HISTORY LESSONS

Pete Seeger’s description of Stalin as a “cruel misleader” is somewhat evocative of Marge Schott’s “Hitler went too far” (Letters, Nov. 16).

Perhaps Seeger would care to reprise “Ballad of October 16th,” the song he popularized as part of the drive to keep the U.S. from opposing the Hitler-Stalin axis. I was particularly fond of:

“Oh, Franklin Roosevelt told the people how he felt / We damn near believed what he said / He said: I hate war, and so does Eleanor, / but we won’t be safe till ev’rybody’s dead.”

DON M. MANKIEWICZ

Monrovia

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Regarding Seeger’s letter commenting on support of historical wrongs:

If alleged support by ancestral association is equivalent to actual support by personal participation, then I know where all the flowers have gone: They are beneath a headstone inscribed “Human Intelligence, R.I.P.”

MICHAEL APOLLO

Glendale