Dear Editor
Dear Editor Self-Confidence Thank you for Carl Landauer's "The Need for American Self-Confidence" (NL, May 12). I hope it will be reprinted and receive the widest possible circulation. However...
...Downers Grove, III...
...At a time when Israel was weighing the consequences of returning to Egypt the Abu Rudeis oil fields (supplier of some 55 per cent of Israel's oil), Iran (Israel's other major oil supplier) found it necessary-for the "common Iranian and Iraqi interest in staying under opec" and "to maintain oil revenues"-to cast off all support and related commitments made to the Kurdish people...
...In the earlier days of the Today show, Blair occasionally sat up front when the normal host was away, and then one could detect, along with his clumsiness, hints of his political stand...
...and the need for American self-confidence (which does not mean belligerence) has never been greater...
...Arthur M. Shapiro Persian Gulf Stephen Oren's "Iraq...
...Israel cannot ignore the significance of this, especially since it must rely on Iran for continued, and even increased, oil supplies...
...Pocatello, Idaho Eli M. Oboler University Librarian, Idaho State University Pearl K. Bell replies: I am as certain that I found the misinformation about poetry and the Book-of-the-Month Club in an ordinarily reliable source as I have been stymied in my efforts to track it down...
...Robert Frost's A Further Range and A. E. Housman's More Poems...
...That this is not just a small error is indicated by this list of past BOTM poetry choices: 1929...
...Housman, and LaFarge...
...A demoralized, paralyzed United States-one that would let international balances deteriorate by small steps, rationalizing its withdrawal from moral commitments by pious self-denigration-is the surest guarantor of a nuclear catastrophe...
...The time was 1967 or '68, when divisions on Vietnam were really polarizing, and the film was about an American Legion convention...
...Any American who has lived through the civil rights movement of the last 25 years can certainly respond to the fundamental issue of human liberty raised by the article...
...Iranian-Israeli relations were not my subject, and that is why I did not discuss them...
...On one occasion, they allowed Blair to show movies he had made of himself, and my suspicions about his politics increased...
...F. Stephen McArthur Executive Director, Youth Institute for Peace in the Middle East Stephen Oren replies: It may be a semantic difference, but I cannot imagine anything more "dramatic" than a decision by the leading "revisionist" power in the Persian Gulf to come to an agreement with the status quo powers: Saudi Arabia and Iran...
...The penalty for impotence, irresolution or ineptitude in the international arena has never been harsher...
...I wondered how anyone with so little savvy could stick...
...But the subject of relations between the Japanese and the Koreans in Japan, it seems to me...
...Frank Blair As someone who has watched Frank Blair in 10-minute snatches for many years, I enjoyed reading Marvin Kitman's "Blair Leaves the Air" (NL, April 14...
...1939...
...Santa Barbara, Calif...
...suggests some equally, perhaps more important international questions as well: If South Korea is invaded by North Korea-a possibility that has become very real with the collapse of the U.S.-supported regimes in Southeast Asia-would the Japanese somehow come to the aid of the Seoul government, and if they did, would it be as benefactors of the South Koreans, or merely out of their own national interest-a concern about maintaining in somewhat different form a "Greater East Asia Co-Prosperity Sphere...
...and 1943, Stephen Vincent Benet's Western Star...
...Davis, Calif...
...The sentence should of course have read "the first volume of poetry in 32 years," etc., and I offer humble apologies to The New Leader and the disapproving shades of Benet, Frost...
...Christopher LaFarge's Each to the Other (a novel in verse...
...This and other incidents caused me to question not how he had lasted so long, but how he ever got past the first few years...
...Rather than "dramatically transforming the Persian Gulf," the pact merely moves the local balance from a precarious position to a less precarious one...
...Washington, D.C...
...Certainly, however, Iran's commitments are linked to its own interests, and should these interests change Israel could be in serious danger...
...Iran and the Kurds" (NL, April 28) overestimates the impact of the March 6 Iraqi-Iranian agreement on the Gulf area, and ignores its impact on the Arab-Israeli conflict...
...Like others, apparently...
...Stephen Vincent Benet's John Brown's Body, 1936...
...But it seems that, so far, dealings between the two countries have been little affected by the Iranian-Iraqi agreement...
...However much the map of the world may change, fundamental historical processes do not...
...Norman Guttman Korea and Japan I was quite interested in Arnold Abrams' piece on "Japan's Second-Class Citizens" (NL...
...Sloan G. Gordon Correction Pearl K. Bell's "Poets of Our Times" (NL, May 26) includes the following statement: "Erica Jong's forthcoming Loveroot is the first volume of poetry ever selected by the Book-of-the-Month Club...
...Oren's further contention that "Baghdad has given up all this [its desire to dominate the 'Arab Gulf'] and indicated its willingness to live in a Persian Gulf dominated by Iran" is wishful thinking at best...
Vol. 58 • June 1975 • No. 13
