Dear Editor
Dear Editor Ruskin's Purity Since Phoebe Pettingell wrote a really excellent review of The Wilmington Letters C'Ruskin's Roses and Lilies," NL, April 27), I feel churlish about writing to scold...
...Theoretically, it would be his committee that biild make foreign policy, but anyone fa-iliar with the way congressional commit-;s operate knows it is the chairman who etty much determines the decisions, even by indirection...
...No one...
...Indifference is not peculiar to the young, nor is it unique to our polluted century...
...Just the Student Silent Majority, the 98 per cent or whatever, those upstanding, dull-witted souls who will save their generation from the perils of cerebration...
...It is the word "pure" in this sentence: "Ruskin continued to be attracted to children, with an emotion that was not always pure...
...That is particularly true of Fulbright, who is used his position as a forum for the owal of policies opposed to those of the esident...
...Salt Lake City, Ut...
...Marx Lewis Chairman Council Against Communist Aggression German Unity T fail entirely to comprehend the logic of Tierican journalists like Donald R. Shanor Hands Across the Oder-Neisse...
...No foreign policy could be conducted on that basis...
...It would be tragic indeed if the President could not act unless he first produced references to prove he was a good credit risk...
...Helen Markson...
...Students are much like their elders: good, bad, and overwhelmingly mediocre...
...Its absurdities, he says, could have been exposed during a congressional debate that would, presumably, have prevented the war...
...Also...
...Chicago, HI...
...Durham's phrase summed up an intelligent policy, inadvertently adopted by the British government...
...Students have always been mostly dullards and timeservers, misfits and emotional retards...
...There was no golden age—not even in Plato's Academy, I'll wager—when students hung on their mentor's every word, thirsting for Beauty and Truth, or Relevance...
...A mediocrity who has peatedly demonstrated his ignorance of for-gn policy, he has made many statements : was later obliged to retract...
...Robfrt Isaacs Benign Neglect Contrary to Walter Goodman's apparent impresHon ("The Moynihan Strategy," NL, March 30), Lord Durham's 1839 remarks about "benign neglect" conveyed more than a felicitous and epigrammatic literary style...
...both in the April 27 issue...
...Davis B. Carter Goodman Finally, some one else who appreciates Bill Evans' John Goodman has made a fan of me ("Naming Is Not Knowing," NL...
...With Germany disunited, and (qui'e itly) deprived of its Eastern territories, the :ich is at least less of a threat to its former emies...
...Is this threat now a fantasy...
...Fellows states that if we are to place absolute trust in the President where military ventures are concerned, he must be able to point to a record of success in such actions...
...He recognizes that we are witnessing the death of a great musical tradition, the solo jazz piano...
...But it does neglect them by failing to redress the effects of 300 years of repression...
...Both countries still swarm th unpunished and unprosecuted mass irderers and criminals of all types and varies, some of whom occupy positions of great political power and responsibility...
...and has denied others opposed to his ews an opportunity to appear...
...Significantly, he overlooks the "police action" in Korea—involving forces comparable to those now deployed in Vietnam, and fought without a declaration of war by Congress...
...Bernardo D. Bramante Pease Air Force Base, N. H. Student Apathy Richard P. Brickner's "Making Literature Relevant" (NL, May 11) took a surprising tack...
...The alternative would be to have, as is irrently the case...
...or his party can be held accountable in e succeeding election for any mistakes or ilures...
...ollywood...
...Fulbright determine our ternational course...
...hence, a policy of "neglect" made sense...
...Fellows, like others who are critical of our Vietnam policy, lays great stress on the Gulf of Tonkin Resolution...
...I rather doubt West Germany is the third largest industrial wer in the world, and East Germany is no iall affair either...
...Finally, the President has sources of formation not available to others which ten cannot be made public...
...NL, March...
...I believe that because he loved little girls, society demanded he brand himself as crazy...
...I am amazed that more effort is not being taken to expose the extent of our commitment...
...If Presidents Eisenhower, Kennedy, Johnson, and now Nixon, had not conducted our foreign policy, the vacuum created would now be filled by the chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, Senator Fulbright...
...Frank Moss Foreign Policy David Fellows ("Dear Editor," NL, March 30), commenting on Henry F. Graff's "Participatory Foreign Policy" (NL, March 2), writes that a strong President is theoretically desirable, but if "he wants a war he has to get the Congress to declare it...
...in short, stands to gain from reunification...
...To the impure, all things are impure, and vice versa...
...I am proposing, then, a reversal of the judgment that has by now become the usual one on Ruskin, namely that because he was crazy, he loved little girls...
...He draws a distinction between our police actions in Cuba, Haiti and Lebanon, in which only small forces were involved, and our intervention in Vietnam, where we committed a half million troops to what he says is a "war in its fullest constitutional sense...
...I like their style of personal journalism: they told me more about those countries than the ponderous political analyses one usually reads...
...And no one, of course, can guarantee that what started as a minor intervention would not develop into a full-scale war...
...Should the President of the United States or e chairman of the Senate Foreign Rela-)ns Committee determine our foreign policy...
...Moynihan's touting of the black middle class, while in itself correct, ignores the fact that this is still a relatively small group almost as isolated from the urban ghettoes as its white counterpart...
...Moreover, the Resolution did not confine itself to the attack against our ships...
...I would say that he was attracted to children with an emotion that was always pure...
...I hope to see more of this kind of reporting in The New Leader...
...Our own situation is rather different...
...In the struggle rtween freedom and Communist tyranny...
...What he seems not to realize is that the dolts warming their chairs in his classroom have always been with every teacher...
...Buffalo, N.Y...
...For me there will be no point in the continual discovery by scholars of the "crazy" sex lives of the Victorians, unless it go hand in hand with certain discoveries the scholars must make about their "crazy" selves...
...I would say, not even the Germans themselves...
...Brickner's problem is serious, and his distress heartfelt, but it is the agony of all teachers to play Cassandra...
...he has the authority to call wit-sses...
...And when the scholars concede that Ruskin didn't have to be crazy, I'll concede that they don't have to be crazy either...
...Whatever the facts may be as to whether our ships were actually fired on, we were involved long before the Resolution was adopted: otherwise, our ships would not have been there...
...The -esident is elected by the nation as a whole, is views on foreign policy are the subject national debate during the campaign, and e people can accept or reject them...
...Mike Krltz Personal Journalism Congratulations to "Sonny Sonnenschine" for a charming inside look at Soviet youth ("Meeting My Soviet Contemporaries") and to Arnold Abrams for his tale of Taiwan cops-and-robbers ("Taiwan's Dissenters...
...An extreme Rightist nationalist party controls about 10 per cent of the vote in West Germany...
...Indianapolis, hid...
...Dear Editor Ruskin's Purity Since Phoebe Pettingell wrote a really excellent review of The Wilmington Letters C'Ruskin's Roses and Lilies," NL, April 27), I feel churlish about writing to scold her for a single word...
...has been the none-too-secret weapon of ir enemy...
...through his superego, society's voice within, he succumbed...
...No angry revolutionaries or stoned hippies...
...Moreover, it is difficult to see how the existence of this group makes any less offensive the wretchedness of Watts, Harlem or Hough...
...But Brick-ner, in his passionate way, manages to invoke the bogeyman of Relevance as pathetically as his youthful Philistines...
...Its declared purpose was "to prevent further aggression," as we were bound by treaty to do...
...le answer should be fairly obvious...
...He himself no doubt thought it wasn't, and just this thought drove him insane...
...Perhaps Arnold Abrams* dispatch ("Correspondents' Correspondence," NL, April 27) might be the first step...
...Although he cannot prevent Ad-inistration officials from coming before his 'mmittee...
...His eminent jsition was achieved through a seniority stem that often rewards incompetents who ive the ability to get themselves reelected, albright represents only one of our 50 states, id one in which foreign policy has never :en ot particular interest to the electorate, e is accountable to no one...
...An interesting article to print now, on the threshold of Reason's apocalypse...
...New York City Eric Bentley U. S. in Thailand I recently spent several months in Thailand as a member of the military...
...How many other talents are wasting away in the nation's eateries...
...Tarrytonn, N.Y...
...Regarding the constitutional powers of the President as Commander-in-Chief to conduct our foreign policy, it seems to me that as a practical matter any doubts on that score ought to be resolved in the President's favor...
...The colonists of Canada wanted the minimum of British interference...
...Witnessing the huge investment, both physical and moral, the United States has made there...
...The relegation of Bill Evans to background music at supper clubs says more about today's audiences' collective tin ear than it does about Evans' ability...
...The Nixon Administration does not "neglect" the black ghettoes by allowing them a significant degree of political self-determination...
...who treat the subject of German reuni-ation with so much apparent sympathy, vo lime*- within our lifetime a united and irlike Germany has wrought havoc across irope...
Vol. 53 • May 1970 • No. 11
