Correspondence
Correspondence Facts, Figura s, and Sex in the Navy Mark Helprin's review of my book, Fall From Glory, left out important information that would have benefited your readers ("Mr. Vistica's Navy,"...
...In these poems, Eliot uses his references to the Jews to indicate an alien presence in European culture...
...now it is sought at the expense of excellence...
...In fact, when three German bishops thanked Pius XI for so plainly and outspokenly condemning Nazism, he said that the thanks were due to Cardinal Pacelli (the future Pius XII...
...Helprin's claim of "undetailed, unquoted hearsay" is simply false...
...He did...
...In the end, actions speak more loudly than words...
...25), Frederic Raphael tends to over-interpret and even obfuscate the subject of Eliot's anti-Semitism...
...Ironically, geographical diversity was invented to preserve ethnic and religious uniformity...
...In response, Dr...
...Was Ahab critical of Moby Dick...
...Rick Garnett Little Rock, AR Frederic Raphael writes, "Eliot's obsequious postwar decorum was of a piece with Pius XII's concern more with Christian continuity than with Christian witness...
...Does Vistica really believe that I thought he was quoting the pope...
...What next...
...Helprin suggests that my 40 pages of footnotes are flawed or incomplete...
...And Helprin fails to note that I praise Lehman for boosting morale and taking seriously the proper notion of civilian control of the military...
...The pope's unflagging efforts to shelter and, yes, to save many thousands of Jews, efforts that were never questioned and were in fact routinely praised by Jewish leaders, have nothing in common with T.S...
...Finally, Vistica's last paragraph is that of a grouse indignantly ruffling its feathers, but if indeed the Navy's traditions are intolerably sexist he has not demonstrated that fact in his two dozen anecdotes drawn from 10 million man-years of enlistment in the period he covers...
...True, Lichten reports that the pope's formal statements were circumspect...
...T.S...
...Like those of everyone else interviewed for the record, Pope's comments are documented by date, in her case, April 4, 1995...
...Had these details, no matter how unpleasant, gone unreported, the Navy's intolerable sexist traditions would continue...
...The head of the wartime Jewish Assistance Committee, Dr...
...The reader may judge for himself the accuracy of Vistica's contention...
...T]hey are possessed by the superstition of a race and blood cult...
...Eliot and the Pope In "The Tale of TS...
...Anyway, I did more than imply that Vistica's book was critical of John Lehman...
...Vistica's Navy," Mar...
...The point of my criticism-and in a world that values truth it should be a matter of embarrassment for the author-is that he pegged the Soviet navy at a third of its size by counting only major combatants, while including all types of U.S...
...Eliot's "obsequious postwar decorum...
...Eliot and Princess Di's Lawyer" (Mar...
...Pius XII saw to it that thousands of Jews were hidden in chambers under the papal residence of Castel Gandolfo...
...Pius XII's own attitude toward anti-Semitism and Nazism cannot be mistaken by anyone of good faith for the tepid bigotry of Eliot and the English intelligentsia...
...Maybe fear of reprisals, of a "greater evil," did not justify discretion...
...Then fools' approval stings and honour stains...
...In 1935, the pope (then Cardinal Pacelli) said to 250,000 pilgrims at Lourdes: "The Nazis . . . dress up old errors with new tinsel...
...Under Pius XII's leadership, over 85 percent of the Italian Jewish population was rescued by Catholic clerics, monks, nuns, and lay people during World War II...
...That's what happens when you forgo serious scholarship for Geraldo journalism about bottomless dancers and rhinoceros penises...
...I shot the clerk...
...Its outlines, however, are reasonably clear...
...And he gets the blame...
...Boston, MA...
...Lowell believed that differences ought to disappear, that acceptance could not precede assimilation...
...It is ironic that while Pope Pius XI is usually stereotyped as having been strongly anti-Nazi for his encyclical Mit Brennender Sorge, Pius XII is often accused of having been soft on Nazism...
...Vistica praises Lehman for being serious about civilian control of the military...
...It did not occur to Lowell that differences might be harmless or even beneficial...
...This is what I mean by undetailed, unquoted hearsay-that is, a report by the author of what someone has said regarding someone else or a question of fact...
...The year was 1940...
...His election was not received with favor in Germany because he was always opposed to National Socialism...
...Ezra Pound is the dominant influence behind these poems...
...Pound had urged Eliot to write social satire and had provided the models in his Lustra (1915), as in the famous "E.P...
...There would have been more victims had it not been for the efficacious intervention of Pius XII...
...Helprin implies that I relied on unattributed quotes from "bitter enemies" and spun a fictional narrative critical of Navy secretary John Lehman and other Republicans...
...The book is the literary equivalent of sticking pins in a doll: The doll is John Lehman, and John Lehman's sin is accumulating power as secretary of the Navy...
...And yes, I do think Vistica's footnotes are flawed, in that he repeatedly cites sources without supplying the quotation upon which he bases his paraphrases and summations...
...Stephen Steinberg points out in Commentary (Sept...
...Preserving Harvard's aristocratic tone was more important to him than maintaining its academic quality...
...Ode Pour L'Election de Son Sepulchre...
...In addition, of all the major powers, only Germany did not send a special representative to the coronation of Pius XII...
...Pound provided invaluable editorial advice for The Waste Land (1922), after which he ceases to be a direct influence upon Eliot's poetry...
...As the footnote makes clear, the "pope" is Barry Gold-water's former aide, Barbara Pope, an assistant secretary of the Navy in the Bush administration...
...Indeed, several individuals, including Lehman, reviewed and approved their quotations prior to publication...
...This discretion came in part at the request of Jewish leaders who feared, quite reasonably, even harsher reprisals against the Jews in occupied countries...
...1971) that diversity was introduced in the 1920s for the explicit purpose of keeping down the number of Jews at Harvard...
...In fact, the CIA figures have proved to be more accurate than those of independent analysts...
...His record should not be besmirched through malice or ignorance...
...Lichten carefully describes the aid, covert and overt, provided by the pope, his bishops, and the Vatican's nuncios throughout Europe...
...Galen Cawley, Jr...
...It may well be that, from our convenient vantage point, a spectacular confrontation between the Vatican and the Nazis would have been preferable (and certainly more self-indulgent) than careful labors to save as many people as possible...
...I feel like the character in the film My Cousin Vinny who says, "I shot the clerk...
...And then what is this business about using the CIA figures...
...Finally, Helprin finds the details of the Navy's historic ill treatment of women unnecessary and prurient...
...By the time Fitzgerald wrote The Last Tycoon, the Jew was his American symbol...
...Abbot Lawrence Lowell, president of Harvard at that time, argued that geographical quotas were in the best interest of the Jews because the quotas would lead to assimilation, and thus to the end of anti-Semitism: "If every college in the country would take a limited proportion of Jews, I suspect we should go a long way toward eliminating race feeling among students, and as these students passed out into the world, eliminating it in the community...
...Eliot's anti-Semitic passages are very largely confined to Poems 1920...
...Joseph Lichten, then director of international affairs for the Anti-Defamation League, published "A Question of Judgement: Pius XII and the Jews...
...Jeffrey Hart Lyme, NH Iwas disappointed that Frederic Raphael spoiled his fine piece by endorsing the tired but virulent canard charging Pope Pius XII with "cowardice" during the Holocaust...
...What's more, the book cites newly declassified documents from the Central Intelligence Agency, the Defense Intelligence Agency, and the Navy that support my reporting...
...I didn't write this book...
...I must disagree...
...Gregory L. Vistica Washington, DC Mark Helprin Responds: As yet another slow, fat target drifts into the crosshairs, I am beginning to wonder whether I have a secret admirer at The Weekly Standard...
...Cultural anti-Semitism was very much in the literary air at this period, as in, for example, Shaw, Chesterton, Belloc, Wyndham Lewis, Fitzgerald, and Hemingway...
...25), maintains that "in the past diversity was sought for the sake of academic excellence...
...Golda Meir, Nahum Goldman (president of the World Jewish Congress), and many other prominent Jews thanked Pius XII for his untiring efforts in behalf of the persecuted Jews...
...Raphael Cantoni, stated: "The Church and the papacy saved Jews as much and in as far as they could save Christians...
...As an example he caustically points to a citation of the "pope...
...It was the latter who strengthened the title from Mit Grosser Sorge ("With Great Anxiety") to its final title, which means "With Burning Anxiety...
...In fact, the book is based on interviews with Republican officials in the Reagan and Bush administrations- most of whom gladly spoke for attribution...
...I and others read the last passage of Part II in "Little Gidding" as Eliot's cleansing apology for, among other things, the folly of his 1920 anti-Semitic references: At last, the rending pain of re-enactment Of all that you have done and done to others' harm Which you once took for exercise of virtue...
...Thousands of others obtained passports and visas on Pius XII's order...
...Helprin says I should be embarrassed for using the CIA's secret figures on the size of the Soviet navy rather than those of the International Institute for Strategic Studies...
...These are mostly quatrained poems burdened by conspicuous erudition, the latter intended, with some justice, as a slap at middlebrow taste...
...George Jochnowitz Staten Island, NY Professor Harvey Mansfield's statement, "The other value most evident in American education today is self-esteem," moved me to consult Ambrose Bierce's The Devil's Dictionary: "SELF-ESTEEM, n. An erroneous appraisement...
...Salieri negative about Mozart...
...naval ships...
...I wrote, "Most of the time the reader will discover a citation that says only 'Gordon interview,' or 'Pope interview.' (Rest easy, not the pope himself...
...But blame has been unfairly heaped on Pius XII, who was, in his own time, recognized and praised as a peacemaker and friend to the Jews...
...In 1963, Rolf Hochhuth's play The Deputy charged the pope with "silence" and even complicity during the Holocaust...
...Fran?ois L. Quinson Gaithersburg, MD Diversity Isn't Excellence Harvey Mansfield, in "Harvard Loves Diversity" (Mar...
Vol. 1 • April 1996 • No. 29
