Dear Editor

...Dear Editor Socialists Gus Tylers splendid essay on The Riddle ot John Roche (NL September 16) is done in his usual brilliantly analytical style and it brings back vividly a crucial period of our history There is, however, one footnote I would like to add During the years 1939 40, as Tyler recalls, American Socialists who had become disenchanted with the party position and the Keep America Out of War organization helped found the William Allen White Committee to aid the Allies But it was not the only such group In the spring of '40 a Socialist convention held in Washington, D C nominated Norman Thomas to run again for President on a 'keep America Out of War' platform \ number of us—including Alfred Baker Lewis Jack Altaian and myself—walked out in protest left the party and began looking for a vehicle ?o voice our position and give effective expression to a workers' and Socialist pro-Allies stand After conferring with other Socially, among them George Counts and Reinhold Niebuhr we formed the Union for Democratic Action (TJDA) whose mam purpose was to actively champion the cause of the Allies against the Axis Ironically, the same UDA—which later became the ADA—completely reversed itself during the Vietnam war and those of us who had founded the original UDA left when the Eugene McCarthy forces took complete control of the ADA I think this sheds some additional light on the period Tyler discusses New York Cm Murray Gross General Manager Dressmaker's Joint Council International Ladies Garment Workers' Union Saying Good'by After about a quarter century of friendship with The New Leader—but also after a feeling of increasing frustration that has led me to subscribe to your magazine only one year at a time ready to bow out—your per vasive anti-Nixon tone has finally brought me to the breaking point I can no longer abide the shrill viciousness of such writers as Andrew Glass I dined out for weeks on his contention that the former President was jealous of Daniel Ellsberg because the latter was a member cf the 'Eastern intellectual elite " whatever that is, and went to Harvard ('Bugging and Bookkeeping NL, September 17, 1973) The statement is hilariously funny when applied to someone like Nixon who is of old American pre Revolutionary stock and whose people helped open the country Nor can I tolerate the snide viciousness of Walter Goodman or of Richard J Margolis —who referred to Nixon as a "rapscallion ' ('A Letter to the President" NL September 16) 1 refrain from specifying all the others who judged the President by what they would do and think if they were m his position and not by what he did or thought They merely credited him with their own sins I admire Irving Kristol and Sidney Hook If there had been more articles by people like them...

...my blood pressure would not n ive been kept at such a high rate and it would have seemed more like the old New Leader I first started to read your magazine in the American Embassy Library in London durong World War II when I was an information librarian there I think I was the only person who read it It was piled up on a shelf on the lower floor—we were short of space Then I discovered it again in 1951 m the City Library in Iowa City I m not much of a letter-to-the editor writer but evidently I got so mad at your former columnist William Bohn back in March or April, 1953 that I sent him a note saying 1 resented his being so sweeping in lauding the LaFollettes and sending the McCarthys into limbo I recently found the April 6, 1953, issue with Bonn's piece entitled "The Other McCarthy ' in which he tried to make up for his earlier pronouncements (He explained he had been upset by the Senator when he wrote the first article ) I wonder what he would have thought of Sam Ervin and his merry men Ervin made blundering Joe look quite angelic and harmless I'm sure Bohn would have seen the similarity It is a shame to say good-by T have known The New Leader for 30 years, and have subscribed for 23 Columbus, Oho Katherine McC Aumann Mixed Review I am writing with words both ot praise and disappointment for Pearl K Bell's column on The War Between the Tates and The Sectet Glass ("The Overblown and the Overlooked," NL, September 2) i thought her deflation of the Alison Lune balloon was excellent, from the wholly justified complaint about the book s dull-witted title to the acutely perceptive remarks on Ms Lime's literary shortcomings That ? novel so obviously ingrown could cause the stir it has simply proves that the campuses have replaced the suburbs as the purveyors and consumers of kitsch I must add however that I believe Mrs Bell overcompensated for her rapier review of The Wat Between the Tates with an excessively enthusiastic appraisal of The Secret Glass Beryl Bainbridge's modest tale is at best a well-crafted genre piece piously abiding by the rigid structure it establishes tor itself And a less generous but I feel more realistic assessment would find the work to be mere melodrama—melodrama of an icy (rather than soupy) variety to be sure but melodrama nonetheless Washington Doris Corcoran...