[LC]

Mr. N.A. Roskolnikov
2 King St., Suite 10
Parramatta 2150
SYDNEY AUSTRALIA

12th January, 1977

The Honorable Henry Kissinger
Secretary of State
The Department of State
Washington, D.C. U.S.A.

Dear Doctor Kissinger:

On this, the occasion of your temporary retirement from the central councils of world politics, I find it both pleasing to express my warmest congratulations on the brilliant completion of your career to date, and appropriate to express my concern that you should not misunderstand the purpose of the fruitful and relaxing intermission seemingly now just before you.

You have, my dear friend, merely completed one more phase of your work. This is not the time yet for a comfortable settling down to university lectures, memoir writing and reminiscences on the past. From a man of your qualities and gifts, much is yet to be demanded by your nation and by history. As a man who has already become a legend in his lifetime, you must fight to avoid the stricture that the legend often becomes bigger than the man — for neither has yet achieved full stature.

Never doubt, as you step now momentarily from the center stage of international politics and crises, but that this is an interlude, not the end of your life work. This is a vital pause, granted to enable you to read, to study, to regroup your ideas, and to talk to and listen to people for whom you would not, in the course of your current duties, have had time.

Despite your already quite extraordinary accomplishments, you must work to achieve even deeper, broader, and wiser insights into the emerging problems of our world — problems and crises that will dwarf previous problems of this century in both magnitude and complexity. Even you have been moving too fast and have been too busy to fully realize the implications of the combined changes — political, military, industrial and philosophical — that are merging and emerging in this frenetic age. Their efforts at recognition and resolution will inevitably become more violent.

A man of your potential energy, vision, courage and essential wisdom will be needed desperately in a very few years, Henry, when you will, once again, be summoned back to the center stage of that increasingly nightmarish drama called history. I have complete confidence you will be prepared for that final great act in a lifetime that will then, truly, be legendary.

Jan. 17, 1977

Dr. Henry A. Kissinger
Secretary of State
Department of State
Washington, D.C. 20520

Dear Secretary of State Kissinger,

I would like to take this opportunity of expressing my admiration
for you and merely say: thank you for your brilliant work and devotion
to world peace.

The recent Presidential election brought bitter disappointment to
me and God only knows what the future will bring. They will never be
able to replace you and most likely, it will be the tragic flaw in the
new administration.

I would describe myself as a rather intense Zionist but in recent
years I have become sensitive to the predicament of the Arabs; partic-
ularly, the Palestinians. They are a tragic people. And I do think
it is time for reconciliation between Arab and Jew. This significant
change in my political thinking is due, partly, to your efforts in
bringing a more stable peace in the Middle East. Also, I compare the
situation of the Palestinians to that of the Jews under Nazism in this
respect: no one seems to care or really give a damn. In other words,
the helplessness of the forsaken.

Therefore: I have enclosed a complimentary copy of a poem that I
have had published in *Jewish Currents*. The poem entitled: "The Clouds"
(on page 12) deals with the pathos of the Middle East and ten years
ago, I would never have thought of doing such a thing.

*Jewish Currents* appears to be Leftist whose contents I am not al-
ways in agreement with. But the publication is informative and was