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He had been a singer. He left Prabhat at the end of his study singing in Italy. At a successful audition at Les Scala and was signed to begin an operatic career before. The Guns of August one thousand and fourteen changed those plans. Became back to America worked for a time as a clerk at his father's bank in Brooklyn that when the United States at the war went back to Europe this time with twenty seven National Guard divisions. He had been a businessman. He joined us father in law's still waiting for him and rose to the vice president. It World War two as a major in the United States Army Air Force he was in charge of the allocation of aluminum products for the aircraft industry. After the war he was a special advisor to the government of the disposal of surplus and transport and. He had been a deployment. He was a special advisor to the American ambassador to France on my toes concerning the Italian peace treaty he was a special assistant to the chief of the Marshall Plan which of Italy. He had been all of these things and at the age of fifty eight he decided to be something else. There was no evidence he says that I could write. But there was a tendency in the air many retired bankers soldiers and diplomats dabbling in the arts why not. In one hundred fifty two his first novel about an American diplomat in Rome was published it was a popular and critical success and one reviewer summed up the general feeling this way it is written with. That subtle understanding. And it may well leave as. Branded upon. The evidence that Paul Hyde but I could write fiction was in and more evidence has been happily accumulating. And such now both as hotel teller round. The outer drones and now the latest device of Xstrata about one of our diplomats assigned to a post raises a tropical storm I introduce to you a man who says that he enjoys writing as much as he'll sports first of all hyped up. Thank you Mr Dog. Was a very charming introduction. Ladies and gentlemen the name of these down on the side I don't take more time. But. My novels have to do in one way or another with representatives of governments in foreign lands and impression seems to have written risen amongst my limited but loyal audience that I am a retired career diplomat who has turned his hand to the stories based on my life in the foreign service of the Department of State in the comforting assumption that some of you can be counted among my face readers I'm taking this luncheon as an excellent opportunity to set the record straight I owe that the foreign service as well as. They might be getting the impression that I am attempting to claim membership in their exclusive club No I was never a career diplomat directly after the close of World War two I served in the State Department at their request for five years performing several unrelated special jobs resulting from the war. In order to pursue these duties which in one nine hundred forty six covered all of Western Europe and from one nine hundred forty seven one hundred fifty one where in Italy I was made a Foreign Service reserve officer now the Foreign Service Reserve was created by the Congress to enable the State Department to engage the services of outsiders for special jobs for a limited period unlike the Reserve Officers of the Army Navy and Air Force they are not on permanent court they are strictly specialists on temporary assignment the regular foreign service of the Department of State has no need to be ashamed of the adjective exclusive the man who enter it do so only half having passed very difficult and very searching examinations both written or examinations designed to exclude those whose knowledge of history of geography of international law of and of maritime law or of international trade make an homage and of political philosophies is not sufficient in breadth and depth to make a rounded diplomat who can properly represent his country abroad Furthermore a candidate must be fluent in the reading writing and speaking at least one language other than English as for example that must be so clear clean and grammatical that it would pass the standards of Mr Dog. And of the late Howell Ross of the New Yorker there is still a massive groundswell of gobbledygook in the reports and documents that pour from the various departments and agencies of the executive branch of our government but you won't find it in the dispatches of the regular foreign service officers. Whether or not you agree with what I have to say there will be no doubt as to the meaning these men are in the great majority skilled masters of expose the story broke How did I not had those five years of experience as a reserve officer it is safe to say that I would never have been able to write a publishable book there were two officers in the embassy in Rome the minister counselor and the economic counselor both non basons who were kind of off and watchful enough to edit my dispatches my earlier efforts of which I was secretly probably would come back to my desk so spattered with red pencil corrections and comments that they looked like the drawings of an abstract impression these two men never question my facts but they were quite obviously appalled by my inability to state them in a lucid broach the targets of their red red pencils was syntax and semantics knowing that my dispatches would go to Washington over the signature of the ambassador himself a career officer it was their duty to protect that chief by saying that I used the right words improperly parsed sentences it was two years before my first dispatch went through without a comma order that was a big day for me it was in one nine hundred forty nine and I was fifty six years old and had received my first day in English composition. No college student could have been prouder than I almost grateful it isn't everyone who is paid a fact salary for taking a two year course in composition. When my reserves commission expired in one nine hundred fifty one I made up my mind that the least I could do to repay my debt to the foreign service was to utilize the skill which they had taught me by writing in their defense I know you'll wonder why I say defense but during those five years it had become increasingly clear to me that the men of the career service were developing into prime targets for those snipers on Capitol Hill who were gunning for the executive branch our country had emerged at the end of the war as the only nation strong enough militarily economically and Marley to oppose the insidious advance of international communism without seeking it or even desiring it we had had the role of leader of the world of law and order trust bonds with the signing of the two honest this is the armed forces had relinquished their command to the Department of State diplomacy replace guns and bombs our career foreign service officers were in the front line carrying out the tactical maneuvers in the field based on the strategic policies of the president and the secretary of state the tasks of uniting those nations who with us believed in freedom and democracy and of confining the creeping spread of total Tyrion Boccia vision was stupendous one because the military could not be employed we had but two weapons dollars and sway the skillful and effective use of both of these was and is handled by the officers of the State Department but instead of credit they reap scorn and abuse one of the fighting forces went to battle the press in the halls of Congress ringing with the eulogies of our brilliant generals and the brave boys. Ah diplomatic victories on the other hand there have been some notable ones since one nine hundred forty six go unnoticed and I'm song Looking at the reverse of the medal all military defeats such as POWs harbor the Kasserine Pass and the N.C.L.B. chaired all rally if ever done out Nora cries for the beheading of generals and admirals but let one defeat in our diplomacy it. And the horrors of the Capitol Razon with the cries of traitor and treason just why this is I don't pretend to know but I think I can make a very good guess I live in the low country of South Carolina not far from Charles thanks to the untiring efforts of our congressman Mr elemental rivers we have collected a tidy amount of military bases a Navy Yard a mine Force Base a pilasters missile base a base for the nuclear powered submarines that carried Polaris missiles and a large and active air base for the military air transport command these installations have brought thousands of new residents and millions of dollars to my neck of the ward and though they may also bring us one day an enemy nuclear bomb the people are happy and there is no one implying children include Mr Rivers and then bed time prayers and every adult will vote to keep him in the office as long as he chooses to run now this situation is not by any means unique I dare say that there is not a state in the Union that does not have a military installation of some sort and in addition a great many factories producing hardware for officers small wonder that every member of Congress is in there pitching for the defense budget those dollars pay off and vote now to let us have a look at our first line of defense in the Cold War the State Department. Outside of the District of Columbia which has no representation on Capitol Hill it has no installations on American soil and its procurement is largely paper and pencil not a potential vote and a whole lot as for that entertainment allowance they asked for why every honest churchgoing citizen knows that it's for cocktail parties and dinner parties the wines and liquors so that off fancy dan diplomats can open up in striped pants and morning coats why we put tax Weyers slaving here at home no indeed no more money for that sort of nonsense cut the budget in half and let him drink no there is only want to exception to this disapproval of entertaining of our embassies abroad that is when the Congressmen themselves go junketing around the world they expect and demand a red carpet at receptions and official dinners with all the cocktails and champagne they can guzzle some of them believe me stout guys with. The like of the court appeal of off foreign service officers not only makes them safe targets for ridicule and abuse but it also deprives them of sufficient funds to pursue their mission successfully without digging into their own pockets because the great majority of career officers like officers the Armed Forces have no resources beyond their limited by and by monthly paychecks expensive posts like London Paris and wrong are usually handed to rich outsiders who are willing to stand the drain for the privilege of being called Mr Ambassador and your excellency in the days before the First World War when we as a nation and he had to Washington's injunction to avoid foreign entanglements embassies and Legations were considered. The plums of reward to be handed to deserving tycoon. Who had contributed handsomely to the party in power because we had no stake in international intrigue in those days there was almost no trouble they could get us into that is no longer the case today our ambassadors of the field commanders of our tactical political battle we cannot afford to place men in these commanders who had not the knowledge and training to cope with the subtle and dangerous situations arising everywhere every day imagine the shock and outrage of the American public if a man who had contributed fifty thousand dollars to an electoral campaign well made a lieutenant general or a vice admiral. We would think the administration is going mad and rightly so. Well by what method of rodeos nation do we kid ourselves into thinking that in these difficult policy times we can make him an ambassador. All right here I must say time. That I have been some notable exception. In political appointee one of these one of the five standing is the proprietor of the paper today Mr John Hay Whitney who did an outstanding job as ambassador to the Court of St James during the last administration. In Ambassador Extraordinary which is the title of my new book I proud to paint a picture of the wrong kind of political appointee. If you want to know what I think of him read the book. By doing so you make it part of the following suit. If you wish to give heart to the American Booksellers Association and me by. There has been some wonderment expressed. Along with general admiration. At how Barbara Tuchman became such an expert on tactics and strategy Well this is Tuchman as the mother of three daughters. As the father of three daughters I find this quite easy to understand. But mistook one's interest in military battles and in political intrigue began another girlhood years when she fell under the fascination of the romantic novels of Xander Dumas and civil to Scott and an interest in international affairs was almost hereditary her grandfather was Henry Morgenthau Sr President Wilson's ambassador to Turkey in one hundred fourteen. Their uncle was President Franklin Roosevelt secretary the Treasury Henry Morgenthau Jr Barbara Tuchman was born in New York City and attended learned in school majored in history at Radcliffe from which are graduated in one hundred thirty three she was sort of such assistant at The New York offices of the Institute of Pacific Affairs and later served in the institute's Tokyo branch she reported the Spanish Civil War from Madrid for the nation and then was American correspondent for the British weekly New Statesman and next. During the war years she worked for the Office of War Information and she has written three books each of which took a few years the bible of the sword and account of Britain's relations with the Holy Land through centuries of history the Zimmerman Telegram a fascinating report on one of the kinds of deal Helms major diplomatic mistakes when he made them they would be it's and he made them all the time. And her present book The Guns of August a colorful comprehensive and remarkably clear description of the beginnings of World War One which is both a major treatment in the field of American historical writing and despite the underlying there's an irony of the feel. Exciting and attaining book I'm happy to present the author through your mouth with Barbara thank. You. First comes out. I. Really say that my reaction to what's happened to this book is been one of the stars. Keep reading the reviews and watching that numbers game on the bestseller list and asking myself. First to. Step into a book on the wrong part it's. Surprising to venture into that uncharted territory when. Captain and Pearl Harbor was considered poor firing in publishing circles when when I took the. First chapters of the telegram which was also on the First World War two publisher. Present one he said very kindly that it was his best advice to drop the whole project it was the wrong war the Civil War and the second war all the public was interested in I didn't leave in any case to publish it can be wrong about. People keep asking me how women came to write about war but I don't think that anything human need be alien to women. Or is after all has been a human activity for quite some time in any case the idea for the book was proposed by a man so I hope that makes the Orthodox. It happened like this I had for a long time wanted to write a book on nine hundred fourteen because I thought it was the moment in modern history the moment when the clock struck much say I didn't I couldn't figure out how to go about it I had no focus framework and. While I was working on something else when I was told one day that gentleman from McMillan's wanted to talk to me about an idea for one thousand fourteen what I'd be willing to make. Well in your world you might ask was Kennedy willing at the convention. I meeting was arranged and. Scott explained to me his idea about a book on the first months of the First World War I disappeared in the library stacks are weak and almost at once discovered that this was it and from then on I was lost anything else but I soon found that one has of the subject the query of friends who would ask me what are you working on now when I answer World War one kind of blade come over their eyes which I learned to recognize is the wrong war. After a pause they put out brightly Why don't you try writing a novel. People always ask me why don't I write a novel I don't know why what's wrong with what I do now. I think novels are fine. But. I've never seen understood why people seem to think it's higher or healthier form of activity or and my way preferable I've always thought history was more fascinating and exciting than fiction. And I've always wanted to write it so that other people would find it that way too. I agree with drunk of a great nineteenth century German story and the only German I ever found or agree with who said that when you compare the portrait of Louis the eleventh in the Scots Quentin Durward with a portrait of the same king in the memoirs of comedian Louise minister he found the truth more interesting and beautiful and the romance more interesting and beautiful seems that way to me too and I would add more exciting I don't see why anyone setting out to write history or biography need to add fictional embroidery Starcom novels are one thing they're frankly novels and that's all that's right to put in anything. But what I need in a story I'm writing a real advance or real people invent conversations or motives or thoughts for his characters it's not only confuse the reader as to what happens and what that means it confuses the record it confuses history and it isn't really necessary because you can always find real material just as anything you can make up I try not to make up anything even the weather a friend of mine said to me the other day she liked my book where the British army lands in France and I wrote that there was a sound of some of thunder in the air the sun meant went down the blood red sounded like an artistic touch. Was an art it was true I found it in the memoirs of a British officer who landed on that day and heard the thunder and saw the red sunset all I did was put it in the right place that's why I think history is more challenging to write without fiction we must work within the limits of real people and real events and real characters and real weather and. All these are far less logical and far more haphazard than anything you can invent. As novelist can invent their characters and things for them to say and do and ways with them to meet other characters and and when invention fails they can fall back on coincidence or when a character becomes inconvenient to the plot in some way they kill him off death comes off easily in novels but you would be astonished how rare it is in history where I mean at the convenient moment in the plot I had only one death scene two to do with all that month of August or General Sampson also committed suicide in the forest after the battle of time of birth and I was so determined to make the most of it I left home pro week to write a ton of per chapter and so two I was going to work up to a climax of tragedy like the heath scene in Lear I had a tended to achieve this effect by stark simplicity of language and by the time I reached that death shot in the dark I was writing a monster. I don't think it quite came off I think I understated it too far I wanted to make the reader cry but I have not yet but wept. Novelists and historians I think have one thing in common we want the reader to turn the page That's a quotation I confess from Captain brink of Owen who once said she wrote her books with a sign up over her desk will the reader turn the page you might suppose in this connection it would be hard to inject suspense into history when you know the outcome but I don't think this need be so I think penned on how you write I. Worried about this a good deal at the beginning but I found that if you write as of the time resisting always the temptation to refer to events Still ahead your suspense builds itself up naturally I used to get often worked up even doing the research. I often wonder if novelists miss that excitement will Anna Karenina run away with. The top story was he in suspense or did he time. In my book there's the moment when the German invasion reaches almost to the gates of Paris one clip makes that takes a short cut exposing the German flank and get any in Paris who's moment to attack and all that long afternoon show off sit under the shade tree in front of headquarters trying to make up his mind but the Stop the retreat of the French armies to the say. And turn and attack them arms it's pretty German right wing is sliding by the moment as escaping a job still thinks that some things and even though we know the outcome of suspense is almost unbearable because we know that if you had made the wrong decision you and I might not be sitting here today or if we were history would have been written by others actually the subject itself first thirty days of First World War. So powerful that I was carried along by a way that it wasn't til the end I was writing the epilogue that I fully realized was subject I got hold of it was too late to go back and put in the significance like that girl in the writing course was professor said now that would go back over her novel and put in the symbolism. To me as I suppose to most novelists the characters who make the story the novelist create his own but historian can't do that he never knows what he will meet you must submit to his material and follow where it leads the best example I can give of that is my experience when I was doing the cinnamon Telegraph. I started with a I'm with an unconscious bias I've grown up in a family that regarded. Half st and half profit and I absorbed this legend without thinking when I got to work on him for the book the more I read the more surprises I found I found a man of many failings chiefly penetrable self-righteousness which made him inflexible and led him into many misjudgments both men of the best but when I tried to portray the real goals and I found other people to. Buy the legend. They wanted me to win the book was still a manuscript to take out certain uncomfortable remarks and incidents. But taking out things that don't fit a preconceived picture is writing fiction not history. In the Guns of August I think most puzzling character was shot here I started with no preconceptions. But as I dug into the mass of material written about him and it was a great deal because it offers general for the first two years the Warren. Report that a military figure. I couldn't quite make out whether he was the fool it was said post war story in stride making about or a strong silent autocrat don't mind because simply an articulate. In fact I think he was neither but just wrong classifiable like so many real people. He was not bright but then there was that. Immense charitable self-confidence. What was its source. I don't never really found out the best I could do was tell how he looked and dressed and ate and how he spoke. In that wonderful line very easy spoken creamy tone and let these things convey a picture to the reader. Or to take a man I'm doing a piece on now no novelist would ever do to this to his hero what life did to this man. I've seen two pictures five years apart when he was twenty five he was tall six foot too long handsome strong when he was thirty he was a fact and he grew fatter and ball too so that at the height of his career the time of his greatest triumph and I'm writing of him he was no getting away from it not active. Now writers of fiction of course do not hesitate to afflict their heroes with a variety of misfortunes. Make them suffer from a Puritan conscience or they sink to the dregs or they become infatuated with worthless women like Mildred and of human bondage or they could murder in a canoe or Gage and. Peculiar adventures on the street cars or hot tin roofs or. Caribbean Beach just. But I never heard of a novelist yet who caused his hero to become fat. Yet this is the kind of an heroic thing that happens to ordinary people in real life in the historian must accept other types of. Plot in history is even more of a problem I said I read a piece the other day about the English novelist. Compton Burnett was quoted as saying that. As regards I find real life no help. In real life there seems to be no plot. All right. There was for example Gray's speech to parliament in August nine hundred fourteen. It had a kind of inherent drama that it's a writer a real chance England was divided when they go to war. All Europe was waiting for them waiting for a great speech he stood up House of Commons crowded to the galleries with tense silence when he had finished he had carried parliament and then what happened nothing the British ultimatum didn't go to Germany for another twenty four hours after. I was left with nothing to work with. If a novelist permitted this kind of anti-climax he would have been booted out of the Union. But that's the way it happened there's nothing I could do to let it stand the novelist can arrange climaxes and situations to self but the historian can't do that or at least the honest one. He must as I said before. Submit to his material and wait and be almost passive spars his temperament. Until the nature of the material itself supplies the answers I'd like to give you an example when I came close to the end I had a battle order to the Army's son even the mark this was to be my climax it was what I was working up to after one hundred odd pages. But the trouble with it was it just wouldn't do it was flat it was leaden it was simply not climactic I carried it around with me for weeks I put the card and read it over and over and kept it in my pocket book but. Trying to figure out how to use it and then one day almost as if the card stood up and said listen the meaning of it. Became clear it was it's very flat was the significance and then I saw how to use it I quoted the battle order and wrote that was. The time for splendor was passed the order did not shout forward or summon men to glory after the first thirty days of war and nine hundred fourteen there was a premonition that little glory. I have another example of how of how material itself can speak to the historian in someone's memoirs I saw I read how the grand Nicholas Russia had wept when he was named commander in chief allegedly because he felt inadequate to his job so that it didn't ring right I knew he was considered the only man in the royal family that he was known for sixteen tough manners he was marred by the common soldiers hated the court and I just didn't think he did feel inadequate but then why did he wait of course I could have left it out but I didn't want to I want to use it but make it fit and then I remembered other tears and went through my notes and I found an account of Churchill weeping and also missed me the French foreign minister and then I realized that it wasn't the individuals it was the times and I wrote. There was an aura about nine hundred fourteen that made those who sense to shiver for mankind and after I wrote this I realized expressed what I wanted to write a book in the first place there's even an artistic ending to that story because the other day the reviewer. Post Dispatch quoted that sentence and said it was the key to the book. Well that's what I call communicating ideas I wrote it in the field of it and nothing more satisfying ever happened to writing. At a National Book Award meeting last month won't occur told the nation's assembled book reviewers why they were not going to heaven the reason he said was that they were having their heaven here on Earth. Well he's right of course and as we required our ease before our very eyes firesides across the country smoking our cigarettes sipping our brand is returning our wives and ledges and reading his new book we will think kindly of its author sitting in one of those instruments of torture known as theater seats dying for a smoke and knowing there's no chance for one of the next thirty minutes trying to take notes in the dark and gobbling mint at the mint at The Mint in an attempt to avoid coughing and giving his reactions to the show away. That is we will think of him if that confounded telephone of us stops ringing and if that cannonade from the television drama will ever die down and if those dear dear children will ever decide to call it a day and go to bed the thoughts will be kind but they will include no trace of commiseration because we know as well as he does that he wouldn't change his blessid condition for us and that his chance of going to heaven are just about the same and for the same reason as I was Mr Ker loves the theater and his love as is apparent in his scathing criticisms of the pretentious in the third rate as in his columns of encouragement and praise. One reader wrote to the editor of The Herald Tribune of one of Mr Co's reviews so I'm going to have I read a report that gives the reader such a living impression of what happened in the theater I felt as if I was sitting in the front row seeing the play with my own eyes only one who loves the theater and knows the theater backstage on stage out front academically and in the sweat and tears of actual production could write reviews that create that effect and this describes most occurred in his forthcoming book must occur cerveza white to state the play and come to play a forces in modern American society and adds to our enjoyment by writing about why we no longer enjoy ourselves just a World Cup thank you first of all I would like to congratulate Mr Dill beer on finding that letter in the letters to the editor column of the Tribune I keep looking. This regularly and it's not the kind of letter I find. I I think he's done an excellent research work here. And deserves our commendation now I'm in a peculiar position here at the moment following these two so obviously intelligent and attractive people because I not only have to follow them but I have to follow them without an act that is to say my book the decline of pleasure which has been mentioned hasn't been published yet so I don't know where or as a headline in the few of us had it last week in nowheresville which is rather a good word I'm suspended in a void at the moment that's rather uncomfortable that is to say today before you I can't be modest about all those good notices. Nor can I be brave about all those bad notices so either posture is kind of attractive you can make it work but I'm stuck right in the middle poised in nowhere's Ville and the only thing that does for me is lead me into the subject matter of my book which has to do with a vacuum I think that we all find ourselves in today the moment we step away from our work now we have been trying for a century to step away from our That is to say for at least one hundred years we've been trying very very hard to see if we could make more time for leisure and presumably we're going to use our leisure time for play that is to say we're going to have a good time you probably don't remember an old one a Claire film about thirty five years ago with thirty years ago in which finally the machines were doing all the work and all men had to do was troop down to the river bank and sit there with their bread and cheese beside them and fish and sing all day. That was of course a satirical film it was kidding our idea of approaching leisure and approaching freedom from care and from labor at the same time it was imitating a dream that we had it was kidding it and reflecting it at the same moment that was our dream we have been working to cut down the hours of labor to free people on weekends and finally workmen did get their Saturday afternoons off and then their Saturday mornings and we got the work week down to the point where today we think it's going to be twenty hours a week very very shortly if this happens we're through the way things stand at the present time because nothing terrifies us quite so much as stepping from that work week into our leisure. I mention in the book. Several different medical reports one of them has to do with the prevalence of tensions leading to heart attacks in junior executives today and the rather surprising finding of the report is that it isn't the work pressures that kill people they are at least as tense if not more so during their leisure hours what scares them to death is having nothing to do and this has become quite a commonplace condition another little bulletin that I've slipped of the book has to do with the fact that as you get toward the end of January every year things we get begin to get just a little bit better because relief from the necessity of having to be happy at Christmas. Is now taking over. Nothing disturbs or distresses the contemporary psyche quite so much as the need to be happy or to seem to be being happy and if you have to go through the act you will go through it you gently grit your teeth and you do it and you're delighted when it's over and you can get back to the routine of chore all those chores that you have to do all the time now generally speaking in our terror over this leisure that we worked so hard to get I think we find only a single solution I like to mention a man that I know a man who is. Healthy middle age. Has a profitable job and also a job that some respect attaches to he is happily married he has several attractive children seems to be nothing wrong excepting his family discovered much to their dismay that regularly four or five times a year all of a sudden he disappeared on Friday night. And either was not located until late Sunday night or if located was located in a bar such that is to say he started to lose himself for a series of long weekends now an interesting thing about this is that he never was late for the office on Monday morning it never affected him one bit he was always got back in time to get to the job in good condition curious it seemed as though perhaps the threat of Monday morning was his salvation. And the promise of a free weekend was his help in any case I do know how the problem was solved his family encouraged him to buy a power saw and install it in the basement where he went to work beveling cabinets and finishing up a room in the attic be used as a guest room and then from that he tended to move out onto the terrace where he laid flagstones so that they could have cookouts in the summer time he took out part of the dining room wall in due time where his one thousand century ancestor might have worked disgraceful fifty hours a week he was working seven days. That is to say he was doing his regular fifty fifty five hour a week job at the office and then he was also working every night and Saturday and Sunday sneaking in a little perhaps on Sunday to loosen the evening up but he's working all the time and accurate never got drunk again not so far he looks tired. But he's content whatever strange guilt that may have been that drove him to this has been removed or relieved by returning to the labor we all thought we were going to be so happy getting away from what we discover as we get away from it that we are no longer happy. I could give you a lot of examples of this as they simply come under my observation but I'd like to point out that the return to the work process or the possibility of profit for somebody it's not greedy but the possibility of accomplishing something through leisure activities is today I think almost uniformly the worst example or least to me the most shocking example of this that I have come across thus far is the business of tricking and treating of hollowing because that seems to me really to be quite attractive activity for children and also they bring home these loaded bags you say of things which they can't finish and I do. And it takes weeks sometimes but just I think a year year and a half ago whenever the hollowing before last a new policy was instituted that is gaining widespread assent they send the children out in their school costumes and their bags for candy in one hand and in the other hand a UNICEF collection cup now you see even the children can feel not guilty as they go out doing something useless and strange and fantastic and wonderful it's no longer so fantastic it's a problem and time how to learn to enjoy the absence of work out of stuff we're terrified of course both ways we're terrified of not stopping because obviously we can kill ourselves if we don't stop on the other hand we're terrified of what happens when we do stop because we feel more like killing ourselves then than we do while working. I had an actor friend very cultivated actor I might add the not also cultivated. Drop in one evening not long ago we had a very splendid evening which sitting around four of us talking in the course of it he said he sighed very deeply and so I've got to slow down if I don't I know I'm going to have my heart attack but on the other hand he said I've got to hurry up or I won't get enough done before I have my heart set. On. How do you get out of that mine that's really tough sometimes we see especially in literature today in novels plays and so on a symbol of rebellion against some of this at least for instance we have today a kind of pattern I think it's almost a cliche at the present time a pattern of the rebellion against conformity the need to be non-conformist now in part this is a rebellion against perhaps outdated social attitudes but it's also a rebellion against the routine of. Our labors and the things we do that we somewhat despise during the hours of our work and we've all read about these rebels about these nonconformists and to conformists and they present us with a problem the minute that they do rebel against the pattern I'm talking about because if they are rebelling against all of our useful and practically profitable pursuits they don't seem to know what else to do they need to fall into a vacuum and they do nothing that is to say in our novels and plays the only alternative to working all the time seems to be letting the furniture go to seed. Not cleaning up the dishes refusing to shave you can add drugs to that if you want to it goes well with not shaving. Going out on the road to go nowhere that is to say the alternative is for the most part of utter blank This led me into a problem a couple of weeks ago I went to see a new play on this theme and while I admired certain things about it and by nature crab as everybody knows and I found certain things in the play that I didn't happen to like I for one thing didn't happen to admire the hero who was rebelling very much I mean he was kind of filthy and dirty and. He wasn't taking care of the little boy he was living with and his idea of fun. Was really pretty much to go down to the docks where people were sailing and get in on the party on shipboard and then get off again because he loved the sense of embarkation without having to go anywhere. And the other thing he did most I guess was to go into the movie house on forty second Street you know all those great houses up and down forty second Street because there are so many of them so he went from one to the other and spend all of his time there that is to say he could think of no other way to spend his time now that he had rebelled against all the processes and the pressures of both society and labor and my wife who like to play better than I did as she sometimes does never lets me forget it. Started badgering me about this particular play and she said I don't know what you're talking about because after all in your book you're really arguing for the whole principle of enjoying one's freedom and leisure and idleness and so on and so forth here that's what this man was doing and then you say you don't like him for what's the matter with you. I hope the reviews don't come out this way by the way. I. Tell you because book will be published on the fifteenth of May and you may get it for yourself and get much more of all this. And. And. And. And.