Letters to the Editor

Mr. Bergamini Responds

TO THE EDITOR:

In his review of my book Japan's ImperialConspiracy, Professor Bartlett echoes the establishment line enunciated last September by former ambassador to Japan, Edwin O. Reischauer. Though now a private college professor, Reischauer had taken it upon himself in August to confer about my book with the Japanese Ambassador to the U.S., Mr. Ushiba. According to a letter Reischauer wrote a mutual friend in Japan, he and Ushiba agreed that my book was "a serious matter, calling for a joint policy." Ever since then members of the small academic community specializing in Japanese history have refused to speak to the evidence or consider it in its totality but have brandished their credentials at me with damaging effect.

The wrong they do me is encapsulated in Professor Bartlett's charge: "He disregards volumes of documentary evidence which does not bolster his idiosyncratic view." This is an utterly false statement unless the impressions of Western journalists, the memoirs of Western diplomats and the creations of professional image-makers hired by the Imperial Household Agency are to be considered seriously as evidence.

Only three published documents exist which give firsthand verbatim accounts of conversations between Hirohito and his close advisers. These are the daybook of Chief Aide-de-Camp Honjo, the complete diary of Lord Privy Seal Kido, and the memoranda of Army Chief of Staff Sugiyama All three were published in 1966-67. And I was apparently the first Westerner to acquire them and study them in detail. They demonstrate specifically on a day-to-day basis that the presently accepted description of Hirohito's role in the Japanese state is no longer tenable.

I have cited them and their revelations at length in my pages and also a great deal more good evidence to explain what Hirohito was talking about and why he held the views that he did. I also explain in some detail how and why a false view of Hirohito found its way into the history books. No doubt I am open to challenge on some points of interpretation but as yet I have not been challenged on any important points either of evidence or logic.

For me to look at the daybooks of Hirohito's principal advisers should not be called, in Professor Bartlett's phrase, "burrowing." Nor should Professor Bartlett tell alumni who "seek understanding" that they will "regret it" if they read my book. Rather, Professor Bartlett should read the new evidence himself.

Rowayton, Conn.

POSTSCRIPT, May 1972.

Through a lapse in the mails, my reply to Professor Bartlett is being printed a few months late. Since January my book has been studied closely by many scholars inside and outside Japan. I have been challenged on my interpretation of a number of events and on several fine points of translation from Japanese originals. As yet, however, no one has been able to point out in my work any significant errors of fact. Taking into account all the criticism I have heard, I would want to change, for a second edition, less than fifty of the half million words in my book. (For instance, I would change "91 villas" on page 73 to "many villas.") The emptiness of the name-calling to which I have been subjected encourages me to think that Japan's Imperial Conspiracy will have a long shelf life.

John Hurd kindly noted my ability to answer my critics in "Further Mention," May issue of the Dartmouth AlumniMagazine. In response I would like to make one observation. I don't know how Naomi Bliven, who gave me such a favorable review in The New Yorker, got the idea that I see a future military threat from Tokyo. Japanese are well aware that their nationfactory is a vulnerable target in the missile age. I have reason to think that those inner leaders of Japan who still cherish expansionist dreams expect to realize them by economic rather than military means.

Investment Policy

TO THE EDITOR

This letter concerns the Trustees' report examining the role of the College's investment policies.

Inherent in this study is the philosophy that the investments of the College should be made on the basis of social aims rather than a pure investment basis. An example was given that the investment committee deliberately is refraining from investing in the stocks of South African gold and copper mining companies.

I submit that the people who give money to Dartmouth would rather think that Dartmouth was an educational institution and not a social or a welfare institution. I submit that it is not the business of the Trustees to have any of their investment decisions based on what happens to be the social philosophy of the current president, or Board of Trustees. Who knows? What pleases President Kemeny today might displease his successor, not to mention the hordes of alumni who might differ with him.

Dartmouth has a big enough job as an educational institution without trying to be a social agency.

Dallas, Texas

ROTC's Good Points

TO THE EDITOR

I would like to add my 2¢ to the rhetoric which has been swirling around the ROTC issue.

Initially, to establish my credentials as one with no axe to grind, I am a decidedly unmilitary person, both in bearing and in philosophy. I have always been bitterly opposed to that supreme folly of our times, the Viet Nam quagmire, which was foisted upon us in the guise of a crusade against "Godless Communisim" by Dullesian brinksmen, aided and abetted by the omnipotent Pentagon. While I was an initial backer of Mr. Eisenhower's presidential campaign, I found few events to cheer during his tenure of office other than his famous advice: "To beware of the military-industrial complex."

With regard to Dartmouth's abolition of ROTC, I consider it an abject capitulation to the frenzied voices of SDS and its radical sympathizers, and a shameful chapter in our College history. In my judgment, the best hope of coloring the Military with a civilian hue and blocking its complete control by gung-ho military types is to partially staff it with liberated students from colleges such as Dartmouth. I see no reason why the College authorities should have caved in to the loudest shouters; nor why a student who desires to join ROTC should not have the opportunity. I applaud Princeton's reactivation of ROTC and hope that we will follow suit.

Worcester, Mass.

An Unfortunate Parallel

TO THE EDITOR:

I am sorely tempted to resign my citizenship in the U. S., my adopted country, which has been so good for me and to me for nearly forty years. Yet the only viable alternative would be to resume citizenship in the U.K., something at the moment almost equally obnoxious, since Mr. Heath is playing a minor chord in response to Mr. Nixon's major.

It is my profound conviction, as philosopher and historian, that we in the U.S. are very much in the situation of Germans in the Thirties. I was there, as a student, when the crucial things happened; "my family" would receive the ashes of a member, or perhaps not even those. One of the eliminated was head of Catholic Action in Berlin, another a comic in München. As philosopher and historian, I am incapable of explaining why such ghastly things occurred; but what I do know is that Adolf Schickelgruber increasingly isolated himself even from his yesmen.

I find an unfortunate parallel between "The Third Reich" and "Our America."

Professor of Philosophy

Hanover, N. H

"No Caricature"

TO THE EDITOR

It was disappointing to read Mr. Bryant's letter (April) with its denial of our Indian tradition. The statistical approach which he used (and why start with 1800?) could hardly discover the truth of this rich and powerful tradition. Why are Americans, especially, prone to use this method in situations where it cannot be useful. Let us not count the instances, rather weigh the significance of the deeds of our Indian brothers, particularly in the years of our infancy.

Eric Kelly, genial teacher of short-story writing at Dartmouth between the wars, would feel very sad indeed. Some will remember his stirring tale of the part-Indian student Philip Brewster in Three Sides ofAgiochook (1935). Philip performed a dangerous mission for Eleazar in 1775, stealing his way to Canada to placate hostile Indians who could well have endangered the Valley, including our College. Sturdy son of Dartmouth, one of many stalwart Indians who served the school they loved. Let us memorialize them always, and vividly to our senses.

And please, no more talk of caricature. This is no caricature, our Indian insignia. Have we forgotten our Art I and the vast difference between schematic design and caricature?

Lastly, have we in seriousness abandoned the Wah-Hoo-Wah? Shame on us! We can now "give a rouse" for our class notables in the Alumni Magazine. How bland when for years we have been hearing that Indian yell! It had carrying power. Like a thousand other schools, can we only give a "rouse"?

Arlington, Mass.

Bypassed

TO THE EDITOR:

The alumni have undergone three wars and we never tried to impeach a President of the United States. Perhaps the alumni have been bypassed in their judgments.

West Medford, Mass.

Henry Williams

TO THE EDITOR:

An applause card to you for reprinting the Sam Hirsch article on Professor Henry Beates Williams.

Those of us who were privileged to pour Professor Williams' teaching (personal as well as professional) into our heads will never lack enthusiasm for life. If there is any reality or beauty or solidity to learning that sticks to the ribs it is in knowing and working with preeminent teachers such as Henry.

Those who shared his experience all those years on the campus faculty are indeed blessed individuals.

Spokane, Wash,

Elliott White

TO THE EDITOR

Many thanks to Prof. Edmund Booth for his understanding obituary of Elliott White. I had the privilege of having Mr. White as my Freshman English teacher and his impact on me was and still is great. He was an authentic, one of those few men with a mind of their own who make you challenge your own mind set and lead you to reexamine your most basic assumptions.

He was one of the first ecologists I knew, believing the automobile was the curse of civilization and staunchly walking over Ledyard Bridge from his place in Norwich. He practiced what Thoreau preached.

I sent to Hanover for Mr. White's two books of verse when they were published and found them excellent, very much like the man. I meant to write and tell him how much the verse and his character meant, but procrastinated too long. I am sure many others who knew this unusual man at Hanover share my sense of loss.

Pelham, N. Y.

"The Prevalent Motif"

TO THE EDITOR

In the Sunday Sports section of The NewYork Times of April 23, I found a buttress for my flagging sense of determination not to contribute to alleviating the money woes of my alma mater.

The letter was from a member of the Class of '72, describing the game of beerpong, under the pretext of wanting "to know what the world's record is for the longest game of beer-pong." The author queries whether there is yet any endurance record for beer-pong and, if so, what rules and regulations he and his friends should follow if their own record-breaking attempt is to be memorialized. "We would like to try for the record by early June of this year," the writer states, "so a quick response would be appreciated." ...

Maybe the writer of that letter and his friends are, like appendices and ear cartilege, only vestigial remnants of an evolutionary scheme that has not sorted it all out yet. Thus, I regard as a hopeful sign the fact that he is a senior. My built-in bias, however, is to believe that the writer is in what still. is the mainstream of Dartmouth life: wassailers and wastrels, intelligent people developing an anti-intellectual slant on things because the real education at Dartmouth, one quickly learns to appreciate, is not in the classroom but in the inherited machismo of the populace. And as long as this remains the prevalent motif, I would rather send my money to my law school.

Brooklyn, N. Y.

Editor's Note: We agree that the letter to The Times was puerile, but we fail to see that this determines the "prevalent motif" any more logically than does, at the opposite pole, the brilliant undergraduate work presented in "An Undergraduate Sampler" in this issue.'

"Something Special"

TO THE EDITOR

I have many friends who are Dartmouth graduates—have several times visited your college. Now and then I get a copy of the Dartmouth Alumni Magazine. It is excellent. Especially enjoyed the article on Kiewit Computation Center. I do lecturing to various groups on travel, education, politics. Kiewit will be featured now. It was inevitable Dartmouth would go coed. Times are changing. Continued success to Dartmouth. Your college is something special.

New York, N. Y.

Three-Part Commentary

TO THE EDITOR

I note that "Wah Hoo Wah" is now "Give a Rouse." Another colorful, picturesque tradition dismantled.

"Financing Higher Education": Any reflecting citizen will realize that America cannot be governed and provided for internally by miscellaneous, politically inspired hot shots from Washington, D. C.

"Fraternities Are in Trouble": A blow at higher education is that there is no collegiate institution that could be more and yet is less than the undergraduate Greek letter social fraternity.

Las Vegas, Nev.

The Open Space Issue

TO THE EDITOR:

Perhaps Paul Nelson '56 has done some research into the workings of the Controlled Environmental Corporation. He may even have met with some of the corporation's leaders and studied its aims through written accounts. If he is a teacher, he must know that debate on issues is important.

Now, the Controlled Environmental Corporation will provide necessary outlets for people to enjoy themselves. Where are people who live in large urban areas to go? There must be some areas left where the land is scenic and just plain comfortable to be in.

The Controlled Environmental Corporation finds these areas and makes them accessible. Its function is as natural as the word necessity. We must all urge Paul not to impede its goals in any way.

Hollywood, Calif.

What's in a Name?

TO THE EDITOR:

It seems to me that Dartmouth is missing a good bet. With all the changes that have taken place—coeducation, revolving-door attendance patterns, and the demise of the indian symbol—Dartmouth should consider changing its name. Think of the publicity and excitement that a "Give-Dartmouth-its-new-name contest" might engender!

My entry, probably the first in the contest, is that the new name be Webster. Certainly, naming the College after that famous alumnus would be most appropriate. What was that great quote of his? Oh. yes-"It is a college, gentlemen, but there are still a small number who love it." Great stuff!

May I suggest a full four-year scholarship to a good, all-male liberal arts college (if there still be such) as first prize?

Milwaukee, Wis.

TO THE EDITOR:

Dartmouth College has changed so much that it is unrecognizable—at least to those who attended 10, 15, 20 or more years ago. The facts behind this statement have been aired many times and I do not intend to rehash them. I do want to offer a suggestion:

I suggest that the Trustees consider changing the name to Kemeny College.

Chicago, Ill.