The United States has taken out thenwrong parts of the Cold War apparatus.nWashington has been cutting back elementsnof its own strength, rather than ofnthe strength of others. Nothing couldnbe more dangerous, than continuednAmerican pressure on Japan to increasenits navy, and to play a’ larger role innworld affairs. With the waning of thenSoviet threat, the United States nonlonger has an interest in a stronger andnmore active Japan.nThe way for a country to deter war isnto become so strong that no one daresnto challenge it. For a powerful Americanto regain economic preeminence, itnmay be necessary to continue to makenJapan pay tribute to Washington bynsupporting policies that are not innTokyo’s interests, as in the case of thenGulf War. The most important thing isnto keep the balance of power tiltedntowards America.nJapan has always wanted to dominatenthe Pacific and thus to control its ownndestiny, but it discovered in 1945 thatnthe price for such ambition could benprohibitive. Japan underestimatednAmerican resolve in 1941. Washingtonnshould never again allow Tokyo to believenit can successfully move againstnAmerican interests.nWilliam R. Hawkins writes fromnKnoxville, Tennessee.n46/CHRONICLESnLIBERAL ARTSnCULTURAL DIVERSITYnAT THE IVY LEAGUEnTwo Ethiopian women who came tonAmerica to study physics at DartmouthnCollege were killed last June by a fellownEthiopian who stmck them repeatedlynwith an ax. Haileselassie Girmay, a 32year-oldnfriend of the victims and annEthiopian-born geology teacher at anSwedish university, was arrested at thenapartment where the bodies were found.nHe was reportedly staying with thenwomen while he visited. These are thenfirst murders in the Ivy League college”ncommunity in more than fifty years.nTrending Westnby Gregory McNameenProse & Poetry of thenAmerican WestnEdited by James C. WorknLincoln: University of NebraskanPress; 733 pp., $25.00na Of making many books there isnno end,” Ecclesiastes has it.nLike the endless streams of cat-cartoonnand celebrity workout books, the flow ofnbooks factual or fictional about thenAmerican West seems not only interminablenbut ever-increasing: The regionnhas long been a popular setting for angreat mass of pulp fiction, to whichnhundreds of new titles are added yearly.nAs writers of higher seriousness abandonnthe artificial canyons of New Yorknfor such sundry locales as southernnArizona and western Montana, not tonmention Hollywood and even Texas, anhost of books with promise to endurenhas been joined to what was as recentlynas two decades ago a very small body ofnworthwhile writing indeed.nWhere there is a literature there is annanthologist, and with the increase ofnwriting from the American West therenhas been an increase in collectionsnpurporting to represent it. In the lastnfew years there have been serviceablennngatherings like Russell Martin and MarcnBarasch’s Writers of the Purple Sagen(Penguin Books), a few dogs like AlexnBlackburn’s The Interior Countryn(Swallow Press), and a slew of inbetweens.nJames C. Work’s sensiblynnamed Prose & Poetry of the AmericannWest makes all but Russell and Barasch’sncollection redundant, and is onenof the better-conceived anthologies ofnAmerican writing of any kind.nGiven an abundance of high-qualitynmaterial — and in this instance there isnno shortage of good writing on thenAmerican West, buried though it maynbe under a mudslide of dimestorennovels — the anthologist’s chief problemnis organization. Mr. Work undoubtedlynconsidered many schemesnbefore arriving at the frame of his book,nan arguable chronological division ofnthe literature into four major eras.nThe editor places the first, “ThenEmergence Period,” in the years 1540-n1832, and he chooses as his exemplars,namong other items, a sequence ofnNative American emergence myths, annaccount by the conquistador Pedro denCastafieda (a less gifted chronicler thannhis later compatriots Escalante andnGarces), and passages from the alwaysnstirring journals of Lewis and Clark.nThe section closes with Walt Whitman’snlovely ode “Pioneers! O Pioneers!”nHere Mr. Work’s divisionnbreaks down, for by his own logicnWhitman’s well-known poem belongsnsomewhere near the middle of his nextnsection, “The Mythopoeic Periodn(1833-89),” which showcases selectionsnfrom Whitman’s contemporariesnMark Twain, Bret Harte, and JohnnWesley Powell.nThat section also introduces thenwork of early women writers like thenquirky, often brilliant Mary Austin,nwhose Land of Little Rain and ThenLand of Journeys’ Ending remainnbenchmarks of Southwestern writing;nHelen Hunt Jackson, whose romanticnnovel Ramona (1884) introducednNew England literary sensibilities tonsouthern California; and Willa Gather,nwho ranks among the greatest Westernnwriters, period. It is regrettable thatnMr. Work could not have found roomnin his already overstuffed collection fornsomething by Martha Summerhayes, anfine memoirist, but at least he had thenforesight to omit an appearance bynMabel Dodge Luhan, who cultivatedn