To the Editor:

The article by Milton Himmelfarb, “Hebraism & Hellenism Now” [July], is a curious mixture of scholarship and twisted logic. Poor Hellenism! It was a civilization that left no priests or rabbis to support it eternally. So we have: “Cultivated humanism is Appollonian Hellenism,” which, according to the author, led to Hitler’s persecution of the Jews. Was Apollo really a precursor of Hitler?

Spyridon Granitsas
New York City

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To the Editor:

. . . The justification for the Six-Day War can be found only in the fact that it was necessary, indeed, that it was unavoidable, in order to insure the continued existence of three million people. But Mr. Himmelfarb would have us endorse as miraculous this of Mr. Macmillan: “The other day, while the world debated, Israel’s three millions imposed their will on their enemies.” So it was not necessary, or if it was, that is not what we are asked to regard as miraculous. It is the fact that we are not used to being thought of as right, and now no lesser authority than an ex-Prime Minister confirms for us that to impose one’s will is right, nay, more than that, praiseworthy. . . .

I greatly admired the technical skill of the operation, as I have no doubt did many Arabs—I mean this quite sincerely—a mere six days for a war bears witness to a remarkable efficiency. But then, as the world was debating some thirty years ago, there were also, I am sure, countless thousands who marvelled at the brilliant, swift campaign then being waged in Europe by those others who also wanted to impose their will. And although, as Mr. Himmelfarb points out, we have all written papers consigning Fichte, Carlyle, Mazzini—not to mention Hegel—to the rubbish heap, I am not sure that we can yet claim to be so much taller than our predecessors—much less that we stand on their shoulders—and, at any rate, certainly not while we continue to believe that imposition of one’s will was wrong in Poland and Czechoslovakia but is now right and a positive virtue in parts of Egypt, Syria, and Jordan. . . .

Michael Langdon
Madrid, Spain

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Mr. Himmelfarb writes:

Hellenism, said Matthew Arnold, is that power which enables us to see things as they really are. It does not seem to have enabled its defender, Mr. Granitsas, to see things as they really are written. I quoted Ralf Dahrendorf as saying that cultivated humanism did not prevent those graduates of German Gymnasia from stamping out people like ants. For Mr. Granitsas, “did not . . . prevent . . . from” equals “led to.”

Mr. Granitsas’s rhetorical question implies that I said Apollo was really a precursor of Hitler. That is scarcely a Hellenic or Arnoldian understanding of what I actually wrote: “What might a Dahrendorf not have had cause to say if those Gymnasia had been largely Dionysian? (Let this be said for Apollo, that of all the—it goes without saying, non-Hebraic—gods, he is the least given to drinking blood.)” In my conclusion, while insisting that Hebraism is essential and that its neccessary proportion is higher than modern Jews used to think, I called Hebraism by itself insufficient, and too simple.

“Antoninus Pius, for his desire to search to the least differences, was called cumini sector, the carver of cumin seed”—that is to say, the hairsplitter. He is alive and well, in Madrid.

In saying that “Israel’s three millions imposed their will on their enemies,” Macmillan meant that the Israelis were victorious, preventing the Arabs from destroying Israel and killing the Israelis. Of course, Macmillan spoke when people remembered something about Arab war aims and the circumstances in which the war had broken out. Does Mr. Langdon, who still remembers, prefer to forget? It is not altogether clear whether he is eager to seize a pretext for abandoning history in favor of myth. Maybe it is only a kind of linguistic or literary tic that causes his attention to be arrested by Macmillan’s choice of words and makes him think long, censorious thoughts.

Why did Macmillan say that three millions imposed their will on their enemies, rather than that the Israelis defeated the Arabs? His rhetorical purpose is not impenetrably ambiguous. He was extolling heart and mind (and will), declaring their price to be far above numbers. In the sentence before, he had recalled Britain’s greatness when the British were few: “In the time of Elizabeth we were only two million people, in the time of Marlborough only five or six million, in the time of Napoleon only ten million”; and in the sentences after, he went on to say that Israel “had what any great people need—resolution, courage, determination, pride. These are what really count in men and nations.” He was making a traditional comparison between le moral and le matériel, like Napoleon’s statement that in war affaires morales count for three quarters, and forces réelles for one quarter.

Mr. Langdon cannot approve my promiscuity with miracle. As in the beginning, I said, so now: miracle, the miraculous, is what one gapes and stares at: what is in a high degree remarkable. The contrast between Macmillan in 1968 and General Sir Evelyn Barker in 1946—“punish . . . the Jews in a way the race dislikes as much as any, by striking at their pockets. . . .”—is in a high degree remarkable. (No need to repeat here the contrast between Macmillan and the Oxford English Dictionary, or Rahel Varnhagen, or Heine, or the Viennese Jew with his reservations about Dr. Herzl’s idea.)

Despite Antoninus Pius’s carving of cumin seed, on the whole he is well-reputed. Let Mr. Langdon take heart, therefore—if that propensity and not something else explains his letter.