910 Railnoad Ave.,
Novato, Calif. 94947
August 28, 1970
United Nations Ass.,
465 Post St.
San Francisco 94102
Peace in the Near East
Dear Sirs:
I believe I was once a member of your organization and also of several organization in the Same field. None of them would ever program me and efforts to have interviews with officials were all a priori rejected. Maybe this is of the past.
I used to go around saying that the two greatest achievements of my life were the honorary visit to the imperial Gardens in Japan and a free dinner from Armenians. Then I added the thirty-three (33) rejections of my paper on “Vietnamese Buddhism.” This was finally accepted at the Department of S.E. Asian Studies, University of California.
A few years back my income began soaring and a none of the “important” organizations would ever listen. I decided to work for world peace—actuality, not empty phrase on my own with the principle to eat, pray, and dance with people which has become quite easy.
The “good-son,” so to speak of the late Ruth St. Denis, my “Dances of Universal Peace” are spreading very rapidly and a team of my associates is leaving for Asia to film and record the work of my associates, though not a single organization in San Francisco will accept these associations—excepting the young people. They are coming to my meetings in hundreds all over the Bay Area. Participating in “Dances of Universal Peace.” These dances are spreading very rapidly in many parts of the land.
For years I have been working for peace in the Holy Land. The major premise being Boccaccio’s story of the Three Rings. And its sequel blessings “Nathan the Wise.” In fact I attended a peace conference in Geneva early this year where representatives of all the world’s leading religions met to discuss peace and my verbal role as an incarnation of “Nathan the Wise” was taken very seriously when the conference ended.
It is a great irony but only three men outside the University of California and “American friends of the Near East” would even consider my putative program. All were officials of the U.N. One man gave me four hours and said my program was the sanest and most sensible he had ever encountered. His name was Gunnar Jarring.
Now we are hearing about a presumable U.S. Russian a peace program passing the U.N.
I am no longer concerned with calling on people and being thrown out which has been my experience over many years. I am reporting this to you because you are supposed to be working for the United Nations. Now a counter proposal has come from the very person who would never grant me any consideration to have a joint American-Russian policing form which would automatically under-cut the U.N.
Changes in my private life have resulted in a great increase in my personal income and I am hoping to establish a peace scholarship for the Department of Near East Languages at the University of California in Berkeley.
It is regrettable, exceedingly regrettable, that all news media of every sort of political suasion and every new and old school of dialectics knows all the dramatic events taking place outside the buildings on the Berkeley campus, while the great achievements of laboratory, studio, and class room are totally by-passed by all of them. And my peace program for the Near East takes into consideration the researches and achievements and the personnel of the total of the University of California campuses.
In the meanwhile we have gone ahead. Last night a joint Israeli-Arab dinner hold in San Francisco was a total success. There will be more of them.
And I am preparing to go to the East Coast and also Washington where I am hoping to get some important Americans out of subjective “realisms” into objective reality. I do not believe the world can exist half free, half dialectic. At this writing I am finding the young with me all over.
This is a report and I am pleased to add that an important radio station (not one of the so-called liberal ones) will soon be reporting on our achievements.
Faithfully,
Samuel L. Lewis
United Nations Association of San Francisco
World Trade Center-Suite 257 D
San Francisco, Ca 94111
September 4, 1970
Samuel L. Lewis
410 Precita Avenue
San Francisco, Calif. 94110
Dear Mr. Lewis:
This letter is in response to your letter of August 28, 1970. Forgive me for taking so long to answer you bit we have just moved our office and my time has been extremely limited.
I would be interested in learning more about your endeavors. I am not quite sure what your plans are as this is the first I have heard of them. If you have time perhaps you could me more explicit information about your programs.
Your truly,
Gerald Yoachum
Executive Director
Sept. 6, 1970
Mr. Gerald Yoachum
Executive Director United Nations Association of San Francisco
World Trade Center—Suite 275 D
San Francisco, Ca. 94111
My dear Mr. Yoachum:
I am very happy to have your letter of September 4th. Let me say that at this writing I am absolutely and questionably in favor of what the United Nations has done, at least in decision-making regarding the Near East. But I do not think it is possible to have peace in the world when the opinions of big people are news regardless of facts. Indeed, I am so biased as to believe that kowtowing to opinions itself is one of the greatest causes of turmoil as the present time.
When I was at Geneva early this year there were several challenges to “great” Sir Zafrullah Khan as to what he had to offer excepting emotion and oratory … and he sat down. But that is the type of person who is welcomed everywhere, and whose very beautiful speeches are applauded by everybody and affect the lives of men not one whit. Even locally, and many other places, persons, persons who are regarded as in favor of the United Nations support of oppose various contending parties in the Near East, and so the word “justice” today has no meaning whatever.
In the year 1928 the then living Dr. Henry Atkinson of the World Church Peace Union same to this city and was so satisfied with our interview that he asked me to continue my studies of the religions of the world. I have continued. I have spoken from the pulpits of five of the world’s great religions—elsewhere of course. In my home town it has been almost impossible to get an interview at any level whatever, although Bishop Myers is considering it. The local Rabbis will not give me a chance, but I have two Jerusalem Rabbis strongly with me. The local ministers also demonstrate their “Judeo-Christian Ethic” but it is quite possible within a short time I shall be speaking from a Cathedral in Washington D.C.
I was once employed by the now retired aged Russell G. Smith of the Bank of America and he and Mrs. Smith know a little about me. But the world Church Peace Union threw out my reports. This is not however a tragic letter. Upon examination they were all accepted by The Temple of Understanding in Washington, and sooner or later some Americans may accept achievements of other Americans.
In fact the program for the Near East was part of a larger program of “How California Can Help Asia.” Page after page has been given to the questionable Aswan Den, but what Americans have done, have actually accomplished in the Near East, or for that matter on the whole continent of Asia, is not news, and this to me is a crime.
In 1930 I proposed that all religious holy places be de-nationalized and de-politicized. After the UN was established I felt that it, or some co-coordinative or subsidiary group should in some way be given jurisdiction over the holy places of all religions.
The peace plan which I proposed and which was accepted as wonderful by Mr. Gunner Jarring and separately by at least three other UN officials, included at least mutual recognition of all religions by each other and even the establishment of a Papal residency in Palestine.
As part of the program “How California Can Help Asia,” I know what the graduates of the multiversity have done, can do, toward the solution of water, desert, and soil problems in the Near East. This was particularly true of Professor Paul Keim who accomplished wonders, actual wonders hardly known anywhere. But the same is true of the multiversity in general, that campus riots or ingressions become news and great accomplishments are ignored by the press. Yes, the State Department did give him a little recognition; the recognition ended there.
Both Paul Keim and an Iranian Professor, separately, worked out methods of the construction of adobe homes with plumbing and sanitation, at low cost. I have ream after ream of records in my files, and the only organization in San Francisco that ever let me say a word was the Commonwealth Club and that under my good friend Ret. Admiral Evenson of Belvedere.
I was once sent on a peace-feeler mission between Pakistan and India and was excoriated for even trying. Then the nations met with Kosygin at Tashkent. Now I am becoming a hero with the young, because older people simply wouldn’t let me speak. My paper on Vietnamese Buddhism was rejected 33 times. Then I met other Vietnamese Buddhists whose papers were also rejected, until I met Prof. Richard Kozicki at the university of California. Since them I have been working for peace in Palestine.
The hard fact that Mr. Gunner Jarring and later his associates thought my plan was wonderful, coupled by its rejection by all the peace and religious groups in the U.S. has not stopped accomplishments. My young associates have recently been most successful in putting on joint Israeli-Arab-Christian dinners with prayers. I understand that the American Broadcasting Company has now accepted these faits accomplis.
The welcomes finally received at Geneva from the real leaders of the real world’s religions, and the later receptions from the youth, wherever the youth were approached, makes me feel certain that something will be done, and that we can rise above our dualistic hypocrisy concerning “democracy’ and continued rejections of eyewitnesses of historical events.
At the present time I have lost my two chief secretaries who have been rewarded with lucrative positions in connection with my own efforts. One of these is in “Dances of Universal Peace,” my inheritance from the late Ruth St. Denis, etc. A complete writing of my program would be difficult but I am hoping to have some of my young friends go over my files and pull out stacks of university brochures which have been ignored by press, radio-TV, and so-called national magazines. But I am optimistic enough to believe we can have peace in this world on two simple bases:
A. Facts should be considered as more important than subjectivities about them by important persons.
B. Facts should be evaluated not on reactions to personalities presenting them.
I am very much for one world. I have lived in many lands. I have had no trouble with strangers anywhere, no matter how exotic we may claim them to be.
Faithfully,
Samuel L. Lewis