Dear Editor
DEAR EDITOR KUDOS As a new subscriber to your magazine. I am grateful for your current articles about important happenings in our country. "New left in Disarray" (NL, September 11) by Jeffrey L....
...Had Davis read the newspapers controlled or inspired by former Premier George Papandreou and his even more ambitious son, Andreas, he would have seen references to a revolutionary state already in being, and so the coup which took place on April 21, by a jurist and military men (all usually heaped together under the derogatory term of "military junta") was in fact a counter coup...
...Nowhere in his article has the nlf leader mentioned Tanner's letter and there is no reason whatsoever to assume even his awareness of Tanner, who is a war prisoner not of the nlf but of North Vietnam...
...Certainly Greece is more worth preserving than that octopus sort of democracy that was peacefully and painlessly put to sleep last April 21...
...East Rockauay, N...
...I do...
...Democracy is all important, but if democratic institutions are so corrupted as to make honest government and security impossible— what does a poor country do...
...New left in Disarray" (NL, September 11) by Jeffrey L. Hodes was a real eye-opener—an informative, brilliant and objective contribution...
...But the inferences Hook draws bespeak an entirely different mentality, one which is heavily conditioned by Madison Avenue's techniques of psychological manipulation...
...Editor The Minority of One Sidney Hook replies: Mr...
...Arnoni's abusive letter leaves completely unaffected the points I made...
...If anything, it is rather doubtful whether Commander Tanner, if exposed to the mistreatment fictionalized by Hook, would be in the smart aleck mood of pulling a practical joke on his persecutors...
...The manipulativeness with which Hook draws inferences is related to his reference to me as one "who abuses his American citizenship...
...Professor Hook may rejoice in further learning that this does not exhaust our ignorance, which extends very deeply into the domain of idiot entertainment...
...All wars, unfortunately even those in a just cause, have unintended tragic consequences...
...1. Felix Greene's film on Red China was not an authentic depiction of the real situation within China, but...
...Nor do the North Vietnamese authorities need to be so terribly embarrassed...
...GREEK DEMOCRACY In his "Letter from Greece" {NL...
...There is in this North Vietnamese oversight a refreshing quality of innocence that speaks well for those "guilty" of it...
...Sylvia W. Alfneu DAMASCUS TARTS A short note to your reviewer of Julio Cortazar's anthology, who demolished the translator, Paul Blackburn, because of a problem about the etymology of apricots...
...as subsequent events have revealed, a blatant piece of pro-Mao propaganda...
...Or have they both been like that for a long time...
...New York City Paul Willen Editor's note: Rabassa's translation of Hopscotch was incorrectly attributed to Blackburn in the course of the editing...
...What a pity that Greece is so often reported in disregard of what is of absolute importance—namely, that Greece has not friendly but hostile frontiers, and lodged behind are those demanding "another round," with the aid of a foe within...
...It is only when American attacks against military targets cause civilian casualties {by accident) that he is exercised...
...Whatever their color, it is obvious that there is something radically wrong with his vision...
...It was obviously inserted to reinforce Hieu's citation of other letters from Americans designed to prove that American soldiers and civilians alike were ready to break with their own government...
...It was embedded in the text of Nguyen Van Hieu's communication without any identification of its source...
...Hodes...
...Had he made his sojourn to a paradisal tourist's island a few months before, ? guess that even there he would have had the opportunity to study the reasons for the demise, and while lamenting it, would have lamented it considerably less...
...as originally intended...
...The Tanner letter facsimile was obtained by us not from Professor Nguyen Van Hieu, but from North Vietnamese sources...
...When such reference is made to someone who is not a native American, it is likely to be an attempt to alert some authorities to action, thus, in effect, constituting a recommendation of punishment for certain ideas...
...In this respect, few translators can compare with Paul Blackburn, or for that matter, with Gregory Rabassa, the actual translator of the maligned Hopscotch (wrongly attributed to Blackburn...
...Every reader of the page would naturally assume it had been furnished by Hieu to back up the authenticity of the other letters he quotes...
...however, intend to spoil it...
...If anything, their unawareness of the imbecilic components of the American culture—an educational gap obviously not shared by Professor Hook—may indicate that a sincere and idealistic people does not specialize in evolving a manipulative propaganda apparatus a la Madison Avenue, such as would easily preclude Hook's "'happy accident...
...this editor must plead guilty to the charge of ignorance of the identity of "Ben Casey" and "Clark Kent...
...He further refuses to recognize the moral distinction between the deliberate torture, mutilation and execution of civilians, to which the Vietcong has increasingly resorted, and the unintended death of civilians in consequences of military action...
...1 do not know the color of Mr...
...If he can...
...Yes...
...M. S. Arnoni...
...Its insertion in the page carrying Hieu's article was done by us in keeping with our usual format of illustrating articles with related graphic matter...
...Your academician, with his dictionary and his syntax and his petty judgments, is welcome to his apricots—I will have Damascus tarts a la Paul Blackburn...
...He may be right...
...As things stand, there is a fair chance that Greece will return to democratic institutions, but those who know and love Greece must rejoice that a return to that corruption sponsored by the Papandreous is not going to happen for quite a while...
...Most observers of the Greek political scene would not make so rash a prediction...
...He does not regard the civilian deaths resulting from Allied air raids against Nazi military targets as atrocities...
...Sidney Hook, winds up with the blackest eye...
...if only in protest against an alleged humanitarian whose eyes somehow do not seem to behold reports and photographs of American and American-condoned atrocities committed on captured guerrillas appearing in the general American press itself...
...His admitted, if elaborate fiction on the background of Felix Greene's film China blackens his other eye...
...As far as the whole incident reflects on anyone's integrity and personality, I believe that your correspondent...
...End of the Game and Other Stories, reviewed by Alfred J. McAdam, NL, September II...
...taxing me with deliberate invention, when I cited as an illustration of Bertrand Russell's inconsistency Russell's statements that war against the Soviet Union would be worthwhile even at the price of the destruction of the whole of Western Europe if the Kremlin refused to accept international control and inspection of atomic power...
...His claim that the 'lucky accident" proves "ill-treatment or threats of ill-treatment" and "exposes the despicable actions of the Viet-cong" has no basis in fact whatsoever...
...His secret and symbolic communication alludes to no mistreatment and conveys no complaint...
...He does not regard the destruction by Israeli soldiers of Arab buildings housing snipers as atrocities...
...I intend to share it with my colleagues in the guidance department of my school, and I look forward to more articles by Mr...
...He dedicated an entire article to me...
...But Arnoni is not an absolute pacifist...
...There isn't even one single hint in Tanner's letter of anything of that sort...
...2. Televising "recantations" by wounded American airmen not only violates the Geneva Conventions but is a gratuitous act of cruelty...
...What are the prospects of a wounded man helpless in enemy hands who refuses to collaborate...
...4. I am willing to denounce atrocities committed by both sides in Vietnam, but Arnoni persistently refuses to condemn the deliberate multiple and escalating atrocities by the Viet-cong...
...He is right...
...Tanner's letter was presumably supplementary handwritten evidence that American soldiers were in active revolt against their orders...
...The facsimile of Lieutenant Commander Charles N. Tanner's letter and his photograph, both reproduced in our pages, did not constitute a part of Professor Nguyen Van Hieu's correspondence...
...August 28), Professor Davis of Columbia University pronounced democracy in Greece dead...
...He cannot cite evidence that it is deliberate policy of the American forces to destroy non-combatants...
...5. This is not the first time that Arnoni's ignorance of relevant facts has caused him to come a-cropper...
...They include ap photographs of chopped-off heads being taken as "souvenirs...
...Whether he is a native citizen, or not, it still seems to me to be an abuse of the rights (perhaps "duties" would be a better word) of citizenship not to inform oneself of the relevant facts...
...NL, August 14), when subjected to factual scrutiny, emerges as so pathetic that one almost hesitates to spoil his fun...
...No dictionary yet invented can measure the "competence" of a translator, but only his success at re-creating, with "fluidity and imagination," a work of art in a new language...
...If so called "fronts" become numerous and yet are dedicated to the interests of a few—or a hoodwinked many—what then...
...Passaic...
...Davis seems to regard a victory by the Papandreous at the polls as certain, had the elections taken place in May...
...Arnoni's use of Commander Tanner's letter was misleading and unscrupulous, to say the least...
...Stock bridge, Mass...
...While in hidden symbolic communication Hook may be imitating Tanner, his implied administrative recommendation is certainly McCarthyite rather than civil libertarian...
...It merely reflects mischief vis-a-vis the North Vietnamese — which is hardly the worst of the things the American pilot had tried to do to them...
...I can understand the position of an absolute pacifist who refuses to recognize the above distinction...
...3. Mr...
...I am willing to join in the strongest condemnation of such a policy...
...Arnoni's eyes...
...A. C. Sedgwick CRUEL DECEPTION Sidney Hook's exultation at believing himself to have, "by lucky accident," discovered "a startling and poignant piece of evidence" of nlf mistreatment of American prisoners of war ("Dear Editor...
Vol. 50 • September 1967 • No. 19
