Liberals Opposed to Nazism Those in Austria Regarded as Against Totalitarian Movement To THE EDITOR OF THE NEW YORK TIMES: In the letter by the Rev. Thomas A. Michels, published in your issue of Sept. 15, we are told that in Austria "most of the liberals-in the European sense of the term-were not only not opposed to nazism but favored it openly or cryptically." This is, I think, a misstatement, not only with regard to that small group of politicians who followed in the foot- steps of great liberals like Prof. Unger or Franz Klein, but misleading in so far as there was no Liberal party in the Austrian Reichsrat and the liberals of either the Socialist or the Christian Socialist party cannot be justly accused of favoring nazism. This misstatement is obviously due to the confounding of liberalism and anti-clericalism. It would have been ex- cusable in the nineteenth century, when Pope Pius IX issued his encyclical "Si quis dixerit" against the liberal enemies of the Catholic Church. It is, however, inadmissible today when liberal Cath- olics in France and in Italy were and are waging a gallant and intrepid war against nazism and fascism. It is similarly misleading to identify the forerunners of nazism in Austria, the Grossdeutsch (the Greater Ger- many) party with liberalism. Ritter von Schoenerer or Schober were as little liberal as Bismarck or the Kaiser himself. And although it is none of my business to defend the memory of Mgr. Seipel against Father Michels, it seems to me unfair to mention him and Doll- fuss as equal champions of Austrian independence. Chancellor Seipel was a highly cultured statesman of European size who did his best to strengthen Austrian democracy, while Dollfuss did his best to destroy it by aping Musso- lini's corporative state and by anni- hilating all Socialist achievements. His tragic resistance proved of as little avail as the "courageous letter" sent by Otto of Austria from Belgian safety, challenging 200,000 Austrian veterans to offer armed resistance to 75,000,000 Germans. It may be of use to cry over spilled milk, but it is of little use to back up with this liquid Habsburg ambitions. RUSTEM VAMBERY. New York, Sept. 16, 1944.