Dear Editor
Dear Editor Indifference Richard P. Brickner writes ("No Tears of Special Pleading," NL, May 25) that Henry Jaeger's Rebellion of the Lost is a fine novel in part because its characters and...
...In any case, why should a formal peace prove more secure than an informal one...
...In all but the most remote sense, a formal peace is clearly an illusion—in effect, a call for institutionalized war...
...The demonstrations were based on a pragmatic calculation that most people cannot be expected to act on their views very much of the time...
...E. L. Lawton British Students As an instance of the wide difference in attitude between American and British radicals, which Elliott Abrams briefly considers in "British Campus Scene" ("Correspondents' Correspondence," NL, June 8), let me cite an incident that took place early this year...
...I cannot at all see how this essentially token movement will advance the antiwar cause much beyond where it stands now...
...The reai question is the extent to which the Soviet Union is prepared to permit the West Germans to trade with Soviet client states in Eastern Europe, and how much commerce it will carry on itself...
...perhaps it was unrealistic ever to suppose they would...
...However brutal the invasions of Hungary and Czechoslovakia may have been, the USSR has never overstepped the boundaries of what it regards as its own sphere of influence—Eastern Europe...
...And until the peace movement has a powerful and popular leader, such as the late Robert F. Kennedy might have been, it will continue to be an incoherent jumble of mutually hostile sects...
...I see no evidence to support this view...
...He will soon corner the market on ennui...
...Herman's hostility to leaders is mere sentimentalism...
...The strike failed, among other reasons, because Rudd refused to adopt a consistent or practical policy and impose it on his followers...
...Now we get: "Having watched indifference squeeze love and life from the Kuhns, we become less indifferent to indifference for a while...
...Meir's government is currently said to be contemplating the permanent incorporation of the 1967 conquests into the Jewish State...
...Reunification is surely no more realistic or acceptable to the East Germans, Russians and Poles...
...If Bonn is allowed to create an economic MUteleuropa, it will have achieved something a good deal more important than reunification...
...The mass protests admittedly have not ended the war...
...It is not likely that an Arab government couid renege on past rhetoric and delusions and still hope to survive...
...In two consecutive issues of The New Leader he has chosen to wage a peculiar battle against the forces of indifference...
...and certainly it is a feasible one...
...he became "leader" of the 1968 Columbia strike purely by grace of the New York Times...
...Students, even if the two-week election recess idea catches on, cannot hepe to compete with this, and the "Continuing Presence in Washington" will necessarily be a nominal one...
...Chicago, 111...
...For all their tough talk and nonsense, the Arabs have never occupied Israeli territory, while Mrs...
...But is this likely...
...Mark Rudd, whom I knew, also subscribed to this notion...
...if Brandt is able to boost his country's exports in the future to any commensurate degree, he may yet achieve the perennial dream of a German-dominated Mitieh'uropa that provided so much of the impetus to both world wars...
...Toronto, Ont...
...On any foreign policy issue, the Federal government's lobbying and pressuring powers vastly outweight those available to private citizens...
...But since neither course seems terribly likely, the pessimism of the Springer press appears perfectly justified...
...New York City George Westley Germany Though Carl Landauer evidently approves of Willy Brandt's overtures to the East Germans and the Russians ("U.S Test in Germany,"' NL, June 8), he does not indicate what he thinks these moves ought to achieve...
...Lewis Woodcock...
...In fact, he generated for his enemies about as much publicity as they were able to drum up for themselves...
...Since Landauer emphasizes the political aspect of the Soviet-German and intra-German talks, he presumably regards reunification as the eventual goal...
...Donald Shanor notes in the same number ("CorIespondents, Correspondence") that the leaders of the German Democratic Republic know they cannot afford intimate relations, let alone reunification, with the West...
...I sincerely hope the approach adopted by Dartmouth College's Continuing Presence in Washington will meet with success, but it stands Uttle chance indeed if Herman's story is anything to go by...
...For Agnew seemed to devote himself almost exclusively to attacking student protesters and their alleged allies within the press and television industry...
...The Administration leaders are in Washington 24 hours a day, seven days a week, all 52 weeks of the year...
...Boston, Mass...
...As in most countries—aside from the United States and, to a lesser extent, France and Germany—the students were reacting mainly to civil libertarian issues...
...Whatever else his attitude indicates, it does not point to indifference...
...If it is morally unobjectionable for the Israelis to solicit and accept American assistance, why does increased Russian support lo Egypt threaten peace...
...Having our own skeletons in the closet, we are scarcely in a position to attack their skeletons too vehemently...
...Why is it that only Israeli fears must be placated...
...Landauer himself concedes that the Soviet claim to possess a right of intervention in West Germany constituted little more than a "tactical maneuver," so it is difficult to understand how he can use such rhetoric to justify the American presence in Europe...
...Landauer interprets the events of August 1968 differently, writing as though the Russians were momentarily planning a military assault on Western Europe...
...May 11) he deplores the inability of his bloodless students to involve themselves passionately with the truths to be found in books...
...Yet even in this respect, the long-term prospects are not encouraging- The Russian actions in Czechoslovakia (which had greatly increased trade relations with West Germany during the Dubcek period) indicate that there are limits to German penetration the Soviets consider acceptable...
...and it has a leader, however inept...
...The Administration is richer and more cohesive, its ties to the Congress are of longer duration...
...If our forces are intended mainly to repel a Soviet attack, then our European presence is in fact little more than an excuse to swell the military budget, for there is no evidence that an invasion has ever been contemplated...
...Nor have the Soviets forgotten that a united Germany has twice in this century aimed to control Eastern Europe...
...Brandt has already condemned as hopeless demands for the restoration of the Oder-Neisse territories new incorporated within Poland...
...Though the political implications of rapprochement seem rather limited, the West Germans have managed 10 use their considerable economic strength to obtain greatly increased trade agreements with every Iron Curtain country except East Germany...
...Still, they did help to bring what was once the opposition of a tiny minority to the attention of a wider public, as well as sustain antiwar opinion and eventually make it respectable...
...Dear Editor Indifference Richard P. Brickner writes ("No Tears of Special Pleading," NL, May 25) that Henry Jaeger's Rebellion of the Lost is a fine novel in part because its characters and situations are real, not mere cardboard vehicles for "teardrops of special pleading...
...Perhaps the Arabs, with some justification, dread Israel quite as much as the Israelis do them...
...In January, the British government announced it was keeping records on several notorious young radical leaders, and intended to expand the files...
...Brickner himself, however, seems guilty of just such pleading...
...The next day, several colleges at Oxford were occupied by their students, who explained that those on whom the dossiers were being compiled might some day become Conservatives, and that their careers would then be hurt by the existence of material detailing their former beliefs and actions...
...A formal peace would most likely result in the overthrow of the regimes that participated in it, as well as reinforce the Arabs' sense of humiliation and victimization...
...In '"Making Literature Relevant" (NL...
...Baltimore, Md...
...Correcting this situation would appear to be Brandt's principal aim...
...Since retention of that area is obviously the primary goal of Soviet foreign policy, can the Russians be expected to promote their chief rivals...
...West Germany is now the leading industrial power of the Continent...
...Clement Gaines Israel Eliahu Sa'peter's insistence on a "formal peace" between the Arab states and Israel ("Russians Over Egypt," NL, May 25) reflects the kind of smugness and moral conceit—on both sides—that produced the Middle East conflict in the first place, and which perpetuate it now...
...John Powell Protest If the Nixon Administration is quite as indifferent to mass protest as George E. Herman contends ("Correspondents' Correspondence," NL, May 25), I wonder what exactly the Vice President has been up to these past few months...
...If apathy does not cross Brickner's path more often than it does mine, it at least does so more impressionably...
Vol. 53 • June 1970 • No. 13
