To the Editor:

Does Mr. Bush know that the ploy of using Nicaraguan stamps as evidence of perils posed by that country has been used before?

On June 16, 1901, at the climax of U.S. Senate debate on whether to cut a canal through Nicaragua or the Panamanian isthmus, Senator Mark Hanna's able lobbyists (after scouring all Washington stamp dealers) mailed a Nicaraguan 1-peso stamp to every one of the 90 Senators.

It showed the Momotombo volcano ''in magnificent eruption.'' The mailing described the stamp as ''an official witness of the volcanic activity on the isthmus of Nicaragua,'' which - Hanna's lobbyists had long alleged - would endanger construction and operation of a canal.

Two weeks before, the Nicaraguan Government had denied a U.S. press report - probably planted by the Hanna lobby - of a Momotombo eruption, pointing out there had been no volcanic eruptions in Nicaragua since 1835. And Momotombo was 100 miles from the proposed canal route.