A ROOM OF OUR OWN

...So, too, with Ming...

...Now I am not urging Bob and Judy to study hard so that they can 'do nicely in the war,' but I am urging them that there is a wide field where 'getting by' is left far behind whether one realizes it at the moment or not...

...I note your comment on making our mistakes, if and as we must, from acts of commission rather than omission...

...Russia's successes and growing power are bound to have repercussions everywhere, and unless we 'put our house in order' and demonstrate that we can make a free society function adequately, providing the people with the needs of the soul and the body, material needs and food for each one's sense of significance, unless we can do this it is inevitable that some other form of social organization will take its place...

...A guy has the stuff in him to carry the ball or he hasn't, and one can't drink, smoke, carouse, and expect to be up and at 'em the next day in a football game...

...War hastens economic trends, but while it is on, it holds up political changes only to have the latter burst forth with volcanic eruptions later...

...As a lawyer, I got a great kick out of Fred Rodell's piece on the Supreme Court row...

...I think of her often, and the picture you gave of her sitting out in the snow and sunshine brings many a duplicate to mind...

...I did not exactly know it was as far advanced as your letter indicates, because there is a difference between reading about the Gentile League and things like that when they are words in a news story and knowing the individuals in one's own community who join up, etc...

...We Can't Stand Still "I spent a pleasant evening reading The Progressive of Feb...

...Let me emphasize that the trained soldier does not look for extra risks...

...So far as privileges go, he shares everything with his men, food, sleeping on the ground or in a hammock alongside, drinks the same water, shares the same mud and rain, heat and mosquitoes, and is a sort of combination father-brother-pal-leader...

...All this was prompted by your comment, and especially your explaining how so many of the men at home want to go overseas...

...The seasoned soldier (which naturally I make no claim to be) is a fatalist, and there is sound reason for his attitude...

...He holds a position of responsibility, and he holds it solely because he can 'deliver the goods' in terms of knowledge, leadership, and capacity to control his fears (another word for courage, because that is what guts or courage is...

...Here comes another batch of excerpts from Phil's letters from the Southwest Pacific: "It was a shock to learn yesterday morning that Ray Clapper had been killed...

...Because mankind WILL be fed, with BOTH necessary diets...

...All of which is offered respectfully and with the hope that it doesn't sound too preacher-y...

...Similarly one can't putter with math, physics, and the other exact sciences (and the law requires, for success, the same qualities) and expect to get on...

...Hence there is a great tendency to throw their weight around, to demand and expect attentions, courtesies, and privileges as a matter of right to them individually, and for the most part to get them...

...Experience teaches him that if he does his job in a workman-like manner, if he follows instructions, and doesn't take unnecessary risks—that is, risks due to carelessness or hazards not called for by the mission assigned him—if he's a proper soldier he finds out that every bullet and bomb that comes over hasn't got his number on it—far, far from it...

...It may have been conservative 25 years ago or more to advise one to 'play it safe' and 'wait it out', but in our time 'waiting it out' merely means that one is drifting with the current...

...As I think of it, it must be that you at home suffer the worst of all...

...I was glad indeed to have your report on general conditions at home...

...It may be a matter basically of temperament, but in addition, as you have heard me say no end of times, that the new age in which we live has affected that particular aspect of life most fundamentally...

...Then, under those testing conditions, the relationship becomes what it should always strive to be, namely, the officer is such only for the purposes of command...

...I thought Kather-ine Rodell's piece exceptionally good, and it was a nice feature to have hers on the front page...

...All these "things are only introductions to what will come, I fear, as you have heard me remark before...

...I noticed yesterday the name of a young chap who lived on Van Buren St...

...When one is dealing with one of those factors, it means one goes on living, or he is all through—"curtains" for him...

...It's funny, but my letter of yesterday which crossed yours of the 17th, comments on the fact that I suppose in many ways those of us overseas would seem to the folks at home to have it easier than they, and perhaps we do in some ways...

...I endeavor to get details of what happened and, where it is proper,,, send them on to the parents...

...One pays a high price for it in the days and months and, for some, years that one has to be away from home (there are some here in this theater, for example, who were in the Philippines and who haven't seen their families in three years or more...

...He knows that the best soldier is the one that is still alive and fit, and that it is his job to accomplish his mission without getting hurt, if that is possible...

...I look over the casualty reports daily, and when I see the name of some one from home, I am always concerned for his folks...

...It is a fine relationship as is that between soldiers themselves...

...He is not standing still, rather, he is being worked on by the elements instead of having some chance at least to give direction to the course of his life, and perhaps of events...

...exercise influence far above their (necessarily .intrinsic) merits per se...

...14 from kiver to kiver...

...70 Isn't Passing "I have no doubt but that if I had been home there, I would have worried a lot about Bob Ill's hitchhiking to Beloit...

...Yes, you are right there are hazards and risks to the business but one gets to be very fatalistic about it all...

...But as you may remember my telling you that when I was younger than Bob-—I don't suppose I was over 12—Wilbur Sachtjen and I took a couple of ponies and went on a trek from Madison to Spring Green and then to Sauk City, Baraboo, and back to Madison...

...In direct ratio as one gets close to danger (which is the prime business of war), to that degree one's associates improve, and the improvement is both subjective and objective, that is, 'the undesirables tend to drop out and everyone else tends to be at his best...

...I had heard rumblings of it when I was last in Washington, but those quotations from Black's opinions certainly are juicy...

...So I can only second your decision about Bob's hitch-hiking to Beloit: In normal times even that might seem unusual, but when one thinks of the responsibility that these youngsters have to assume, and the risks and hazards they have to run, hitchhiking to Beloit does not seem like an undue risk, does it...

...Give her a respectful hug for me...

...So I ought to be the last to ignore the Communists as I j think we were quite early in noting that one could not overlook the Nazis and the grave dangers from that quarter...

...He learns to accept the risks as a part of his job, and becomes, as I have said, fatalistic about it, and I think for excellent reasons...

...Interesting how a dog becomes part of one's life...

...Comfort To Parents "Bob should certainly realize this in physical training...

...I think we bludgeoned the kids into reading it or listening to one of us read it...

...Glad to know that Ming [our dog] keeps in good health and retains her customary majesty...

...At first I thought I ought to send you a radio since I knew you would be disturbed by it and worried for fear he was still with me, but then I was confident that you would have long before heard that he had gone on to another area...

...I want to second your remarks to the children anent 'doing enough work to get by.' I don't know whether that Reader's Digest article, 'Seventy Per Cent Is Not Passing,' is still around...

...But as I say, that type of attention does not develop character, nor the critical faculties of the brain...

...I suppose my 'enemies' will call that campaigning, but if I lived according to what my enemies wanted, I'd be under the sod, the only spot for me they'd be satisfied with, but I intend, so far as I can control it, to leave them very disappointed in that respect for some time to come...

...I don't mean that it makes one careless—not in the least—or makes one go out and seek unnecessary risks...

...It can take a fine type of individual and slowly undermine- his critical faculties and perhaps his integrity too...

...They may in fact have the merits or not, but just by their position they enjoy rights and privileges that would not otherwise be theirs...

...I find it is a great comfort to them to know as much as one can...

...You have all the restrictions, all the worry of uncertainty about those you care for, all the cares and responsibilities of rationing, planning, doing, and the pettiness of bureaucracy, the nasty littleness that comes out of people under those conditions, and none of the redeeming companionship that comes when the best that is in us comes out of so many...

...One of the most impressive things about the forward areas in a combat theater is the relation between officers and enlisted men...

...As I remember it, Dad was disturbed about it, but Mother thought it a fine idea...

...While it made me pause and ask myself, 'How come?' when so many who are overseas want to get home, I guess that what those overseas really want, deep-down, is not so much to get home, but to get the war won and to go back to 'real' home, not this distorted war-changed home that they hear and read about...

...Newspapermen, like politicians, big industrial managers, etc...

...You know how heartily I agree with that...

...Hope it won't sound like lecturing, because that is not what I intend —but in this war business one sees the truth of the fact that with some things they are just done correctly or they are not done at all...

...One gets down to the basic facts of life, and the reality of near-by death, like a blow torch, burns out the dross, and the best (only rarely the worst) in men comes out...

...Even today Bud, our English bull dog, is a vivid remembrance and his personality is as fresh as that of any human being...

...That does not sound like much of an adventure in these days of automobiles, but then to go off on ia 150 mile trip by horseback was something...

...I had a frank talk with one of our abler young correspondents last night, because what newspapermen need, as I have come to know them, is exactly the same thing that other people in public life need and seldom get: plenty of criticism right from the shoulder...

...As I recollect, it did not 'go down,' or if it did, Bob and Judy hastened to regurgitate it intellectually as soon as they were out of sight...