Dear Editor
MELLOW I realize that it is probably terribly difficult to review painting, especially abstract painting, but I wonder whether it is necessary for all art critics to speak in tongues. In his...
...James Mellow quotes the statement of his fellow art critic Clement Greenberg, " 'It is impossible today to paint a face.' " This comment is reproduced uncritically...
...But I do not feel that our tax system is so bad as Tyler asserts...
...SOL FEINSTONE MISSILES It is certainly true, as Gus Tyler argues in "Missies and Money" (NL, March 31), that without arms control there can be no serious reduction in military expenditure...
...The grain was produced in the Ukraine and then sent through the straits to Western Europe...
...Of course, this is very far from a free election in the Western sense...
...In the future, couldn't Mellow manage somehow to break out of this sterile and incomprehensible jargon, or at least bother to explain it...
...SOLOMON TZIGANES SOVIET NAVY The "Soviet Naval Challenge" (NL, March 31) referred to by George Herald strikes me as a bit tendentious...
...Soldiers are inevitably trained to use their talents in war...
...London, England VIVIAN BLOUNT...
...But I disagree with a number of the proposals he makes, or implies he would like to make, to solve the basic problem: the perpetuation through our tax system of the maldistribution of income...
...But I doubt that Tyler has hit upon the most critical point, which seems to me to be the nature of the Army, rather than the implements that it uses...
...Tyler attacks the Kennedy-inspired corporate tax reduction, investment credit, and accelerated depreciation...
...To be quite realistic, I don't think anything important will be done, and I doubt that it would help much even if we were able, for instance, to produce the political miracle of reducing the depletion allowance...
...What we should fight for first is fair and thorough enforcement of the present law...
...Now I simply cannot understand what on earth this is supposed to mean...
...Whatever their public relations men may claim, we know that the generals and admirals are always anxious to use their troops, their planes, their ships, their missiles, etc...
...If the U S has the right to send the Sixth Fleet to these waters, don't the Russians have the same right...
...The Vietnam war, especially, illustrates this...
...It is difficult for me to understand how the United States can deny them the "long-disputed right of passage," particularly since the Americans have fought two wars the Tripolitan War and World War I—allegedly in defense of this right...
...It has been argued, plausibly [ think, that the military would save more money by establishing an all-professional force, and thereby ending the immense cost of retraining, than it does by the present inadequate rates of pay...
...Philadelphia, Pa...
...this is surely the ultimate reason for the existence of any army...
...EUGENE SMALLEY POLAND The letter of S. Stein, attributing the rise of Polish anti-Semitism to the Russians ("Dear Editor," NL, March 31), is one of those pieces of Pavlovian anti-Communism that fortunately no longer clutter the rest of your magazine...
...The U.S...
...The Russians insisted only that the Poles follow their foreign policy line without deviation A major concession, but not by any means total capitulation, as Stein would have it Since about 1962, conditions in Poland have tightened considerably...
...The general awareness that the privileged cheat is one of the main factors making the tax burden so onerous to the average man...
...Washington Crossing, Pa...
...What upsets me is that intelligent, liberal thinkers and politicians keep tilting at these same old windmills, and nothing happens...
...Stein apparently has difficulty conceiving of any problem that is not produced by the Communists, especially the Soviets...
...This is not the place to discuss the reasons for this development...
...The Army argues that this force exists only to deter potential aggressors...
...The army's principal manpower expense is not salaries, as Tyler seems to imply, but the necessity to continually train large numbers of new recruits, as the more experienced draftees leave the Army at the end of their two-year terms of service...
...But it does indicate a degree of independence which one would not have suspected from Stein's hysterical fulminations...
...The Russians got involved in the politics of the Mediterranean during the 19th century, at which time they were a major exporter of wheat...
...Today...
...Tyler is also right to point out that a volunteer army will not ease the financial load either, though I wonder if he has considered seriously enough all the arguments put forward in defense of this expedient...
...The British and the French may have regarded the Mediterranean as Mare Nostrum, but there is certainly no reason for the Russians to have accepted this claim...
...This is simply a typical example of American moralizing: If the U.S.A...
...In that year, Gomulka was apparently freely elected by the Polish Party apparatus...
...Obviously, it cannot be literally true—or wasn't that really Golda Meir on the cover...
...It should be sufficient to simply note, along with Stein, though in a different context, that "history may yet repeat itself";that, if Gomulka has extended limited freedoms to his people once, he may do so again...
...The record reveals beyond a doubt that Oppenheimer was psychologically unable to protect himself from pressures brought upon him by his friends and relatives—that is, was unable to safeguard his loyalty...
...if the Russians try it, they are immoral...
...The first is a reduction in the manpower of the military...
...The Communist government of Poland has gone through several phases...
...is not to blame for the fact that the canal has been closed for over a year...
...In other words, where large armies exist the probability is that the armies will be used...
...Therefore, for those who wish to oppose the generals—both in the United States and in the Soviet Union—there are two major imperatives...
...Since the Kremlin was at that time pushing a policy of moderate de-Stalinization, and was simultaneously faced with the more serious uprising in Hungary, it was forced to make concessions to the resurgence of nationalist sentiment within the Polish Communist party...
...The Soviet generals, too, are not the innocent pacificists they often claim to be—witness their successful pressure on behalf of last summer's Czech invasion...
...This could be a great political issue, for the average wage earner has no chance to cheat at all, and resents the fact that the top quintile gets away with it on a large scale...
...New York City BARBARA JACOBSON TYLER I agree entirely with Gus Tyler's attitude and objectives in "Uncovering the Riches" (NL, March 17...
...Russia is no longer an exporter of agricultural produce, so that its interest in the Mediterranean has not, as Herald claims, remained consistent from Tsarist days...
...Likewise with oil quotas and depletion...
...The second is an insistence upon civilian control over the military Establishment, which, unfortunately, the Nixon Administration seems bent upon destroying...
...The few traces of independence evidenced at that time (most prominently by Gomulka, who is so heavily criticized by Stein) were ruthlessly repressed...
...Few people realize that if the Internal Revenue Service budget were increased, several dollars of tax revenue would be brought in for each extra dollar spent...
...So while it is politically easy to propose that business pay more taxes, if you really want reform, it is questionable that this is a good way to get it...
...We now have under colors some 3 million men...
...The oil business and others similarly favored are not particularly more profitable than businesses without special benefits...
...Q.E.D...
...New York City EDWARD G. SHUFRO ZEIGER Having written an excellent review of In the Matter of J. Robert Onpenheimer, which is fair and objective to both accuser and accused, ("On Stage," NL, March 17), I wonder how Henry Zeiger can conclude that the denial of Oppenheimer's security clearance "was undoubtedly a mean, small-minded action for the government to have taken...
...Herald is correct, however, to say that at present the Soviets see the Mediterranean mainly as a passage to the Suez Canal and points east...
...I also don't understand why he should be so hostile to faces, but at least this makes some sense...
...I refer most specifically to tax cheating...
...The obvious key to defusing the potentially catastrophic situation in the Mediterranean is, as the French claim, the reopening of the Suez Canal...
...Wherever the truth on this question may lie, I would certainly agree with Tyler that it is not a matter of principal importance...
...In 1956, this policy produced the riots of students and workers in Poznan and Warsaw...
...Los Angeles, Cal...
...if the army is smaller then it can only produce smaller disasters...
...Since the end of the Korean War the United States has supported, almost as a matter of course, an immense military Establishment...
...So I suppose Greenberg meant to say that he didn't want people to draw faces...
...But the point that anti-Semitism is endemic to Poland and the other countries of Eastern Europe was already made well enough by George Herrschein's letter in the same issue...
...Neither private property nor the Catholic Church was significantly challenged, and the degree of intellectual and artistic freedom which was tolerated surpassed that of many so-called free world nations...
...Zeiger contradicts himself, and admits as much...
...In his column, "A Passion for Destruction" (NL, March 31...
...But the Americans, and American correspondents, cannot hold against the Russians their desire to see this vital lifeline unclogged...
...But since the typical return on capital is generally not excessively high, and has, with cyclical fluctuations, tended to be constant or decrease over the past half-century, regardless of the rate of tax on corporate profits, I think we should realize that any income tax on business turns out to be a hidden sales tax on consumers...
...This I find frustrating because there are things that cen be done, to which Tyler should dedicate his energies...
...Congress knows this, but remains parsimonious...
...I agree that we should eliminate tax-exempt bonds and estate forgiveness of capital gains...
...In the early years following 1956, Gomulka, according to the substantial authority of B. F. Skilling (in, among other works, Communism National and International), established a government that, in major respects, was hardly Communist at all...
...Statistics on this are probably unreliable, but the amounts involved are enormous, and the effects on social morale very deleterious...
...Of course, such privileged activities attract capital that might be more efficiently utilized elsewhere, but the result is more properly protectionism than stealing from the public purse...
...In the immediate postwar period it was obviously totally dependent upon Moscow...
...I want to correct some other erroneous impressions left by Stein about Polish political life...
...does it, it's right...
...This claim seems to me nonsense...
Vol. 52 • April 1969 • No. 7
