To the Editor:

As one who was profoundly affected at the time by Auden’s poetry of the late 30’s, especially his “Spain,” only to experience a diametric reversal of political views (at the time of, and probably somewhat prior to, reading Gide’s Retour de l’URSS), I would have appreciated Bernard McCabe’s article, “‘Necessary Murder’: Spender & Auden in the 30’s” [February], even more if Auden’s political philosophy had been brought up to date just before his death. This would, it strikes me, have entailed some reference to his published viewpoint on American involvement in Vietnam. May one refer to Authors Takes Sides on Vietnam (Simon & Schuster, 1967), in which Auden is quoted (in part) as follows: “. . . It goes without saying that war is an atrocious corrupting business, but it is dishonest of those who demand the immediate withdrawal of all American troops to pretend that their motives are purely humanitarian. They believe, rightly or wrongly, that it would be better if the Communists won. . . . I believe a negotiated peace, to which the Vietcong will have to be a party, to be possible, but not yet, and that, therefore, American troops, alas, must stay in Vietnam until it is. . . .”

John Hastings
New York City

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To the Editor:

Bernard McCabe’s article on Spender, Auden, and Day Lewis is superb. . . . Perhaps he overstressed their “violence,” but in quoting Orwell he should have gone on to the next sentence from “Inside the Whale”: “Mr. Auden’s brand of amoralism is only possible if you are the kind of person who is always somewhere else when the trigger is pulled.”

David Wilson
New York City