Letters to the Editor
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‘Careful What You Anticipate’
In his review of the April 19, 2006, concert of the New York Philharmonic, led by Mstislav Rostropovich, Jay Nordlinger states:
“I might add that, in this opening movement, Mr. Rostropovich lost his baton – behind him it went into the audience, and he never reclaimed it” [“Be Careful What You Anticipate,” Arts & Letters, April 21, 2006].
The baton did, indeed, fly into the audience, striking me in the right arm before bouncing to the floor in the row behind me.
At the end of the movement, a gentleman in that row passed it up to me and I returned it to Maestro Rostropovich, who had turned around to survey the damage.
My wife tells me he looked grateful. In any event, he did use the baton for the remaining three movements.
JEFFREY F. FRIEDMAN
Manhattan
‘What We Owe the Lobby”
In his fine column “What We Owe the Lobby,” Hillel Halkin eloquently makes the case that “moral imperatives” should have a role in shaping U.S. foreign policy [Opinion, April 25, 2006]. But in doing so, he strongly suggests that support for Israel may not be in the hardheaded strategic interests of this country. In this, I think, he is wrong.
Israel is on the front lines in a worldwide struggle between Western democracy and an aggressive, totalitarian Islamist ideology. Allowing that ideology to succeed anywhere will increase its appeal and attract new adherents; conversely, decisively defeating it will discredit its proponents, and lessen the attraction of sacrificing one’s existence in this world for an ever more dubious prospect of triumph in the next.
In 1938, Neville Chamberlain called Czechoslovakia a “far away country of which we know little.” We now know that Czechoslovakia was of far greater strategic importance to Britain than Chamberlain imagined; indeed, German generals stood ready to overthrow Hitler had the allies stood with that small democracy, rather than betraying it.
HOWARD F. JAECKEL
Manhattan
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