paraders and supporters in Springfield, he stayed quietly at home while others did the campaigning for him, Larchmont, N. Y. Richard Hawser...
...One is especially happy to read it in...
...The growth of this population is among the fastest in the world and before long half of the Polish people there will be locally born...
...Naturally, in an article of such heroic length and scope, there are points here and there with which other analysts might legitimately quarrel, particularly Williams' over-large assessment of native zeal for independence...
...What could Poland do to promote friendly relations with Germany...
Vol. 44 • February 1961 • No. 9
