Letters to the Editor

To the Editor: During the McCarthy era the Truman and Eisenhower Administrations, with the ardent support of the Department of Justice and the Atomic Energy Commission, destroyed the careers of two distinguished scholars and public servants, Dr. Robert Oppenheimer and Prof. Owen Lattimore. In 1963 President Kennedy and then President Johnson made what was in effect official apology and restitution to Dr. Oppenheimer by conferring upon him, in a White House ceremony, the Fermi Award. Professor Lattimore, though completely cleared of the frivolous and vindictive charges leveled against him, never recovered from the effects of official harassment and eventually removed to England, where he could carry on, his China studies without interference.

Now that President Nixon, by his statesmanlike reversal of our longmisguided China policy, has endorsed the philosophy and adopted the policies for whose advocacy Mr. Lattimore suffered persecution, may we not expect from him some acknowledgment of past injustice and of present indebtedness? Surely in a situation where President Nixon's sense of obligation must be so lively, he will not fail to live up to the standard of magnanimity set by his two predecessors in the White House.

HENRY STEELE COMMAGER Amherst, Mass., Feb. 28, 1972