Dear Editor

...But I thought it would be valuable morally and historically to see how an Iowa Presbyterian conscience could accept as a duty the lies, subterfuges and double dealing of the Communist underground...

...I agree that i did tend to let men do my political thinking, but men whom I chose from a wide range of possibilities, including men for whom i worked in government, on publications and in private business who were interested in me as a woman, whom i often admired, and who were very eager to instruct me in different ways of thinking...

...Since Israel needs not only military but also economic aid from the United States, its present policy means that it is walking on thin ice...

...The more Israel resists or counteracts the American effort to forge close ties with the Moslem world-for instance, by its settlement policy-the stronger the pressure will have to be...

...But to label it a "curious notion" of the Carter Administration "that the creation of a solid Islamic block against the Soviet Union depends on the 'solution of the Palestine problem'" is a statement for which the adjective curious would be far too mild...

...I mention this not as excuse but simply to show the scope and power of the historical phenomenon into which I wished to contribute a personal insight...

...Such insight is still needed, because the old fear of criticizing pro-Communists that blinded the Nation and the New Republic just before the Pact of 1939 has been revived, if only nostalgically, in making heroes of those like Lillian Hellman and Alger Hiss who refuse to acknowledge the character of their own complicity...

...I was moved to write the piece after reading Alan Weinstein's book, Perjury: The Hiss-Chambers Case, and after long conversations with a friend who was in the same Washington party unit as Alger Hiss...

...Nor was i blaming my mother's early training or the guidance of the men in my life, the point on which Benosky dwells longest...

...Hope Haie Davis Israeli Policy Like all his previous analyses of the Mideastern situation, Eliahu Salpeter's article in The New Leader of February 25, "Shifting Relations in the Middle East," is very informative and in most of its parts at least plausible, if not always fully convincing...

...of aiding the Nazi cause...

...To be sure, "Arab interest in self-defense against Russian aggression" is not objectively dependent on the outcome of the autonomy talks...

...Liberals suppressed or kept silent about their doubts, as did Louis Fischer writing from Moscow in the New York Times, and Joseph Davies, ambassador to the Soviet Union...

...Only a short time before the Hitler-Stalin Pact, a long list of our most distinguished American writers signed a statement accusing anyone who criticized the USSR The New Leader welcomes com men I and criticism on an> of its features, but letters should not exceed 300 words...

...This used to infuriate me when 1 was in the Party, a sign of its partial truth, no doubt, though I was not notably religious as a child and have not returned to religion since...

...Dear Editor Party Years In his response to my article, "Looking Back at My Years in the Party" (NL, February 11), Alan L. Be-nosky ("Dear Editor," NL, March 10) speaks of the human "reluctance to admit obvious error," and accuses me, as did William Sheffield earlier (" Dear Editor," NL, February 25), of using my discussion of conscience and religion as a way of excusing myself for inexcusable political actions...

...The men whom 1 chose-And this was no illusion -were among the best and brightest of their generation-the generation that matured during the mid-'30s, the time of the Depression, of the resurgence of Marxism, of the rise of Hitler, of the Spanish Civil War...

...Carl Landauer Professor of Economics, Emeritus, University of California...

...On the contrary, I regarded the whole piece as an admission of error, of grievous error...

...My purpose was not to make the old comparison between communism and religion...

...West port, Conn...

...Unless the Palestinian irritant is removed, however, the close cooperation between the United States and the moderate Arabs that is indispensable if a dam is to be built against Communist penetration will remain impossible...

...If we should have been undeceived, as 1 said in my piece, by the Moscow trials, the historic fact is that many of us were not...

...Berkeley, Calif...

...And even later not intellectuals but military and political leaders-eisenhower in his approach to Berlin, Roosevelt at Yalta, Truman at Potsdam-still were deceived about the Soviet character and purposes...

...And because the United States has a most vital interest in building such a dam, no American government will long be able to refrain from exerting pressure on Israel to make the necessary concessions...