Jill's assignment to revise a study of the Milwaukee aged for Mgr. O'Grady has rebounded upon me. She pressed me into service and the last several days have seen me with boxes of tables, case studies of the elderly, and scissors, patching together a new study according to an outline of my invention. Hardly an inspiring task! It'll be over in a week, however, at the slapdash rate we've been going. More importantly, I have finished a revision of my manuscript on "Science & Values in Administration,"which will be published in December and March in the Administrative Behavior Quarterly. I was annoyed at receiving it back for various unimportant changes last month, but, as sometimes happens, I found that the whole last section needed revision according to a more general theoretical scheme. From holding separate criticisms of writings on administration, it became a statement re ideology in applied admin., together w/ the major ideological subdivisions of thought. Now I shudder to think how inferior the last section would have been without the more sharply integrated theory.
Not surprisingly, the Center for Applied Social Research has been voted dissolved by the NYU Board of Trustees. "Every dog is allowed one bite"and Stoddard couldn't be gainsaid. I am not deeply moved or materially affected, except that I get flashes of anger at his uncouth stupidity and dogmatism. I have all the Department Heads and several Deans with me on the matter, so it has not been so unpleasant and the allies are present for a future move. As Sebastian advised, "Enjoy your easier life. Thine enemies grow older."
May 5, 1960
Prospective for spending time in next 2 yrs. (averaged per yr.)
4 hrs. wk Financial affairs
16 hrs. wk Class teaching & Consultation (averaged for a full yr.) (including U. of Penn.
course in Spring 1961)
4 hrs. wk. Various promotional activities & projects
3 hrs. wk. Political activity
4 hrs. wk. PROD
2 hrs. wk. Administrative & misc. non-recreational, non-family
________
33 hrs. per wk.
50 hours = Aver. non recreational, non-family week
_____
17 hrs. left for projects on opposite side of page
211 weeks required
47 months would be required for completing the work of the opposite page, given the above schedule.
6 AM - 11 PM = 16 hours x 7 = 112 hours - 50 = 62 hrs for family, recreational, chores,
self-care, eating, reading newspaper.
May 1960 ( no day)
Universities w/o walls should be created. The developing mastery of communications would permit a new orgn. Within the new frame, the fields of knowledge might become much more fluid and defined ad hoc as they should be.
The classical economist's "invisible hand" that regulated supply, demand, prices, profits, and the organization and development of the economy has always had its defenders, some of whom like von Mises are brilliant. But no one has provided the appropriate justification of the indivisible hand for its beneficial effects in promoting & maintaining civil liberties, pluralism, and ingenuity in many areas of life.
A great university such as NYU should be reorganized to face its metropolitan character in a society of radically altered possibilities. For example, we continue to stumble along on the ancient U. S. theory of the professor as the full-time servant of the U. and the "pal" of the students. The truth is remote from the image. Better to create 3 types of appointment that a prof. may elect annually as the budget is made up. 1) As teacher, at a salary of about $15,000; 2) A free researcher at $10,000, and 3) as "business" researcher and consultant at $25,000, all paid from the U.
The 3rd class might include administrators. Evaluation of a person's performance would be on the basis of his chosen continuity in respect to the 3 alternatives. If he chooses only 1), then he is evaluated only as 1); etc.
May 10, 1960 9:15 AM; Princeton Junction
Missed the 9 AM train to NYC & must wait 45 minutes, not in good temper naturally. I have a meeting of the Policy Board at 11 AM to consider a resolution of support & a decent burial for the Center.
Vicky, who is slender, and Jessie, who is quite robust, had a pushing battle yesterday and Vicky apparently sprained her back. She should be x-rayed today to see whether it may be more serious. than that. Strange how violently she exercises - swims, plays ball & runs like a deer, and a small shove can hurt so!
On Friday I drove w/ Jessie to Atlantic City for the annual meeting of the American Assn. for Public Opinion Research. Enjoyed a dinner of flounder at Hackney's and a fine evening walk back to the Tray more along the boardwalk. The Tray more a completely ugly massive hotel. Friday afternoon, Schwerin became incensed at a critic's impugning the honesty of his presentation of a study of advertising psychology. Friday night, Louis Harris lugubriously defended himself against veiled accusations by Elmo Roper that he was compromising his integrity as a research scientist by assisting Kennedy's presidential campaign through the timing and partial selection of release of research materials. Sam Lubell, who was on the same panel, thought he would be the object of their attack & was surprised & disappointed, in a humorous way, when they instead assaulted one another. Sam was seeking a partner for some of his work & I referred him to brother Victor. Dinner with Frank Pinner Friday, drinks after the meeting with Mervin Field from Field Surveys of San Francisco, a party later given by U. S. Information Agency people under Leo Crespi. To bed at 1:30 AM, Jessie sleeping since 9 P.M. Up at 8, breakfast with Roy Carter of the U. of Minnesota. Conversations with sundry others. At 12:30 we drove back to Princeton, pausing to buy a 7 ½ lb. live lobster and shad and roe before leaving the City. The lobster and the fish were consumed for dinner, after we had exhibited the former to neighbors and I had done a ten-minute water color sketch of the fine animal. It cost $4.75, not a bad price for so fine a creature, perhaps so good & inexpensive because the summer visitors hadn't descended en masse yet & because I walked into the cooler and selected it. Atlantic City's most attractive section is the quarter that the poorer whites and Negroes inhabit back on the Aidal bays. Before 9 in the morning it is pleasant & this time of the year at other hours. Otherwise, it is difficult to see why any person of means with even the slightest quality of mind would endure its ugly and crowded hotels and beaches, and its vulgar crass pleasures. Its multitude of shops carry a million articles of costly junk.
Anna Maria flew to Florence for the summer on Friday, with Marco & Tancred. The Prince of Lampedensa's book, The Leopard, whose young protagonist give T. his name, has had its burst of popularity in America lately.
Brother Edward came to town Sunday. We lunched, discussed his projects for renting a house in Princeton. He should do well, perhaps even moving in across the street. I played nine innings of baseball with the most of children, and had a sore left arm from batting balls to them in practice. Sebas., Jill, Ed & I walked to the Freylinheusens for cocktails and outstayed the crowd, ending with dinner & music-making by piano, cornet and voice. Seas. executed a ludicrous dance ball routine and we played "Torno a Sorrento" and "Bye-bye Blackbird" especially well. Tom & I also played. The Baron ?. Rosalind's uncle, a diplomat, was on hand, also Mr. & Mrs. Strong, of New Brunswick, R.'s sister & b-in-law. Earlier Grundahls, Dunnings, Mrs. Erlanger, O'Faelins of Princeton U., et al. But they left before the noise began.
4 PM
Diane Monson turned in her term paper on the invention of machine translation that I had her working on. She will be happy when I tell her how pleased I am: her big blue eyes will light up & her long blonde Norwegian face will be wreathed in a great smile. It is a "C" paper but it gets "A" for effort & substance. The subject is first-class and the idea of getting the documentation of a social-mechanical invention as it actually develops hit the bull's-eye. Much is wrong with the study as such, but it all goes to prove that if one proceeds on important social problems w/ the logico-empirical positivist method, he will do better than otherwise, granted the silliness of some of the "inapplicable" technique. What a wealth of data, even from the skeptical respondents, some of whom refuse to grant that anything is afoot in their work. I should now turn it into an intelligible report on the 1st stages of the invention-complex.
I published Pino-Santos' article on the Latifundia of Cuba. He indicts both Cuban & American interests. I doubt that the Latifundia in themselves are the "causes" of underdeveloped economies. It is not the concentration of resources and power that produces backwardness & depression, at least not on the relative scale of history. Rather it is the character of the ruling classes. The bad behavior of owners & managers. The Cuban elite found their pleasures in life in New York & Paris. Their wealth is hoarded outside of the country. They have little love for the common people of their beautiful land.
Spring is late and lingering in New York City. I ate at Lindy's last night with a friend, and we walked up Central Park West afterwards. The food at Lindy's is good but Jewish cuisine cannot exceed a certain excellence, such as French, Italian and Chinese cuisines can, and so one pays there twice as much as for the same quality in a number of delicatessens and Jewish restaurants elsewhere in New York.
The benches and walks were emptied of people along the avenue. The stretch of walk is the favorite of males in search of other males for love and companionship. The "females" promenade while the "males" sit. Early in the evening the rendezvous are made and the couples go to their private pleasures. Late in the evening, there is a second wave of social visiting, changing of partners, and solicitations.
Homosexuality reaches farther into society than most people realize. These who live almost open lives as homosexuals are but a fraction of all those to whom ties of affection with friends of the same sex are quantitatively as numerous as and qualitatively homologous with such ties with the opposite sex. Then a large shaded area of mixed and overlapping sentiments exists among both the homosexual and the heterosexual. If the depth, extent, and importance of the shared area are not consciously appreciated, it is because the sexual life of mankind, like his other lives, and like his artistic creations, is never realistic. It is played in front of stage settings of myth and symbol and behind masks of slogans, simplicism, and practical fictions.
Don Michael just called from Brookings Institution to ask me to attend a conference on research into the social effects of the space & missile programs. I accepted. He is doing a project for NASA on this subject. I wonder whether NASA was prepared for the "social implications" of the latest burst of public agitation over the downing of an American observation plane by the Soviets. From the smallest child to the President, the nation is excited. I detect surprisingly little sentiment against sending such planes over Russia. Most people are intrigued by the story on its sheer merits. Those who seek a lesson or moral seem mostly to feel that it was unfortunate to be caught, and perhaps that it was bad to admit the nature of the reconnaissance. No doubt we must take some risks of provocation in protecting ourselves from attack & preparing for defense. Such flights over Russia are probably necessary and probably not highly provocative.
Lasswell sent me a manuscript the other day on methods of simulating policy-making and enticing creativity from persons & groups. It is closely related to problems I deal with in my social invention seminars. The paper is too long for PROD, but perhaps I can ask him to let me summarize it.
Last night I thought that PROD might be renamed Social Invention. I think the transition to subjects of greater interest and broader readership might be more easily accomplished through such a concept than through a completely new journal, The American Social Scientist.. I am concerned about the latter's cost. It would be a risky proposition, without $100,000 and my full time.
Ordway Tead, who is convalescing in the country, is reading my manuscript on Science & Values in Administration, and considering my offer to write a book on social invention, both for possible publication by Harper & Bros. Dimock tells me Tead has drunk too much over the years. Why? Ambition in excess of felt achievement. Alas Mrs. Tead, President of Briarcliff, has offered him too much competition. These are good reasons, but of course there must be others.
Friday the 13th began easily enough but became long & arduous. I wrote a little, read a little, and cleaned house before going to the office at 10. There the exasperations of appointments lent a theme to a busy 2 hours. How to get Ken Thompson (FF), Arnold Zucher (SF), Dimock, Sebastian and myself together next week to discuss a European program. How to change the meeting of the Analysis Committee of the Republican Party of NY County next Wednesday. (I was installed as Chairman at a Wed. night meeting by Sick Smith & after setting the next meeting for the 18th, discovered it was the night of a banquet with the Fordham U. Dept. of Govt.)
At 12 I lunched at the Fac. Club with Jerome Gottlieb whom I encouraged to speak to his LASSCO Israel Corp. of the opportunities that Sicily might afford for tourist & agricultural development. Jerry is a young would-be humanist of promise who had had to work in business as an accountant & is doing well at it.
At one I participated in the examination of a PhD candidate who had written on B. F. Butler, a crack-pot politician of 19th Century Massachusetts. The thesis was good in detail, but lacked all theoretical foundation as a scientific work. The subject was a good one for psychological & sociological analysis, but was treated almost wholly on a superficial recitative level. At that it was better than the three previous dissertations that I had examined. The day before a woman had presented a study of the role of non-governmental groups in the formation of the UN. With as inviting a case of promotion & propaganda as one could wish for, she had also written with naivete of a child. She had not even heard of the standard annotated bibliography by Smith, Lasswell, & Casey, on Public Opinion, Propaganda & Promotional Activities, the first work she should turn to on her topic. The candidate we examined at 3 PM could answer no question on his minor field of American History since 1828. He should have been kicked out of the room. Without exception the five candidates I have helped examine this last week should never have progressed so far as to appear before us. I lay the blame to their mediocre talents, and to their lethargy, but also to the wretched higher educational system, and to the backward faculty in charge of them.
I paused by my office at 4 to sign a few letters and give instructions. Harold Lasswell was in town and phoned but I could not see him & set a meeting for next Friday. I taxied to the NYU Club where John Wirt was waiting. John is developing practical educational courses for lawyers on behalf of he American Bar Assn. and wished to talk about his ideas for courses of Philanthropy. I recruited him for the Rep. Party Analysis Committee. He is a competent, tough character, well on the right-radical position in politics. At six Ernest Dichter joined me at the club & John left. Dichter is having trouble managing his Institute for Motivational Research at Croton-on-Hudson because he can keep no one as imaginative and famous as himself, & because he flies around the world giving speeches & planting seeds that sprout into clients. His wife came in a little later & dined with us at the club. I recommended Scofield & Saenger to him for employment. We discussed whether I should be of help He mentioned several studies that had bogged down, and I assented to giving them a push, provided the demands of time weren't excessive & the financial conditions were satisfactory. One project was a Kentucky public utility company's attempt to plan a public relations program; a second was a Savings & Loan Association's need to get people to save more money & to lend their funds to the S&L.A. members. The third was a Puerto Rican government project aimed at attracting industry to P. R.
At 8:30 PM, I called for Father Felix Morlion at the humble church and parish house of St. Albert on W. 47th St. between 10th & 11th A. He had phoned early in the day and asked to meet me. I invited him to come with me to Princeton and stay overnight. So began an intense session of conversations and visiting that ended the following day at 5:30 when he boarded a bus to NYC.
Steve DuBrul of General Motors had recommended that he see me. I recalled dimly that Steve had passed favorable remarks about some work going on in Rome, and that Karen Dovring had mentioned her teaching a course on communications at a place called Pro Deo. Pro Deo, it developed, is an International University of social Studies at Rome, begun 15 years ago by Father Morlion, a Belgian Dominican. He is its President. Its students number about 1500, mostly Italian but aimed at ever-increasing number of Asian, S. American, African and N. American students. It has a world-wide goal of preparing students for social action and raising the level of Catholic social science. It is now a pontifical univ. Its roots are American.
Now Father Morlion has set up a center for Intergroup Relations, with pledges of support from Catholic, Protestant and Jewish sources in America. I do not know with what idea he began our discussions, but after the first two hours and a night of sleep, he had persuaded himself that I should direct the new work.
Morlion is a man of genius - he appears to me not only wise but indefatigable. He elicited from me all of my curriculum vitae, gathered up and began to read all of my published works, probed widely and jovially into the affairs of all of our family as we moved from hour to hour and meal to meal. He spoke frankly of his early life in Flanders, his agnosticism, his activity as a writer, his revolutionary temper. Then he described how he immersed himself in political counter-action against the communists in Italy, arguing with their leaders at mass meetings. Finally he was most frank in relating his difficulties at the Vatican. The Vatican is full of intrigue, he said. The Monsignori flatter you to your face & knife you in the back. Heavy narrow currents of reaction buffet you. The Dominicans are charged with responsibility for the University but are not necessarily all allies. Pope John, as did Pius XII, asks Catholics to seek worldwide cooperation with religions that oppose communism. The new center for intergroup relations would seek to study and propose action on all kinds of issues and problems that confront man in search of universal brotherhood under God. It is to be more vigorous and international than the Natl. Confer. of Christians & Jews. It is to discover a universal consensus of religious fraternalism, and to promote collaboration among groups in the pursuit of the newly-found consensus.
I have never been truly a Catholic and can only conceive of myself as one in the future by a rewriting and reinterpretation of doctrine to the point where it could more easily be a "monstrous heresy" than a "brilliant translation" to those who rule the Church. I told Father Morlion that he must regard me as less of a Catholic than I am rather than more of a Catholic than I am, if he is to let me feel comfortable. I also said that I believe he has his hands on a truly great concept of a university, of research, and of activity. I feel that I should take up the challenge of this task. I run the danger of disturbing a horde of my acquaintances of the past who are locked in the academic liberal-rationalistic-atomistic death-embrace. But I have never fallen in love with this ideology, and therefore, like all who ever in history have stood by while a mean faith has put out the eyes of its believers, I am free to think that by the inner flame of truth and the beacon lights of history, some way of life will appear more sane, humane, reasonable, and joyously productive. The petty misunderstandings, the many slights and suspicious epithets that go with renunciation of the social science club's prerogatives, will not deter me for more than thirty minutes from accepting Father Morlion's mission. I simply must decide whether it is a true and good mission, whether it can and will come into being and, whether I have the qualities and control to master it.
Vice President Nixon undertook a 3 3/4 hrs. interview of TV with irritating fool Susskind last night. Nixon showed excellent composure, not much originality, a good but not highly unusual command of facts. His smiles were quick and not always where you might expect them. Like many another person, too many of the smiles were Japanese, i.e., responses to aggressive remarks, not the bubbling forth of gracious & happy sentiments. His theories of government are, like almost all politicians', verbal structures, designed to serve by themselves as matches for popular attitudes, rather than operational guides to himself of to the public aiming to understand his possible actions. He was on guard for 3 3/4 hours; I believe there is a smarter Nixon, less amenable, less uniform, beneath his performance. The public may only sense it; the public can never study it. A few may get in close. Perhaps I shall find an occasion, and an answer.
Khrushchev refused to deal with Eisenhower at the "Summit Conference" today unless the USA made humiliating confessions of aggression & provocation. Ike called off reconnaissance flights over Russia but wouldn't go further. So the Conference collapsed and all are speculating on the effects. I added a second editorial to PROD's next issue, urging a Commission of political scientists to give continuous reports on war & peace. We have little information & balanced, safe advice coming out of the parties, the committees of the legislature, the press, and the bureaucracy.
The probable failure of the Summit dissolution to bring all-out war makes me wonder again whether anything can start a war. By the standards of the past, every casus belli has been experienced. Small nations abuse the large, diplomats are jailed, spy rings are uncovered, ships are sunk, prisoners are held incommunicado, nations are derided, heads of state are insulted, statistics are exhibited to prove that "it is now or never". Yet neither the Soviet Union nor America makes the fatal move. We can now ask: Is there such a thing as a "fatal move"? Perhaps not. Perhaps a new psychology has gripped the world, which forbids the ultimate assault as much as individuals taboo patricide. No matter how deep the hatred & resentment, no matter how many conflicts and provocations, a full attack is restrained. Short of the highly destructive struggle, there occur numerous imbroglios, even moderate wars, and the cold war goes on and on.
In discontinuing the Summit meeting of the 4 heads of state, Khrushchev may be:
1. Indignant:
a. Because he sees other people's faults but not his own (displaced to nations' faults & Russian faults.
b. Bec. he has known of many incursions, has been building up anger, & now finally has a fallen plane as evidence
c. Bec. he is maddened by the stubborn Allied position in Berlin.
2. Sham-indignant:
a. To force Berlin concession
b. To split Allies
c. To appease aggressive faction at home
d. To make propaganda at expense of a "useless" conference
Met with David Danzig, Amer. Jewish Committee, & Father Morlion. DD left after 30 minutes & F. M. & I worked until 5:30. I outlined a complete scheme of personnel, projects, calendar, finances, functions, for the first year of the intergroup relations center. We meet again in a week and then he leaves for Rome.
Spring has come to Princeton. The evergreens have their yellowish tips of growth. The dog & cats lie flung in all directions on the grass and stones. No one bothers to close doors & windows. Rakes, bicycles, toys, and snaky hoses trip the walker whose head is in the balmy sky. A badger climbed into a maple tree's hollow trunk and the whole family tried to capture him with ladders, hoses, nets, all to no avail. To the boys who regretted giving up the game, I explained that the animal was clinging to his niche with the desperation of near death. He wasn't going to come crawling out for being drenched with water, or prodded by a stick. they finally understood how one being's game can be another's nightmare. They can finally understand anything except that the world cannot be mastered from the outside.
Ride the late NYC subways for the Moscow of Doestowski. Another train careened into Columbus Circle Station last night hooting for the police. They removed a drunk Negro who had been staggering around a car apparently trying to remove his pants. They pushed him up the stairs and out.
Reading, I passed Washington Square & transferred back at the next stop. A Cuban lady of hefty but curvaceous figure, accompanied by a girl of twelve and carrying two suitcases spoke to me in Spanish, seeking the train for Pelham. I wasn't informative but was comforting, for she was made uneasy by another man, a Puerto Rican, on the platform. They had arrived from Havana four months ago, refugees, "petites gens", perhaps the family of a Baptista noncommissioned officer.
Cramps & diarrhea yesterday early morning, probably from Yo Wing's seaweed and fish soup the night before. AM in office, lunch w/ Ralph Meuersohn; at PhD oral exam. Flunked a smooth candidate. These bastards won't read. Fever 100.2 o at 6. Too Corocidin. Napped. Slept long and well after dining at the Grosvenor Hotel w. Frasca, chairman of the Fordham Dept., Lovis Koenig, Marshall Dimock and Bob Wotzel. Likable people, but the conversation was only occasionally interesting. Too much shop talk. Then I fell asleep composing several beautiful lines of poetry, since forgotten, and a little later, stirred and dreamed again of what we supposed to be the same lines but was distressed to see that I had used the words "far from the madding crowd" and now, by the peculiar rules of dreams, was forbidden to erase this purloined phrase of Grey, become so trite.
The concept "delegation" of responsibility came up in conversation w/ Fr. Morlion the other day. The word is used a thousand times, but as it fell from his lips to relate how, he freed himself from his administrative burdens, the slight incongruity of the ancient habit & the modern usage joined my freedom-seeking thoughts at the moment and just now, five days later, while reading a note on the history of the Dominicans, I have a new idea. It is that the term "delegation" is usually presented in textbooks of administration as an instrument of the executive. Who, looking downward, decides that he can get his work done better by releasing it temporarily to the custody of subordinates, but psychologically and sociologically, if not formally and legally, is as often represents a concession from executive to subordinates, produced by incessant demands from below for more freedom of action, authority, responsibility. When an executive-centered person makes much of "delegation" he is partly responding unconsciously to democratic participant-centered pressures. When participants and their allies call for delegation, they are partly calling for a revolution, which, however, is contained within the semantic system of the old administrative order. So this word, like so many others, stands as simple and serene as a ship's pier but through it below pass the tides, currents and life of the sea.
Glanced at Qabus Nama, Mirror for Princes. Largely foolish advice. No wonder the princely target fell after seven years and "The Old Man of the Mountain" seized the reins. A bad education is worse than useless.
Does God belong in Political Science?
Proofreading a mimeographed version of my talk at Williamsburg on "Democracy as Method and Accident," the thought occurs that a new Constitution of the U.S.A. should be written. There is perhaps no better way of expressing clearly, concisely, and forcefully the changes that should be made to transform both the methods of our social operations and the substance of our goals. For instance, the "preamble" must state the relation of man to God in government. The role of experts would be described; they are not considered at all now. The role of the people of different levels, of parties, of groups can be prescribed. The expansion of the Constitution to the whole world can be and should be provided for. The "rule of law" may be stated. The principle of limited power & how to maintain & define limits could be asserted. New modes of functionalism can replace structuralism in delimiting & defining problems & difficult cases, and in ensuring rational change. Compulsory interrelation of policies can be provided.
For Immediate Release
NEW YORK UNIVERSITY PROFESSOR URGES EISENHOWER-KHRUSHCHEV
RADIO EXCHANGE. SUGGESTS NIXON PRESENT BOLD PROGRAMS
Professor Alfred de Grazia suggested to a meeting of the Stanford University Business School alumni at the Princeton Club tonight that President Eisenhower offer to debate the U-2 and Summit affairs openly on the Russian and American radios. Khrushchev would be given an hour of time here in return for the same privilege to Eisenhower in Russia. "We cannot lose," he said, "whether the Soviet government agrees to or refuses the request. At best, we have an excellent case to present to the Russian people. At the least, the world will further appreciate that the truth cannot be heard in their country. The whole story of these incidents, when known, will help achieve two major aims of American foreign policy: to make clear American military strength, over Russian skies if needs be; and to show the irresponsible character of Soviet diplomacy."
Referring to the effects of the incidents on the American presidential campaign, Professor de Grazia challenged the idea that the incidents might injure Richard Nixon's chances of receiving the Republican nomination. "However," he said, "these events might unwarrantedly take away votes from him in November. All the more reason, therefore, if he is to succeed, that he present bold new plans. The critical areas are five: to reorganize military and civil defense, to develop new foreign policy themes for the uncommitted world; to reconstruct the conditions of metropolitan living in America; to establish Negro equality once and for all; and to diminish domestic and foreign obstacles to free commerce and production."
Professor Alfred de Grazia, former psychological warfare officer and advisor to U. S. Information Agency and the Operations' Research Office, is Professor of Government at New York University.
Sent $200 to Mike Nalbandian to help him on his business trip to Nicaragua. Transamerica Corporation is paying about $700. A gamble, but the stakes are high & the loss limited. Also Mike desperately wants this chance to put a deal together; he has worked on it long & hard.
Cool, dark, green, wet, breezy morning. We awakened at 7 and dallied in bed until nearly 9. A fine dawn for resting, listening to crows, sniffing the winds through the waving curtains, & embracing your wife warmly.
On Friday evening I spoke to the Stanford Business School alumni at the Princeton Club. I sent up a couple of trial balloons on ways of interpreting the dreadful altercation between the Russians and Americans over the U-2 plane crash and Summit meeting. (copy of the release is attached). This Republican group would, I sensed, like to see Rockefeller as the candidate instead of Nixon. There is little question but that N. R. would do better. I believe, for one thing, that the Catholic issue has shifted its locale & will not be felt so much as a loss to Kennedy, say, among the small town folk as among the liberals & Jews who, in 1928, were for Al Smith. Yet these same voters will not move away from the Dems if Nixon is the candidate nearly so much as if R. were. Furthermore, I have an idea that R is going to sit this campaign out or else come forth strongly against N. before the Convention. If he fails in the latter attempt, I believe that the Rep. party will be badly split and perhaps break up. I am beginning to think that it may be in order for N.R. to reenter the Rep. Party convention, bust it up when faced with defeat there, organize a third party & pull a big Rep, Dem. & independent vote, moving into groups that the Rep. candidate can't touch, as are the Negroes, pulling a heavy Jewish-liberal vote that is cold to Catholic, unintellectual Kennedy. With the decline of party machines in campaigns, the best campaign can be waged by fresh, enthusiastic middle-class volunteers and professional campaign managers, both of whom R. would command in great numbers.
The girls were pressed for time and I drove them to schools. Passed the boys walking, on my return. All do well; they have broad bases & good endurance in the long educational haul. Carlo claims he is behind his class. We may ask that he be kept in the same grade but under a different teacher next year. He is wiry but small, and at seven somewhat young for his second grade group. He wants to be older so that he can get more deference and control his own & others' responses. Also he doesn't want to feel strained by the classwork. He himself offered these explanations, that also serve to show how intelligent he really is. He constructs sentences of a philosophical and complex order far beyond the capacities of most children. He is affectionately fully-expressive & unrestrained. He is enthusiastic about sports. His only troubles come from his lack of weight amidst the pushing crowd and his achieving flight while others are learning to walk. So he seems to walk poorly.
Harold Lasswell is growing quite grey. He is 58 but appeared suddenly older, at least during the first part of our visit on Friday late afternoon. I met him at the University Club & we drank several whiskies before going out to dinner. At first he appeared strained, unusually nervous (he is ordinarily the epitome of composure). He talked incessantly, in a rambling and incoherent manner. Later, with a couple of drinks belted away, he settled down and we covered our usual large range of subjects in good order.
Perhaps he was initially disturbed by my introducing Father Morlion's idea of spreading a universal natural law of human relations under God. L's father was a minister and he has forever submerged his early life but, as one gets old, the far past doubles back around the corner to meet him. He began to react positively only when the idea was presented in Lasswellian terms: I. e. faced with the goal of influencing the future, which of the group networks of the world does one enter to deposit and distribute messages: The army, the Church, the American universities, a secular political party, the communist movement, the UN, Zen Buddhism, etc. He seemed to feel that Father Morlion's route was as good as any.
Indeed L is always sympathetic with tactical plans, perhaps because he is by nature a poor tactician but a lover of plots. He is a pleasant nihilist, the mad suave doctor of 19th Century scientific romance. Towards the end of dinner, he drew out more of his theories of super-control society: Khrushchev, De Gaulle, the military, political & religions generally, he says will appear naive and primitive to the next generation of power elite, who, he confides in significant tones may even now be preparing to take over. What specifically will they be able to do? Paralysis bombs for one thing. Lay low whole populations for hours and days while the controls are quickly assumed. "Why not kill them?" I ask, with secret irony? Too much use for their labor, he replies. Perhaps in America, I say, but certainly not in China or India. Dirty hydrogen bombs are the thing, with automation & all of that, no need for unskilled labor. He agrees, astonishingly, forgetting his constant exhortations of individual human dignity. I do him an injustice lest I refer to his other side: his Positivism is humanistic. He is carried away by his ideas, rationalistic and unconsciously aggressive (he would be hurt to hear me say he has still an uncontrolled unconscious since he is the father of theories of the controlled libido in polities and was himself psychoanalyzed "successfully"). I believe I understand him well, if only because I can play all of his tunes myself, but do not take myself so seriously on them as to repress their absurd & contradictory tones. If one's ego is strongly enough built as a child, it can later in life contemplate all the horrors of its substructure. If the tiny character goes underground, it will never fully emerge. (Of course this is still not saying much; innumerable combinations & permutations of characterological determinants occur & produce personalities that may be differently evaluated.) My respect for Lasswell is great and the world of ideas would be the worse without him. He is affable, helpful within discretion. He suffers from inability to love & this may make him unhappy & old before his time. He has no truly close friend or family. He would never indicate or admit so. He is the old man in Ingmar Bergman's "Wild Strawberries," save that he is sociable.
L. is in favor of the new magazine. he suggests a new title, "Strategy," in place of my "Social Invention," but I fear this is too avangardiste and narrowly Machiavellian. L. is currently much interested in govt. & science, but balks at promising a monthly column for the new journal. Generally he is singing the same song as of years in his own work. He is writing on psychiatry & jurisprudence and applying without much profundity the several steps of problem-solution to modes of decisions, juridical, legislative, etc. Actually his analysis is nothing more than the tips I set for in my Elements in the first chapter, for the use of college freshmen.
We ate at East of Suez on 58th East of Lexington, of modest decor and fair cuisine, a choice of a Chinese, Indian, or Javanese dinner at $4 to $5. The couple who own & manage the place are displaced almost-whites, bearing the unmistakable heavy hauteur of the ancient colons of Indonesia or somewhere else in that vast area. I should be certain they were Dutch if their English were not so excellent. L. & I contentedly retraced our steps to the Club, examining the numerous shops of luxuries and antiques. I paused to buy a box of fancy doughnuts for the children. At the Club I bid H. L. goodnight and returned to Princeton by the 9:30 train.
11 PM NYC Tuesday May 23, 1960
How did the weekend go? Clearing out odds & ends of mail. Reading Alex Heard's Costs of Democracy, on campaign financing. Composing part of a poem on the reasons why the old want to live. Teaching the boys a little boxing. Playing Paul at ping-pong, where he begins to do very well. Viewing the satirical film, "Our Man in Havana," which, because it dips into tragedy from time to time, misses the superior level of "It's All Right, Jack." Wrote an editorial for PROD. Discussed at length with Sebastian the Morlion proposals concerning the intergroup-relations center at Rome. Rewired a line to the kitchen radio. Acted the teacher with the children a dozen times. Read snatches of poetry & prose.
Today was a day of keeping things going. A final meeting of the Center's Policy Board, mediocre lunch at Faculty Club w/ Mike, inconclusive meeting w/ Truman & Co., investment bankers, the usual melange of letters & memos, a discouraging final meeting of the class in Social Invention. Dinner w/ C at a humdrum French restaurant near Gramercy Park. Pleasant sights & sounds of the day: the children at the sunny breakfast table, David Danzig on the phone saying he was glad that I was interested in the Pro Deo work, Dimock's saying he would stand by me if I wished to make a strong statement against Stoddard's actions. C's light touch. Contrariwise, a close look at the faces in a crowd of people swishing by me as the traffic signal changed, Tom Cook suggesting Stoddard might be hurt, with adverse effects upon the Government Department if we passed a sharp resolution, Tom Norton saying that he didn't have an office in Commerce Building that I could use next year, the miserable performance of the class in social invention, with the several better students absent. Hundreds of sensations & thoughts in-between: irritating, and acceptable, mildly frustrating, and lending subsistence and minor movement of body & mind -- listening to Mike make assured statements about deals that weren't at all certain; watching enormously fat Truman speaking in German accents to a business friend on the telephone about a paper for 200,000 [bogatus] for discount; parking C's car; rereading a written-down speech of mine; buying an umbrella in a dirty little store off 9th St. E. where they are made; riding the train into NYC and reading Heard's book which I am to review for The Southwest Social Science Quarterly. A balanced day -- nor tragic nor triumphal. I suppose most days must be like this. Else we should collapse or go mad. But I prefer a more intelligent balance.
9 AM 12 Perry
A bright cool day. I walked out at 8 & was seized by the feeling of being in Istanbul. I hope that Menderes is forced out. He is not a bad man but he is not good either: he is simply a tough politician of great activity. My business friends in Turkey would probably be harmed if I spoke out against him and I have more than enough problems on my docket, but I am tempted. Turkey is as rich and more blessed intrinsically than Russia, yet she is doing as badly as Spain. Now an authoritarian government. Where is the positive side?
Brother Edward came in for two hours of the afternoon, before taking the 6 PM jet flight home to San Francisco. He looked tired and blinked his eyes often. He is flying to Japan Friday, where legislation to protect GE from the prohibitive damage claims resulting from a nuclear accident is being pressed. The riots in Japan are bad and the law may have to await a decrease in anti-American sentiment.
I was up early and did a sketch in pencil and paper of the red buildings across from my apartment. I hope to try to paint them someday next week. I commissioned SN to buy a gift for Mary Fran Coleman and Ken Bache who are to be married Friday -- It is a pewter pitcher from Holland.
Breakfasted at 8:00 with Sebastian after a scant 5 hours' sleep. Diane Monson met me at my office and we talked of her study of developments in machine translation. A pleasant, hardworking girl. I explained to her that I was now interested in a general study of the input and output of materials for scholars and other information & theory processors, such as executives. Machine translation becomes only 1 set of invention amidst a host of needed inventions in mental diet.
The Analysis Committee of the Republican Party of NY County met last evening from 7:30 to 10:15 at the law offices of Ted Ellenoff. I am chairman. I move gently, but the group is intelligent & cooperative so we should not have too much trouble in taking an energetic course in the future. The main result of an evening of discussion of program and problems was a theory that came to me as a reflection upon many years of political experience & the hundreds of studies of parties in America: the image and model of political organization & practice is still that of the old-time supposed army-like machine; reality has drastically changed and never conformed more than 65% to the myth so that the model is dysfunctional to the organization of politics currently in America. We need now to devise a new organizational formula for politics. Why did I never see this before? It is simple & clear; none of the facts were new. Yet only now did it float into my mind. Marvin Rosen, a candidate for State Assembly, was asking a question that had been put a thousand times, by Republicans, Democrats and independents: what chance have we got to organize all the election districts of NYC? So I thought "of course. None! Why should we? It is all a myth from a partially-existent past."
Father Morlion & David Danzig came to my diggings afterwards, towards 11 PM and stayed until two, talking over the proposed Center with Sebastian and me. Danzig had a few drinks under his belt and was loquacious and friendly. I explained that Livio Stecchini had to withdraw from candidacy for appointment because of new commitments directly in line with his career in the history of science (he is to be secretary to a conference in Iowa). I recommended trying to get Juan Luiz instead. Agreed.
Lunch w/ Rodney White, an editor of Administrative Behavior Quarterly, and sociologist at Cornell U. He is a Canadian and Univ. of Chicago PhD. At his request I described to him how a basic course in administration should be taught. He eats and talks well, but slowly, and I had difficulty catching the 1:10 train to Princeton. His journal has 1,300 subscribers. It is well-staffed, & must receive at least a $10,000 subvention annually.
At Princeton I met briefly with Jasper Crane. He owns most of Van Nostrand Publishing Company. I probed his interest in PROD and explained my plan for an expanded magazine. He was cordial, full of compliments (believable in this dour old Scot), and, while he stated flatly that he had been burned badly with the Freeman and would not entertain a new journal plan again, I feel that he will be of some help.
Swordplay flashed & sounded thru the yard & garden in the evening. The boys sawed & pounded sticks into shape and clashed in violent combat. I was caught up in it along with Vicky & Jessie & soon we had two teams of four, prowling around corners in search of each other. A half dozen scratches and many bruised knuckles, knees, and stomachs were endured in the fading light. Paul & Jessie are furious combatants. John is very skillful. The boys also boxed. In only several minutes, I taught John how to cover up, not to turn his back in retreat, and how to come out of his defensive position leading with his left hand. he has a roundhouse right that is not to be belittled.
Day of the Ascension. Christ tells his disciples they must believe now what they have heard of his rising and must spread the Gospel. Those who believe shall be saved. More, they will perform near-miracles. At the 8 PM mass, I think that there must be scarcely any believers, so rare have such acts been. I think how important it is to prepare a new schema for looking at the world. "How do the Gospels approach God? How can he be approached today? What is the fundamental difference? Is it such as to make man unhappy forever?" We need a new Gospel, a Second Coming if you will. If the 18th century felt the need, we sense it ever more today. Yet we "know" so well the social psychology and history of Gospels that it is incredible that modern man will let one be slipped over on him, even if it is the True Gospel. I wish I could work on the outline of Man and Nature that I had once drawn. I give $6 to the collections. Carlo & John exit from church arguing over whether the lady in front of us had a fox or a mink around her neck. Ugly little beast, dangling limp feet before our eyes as we knelt.
The Menderes government of Turkey is overthrown. Hurrah! I am confident it will not be another Cuba of Castro. Younger military elements, probably of liberal and westernized persuasion, did the job. Business and commerce should gain freedom and more spirit should infuse the entire nation....
Jessie now has 3 canaries in her room. They sing in the morning sun. Jess carried off my journal from my desk too this morning & I had to drive to her school to retrieve it. It got among her huge bundle of books & papers somehow. She is a noble archetype of the cycloid type. Full of passions -- now in rage and downness, then in happy affectionate effusiveness. A slang word that could be used for her at time is "dizzy". She is dizzy, we sometimes say, and I wonder whether the cyclic temperament and "dizziness" don't go together, as one passes from the one stage to the other, so that the seemingly superficial slang denotes a fundamental symptom of this type of woman or girl, "a dizzy broad," "just a dizzy kid". It is dizzying to have these powerful surges of feeling of contrary sensation and social effects, going from sunniness to glowering. Her physique reinforces Kretchmer's theory only slightly, unless you grant that all well developed women are prone to cycloidism more than men are, for she is big boned, "well-stacked," well developed, strong, heavy but not fat, with a large full face, much sandy hair and large blue eyes. it is unfortunate that psychology is so much psychopathology that analysis becomes almost synonymous with therapy. Jessie is a thoroughly enjoyable and "successful" child. It is the "herness" that fascinates me, as with the other children, the movement of the heredity of substructure beneath and throughout her personal and social activity
A houseguest is not good for a journal. Fabio Cavazza has been with us since Friday night. he is about 35, light complexioned, blue-eyed, with a sharply receding hairline, glasses, slender build and round face. Speaks always with dry assurance and is very much on his feet and in motion. He is an editor of the quarterly, Il Mulino, and is influential in that perennial minority, the Republican Party, & publishes books in social science. Though not profound in philosophy or feeling, he is widely acquainted with political affairs & espouses the application of intelligence & social science to affairs of government. We have discussed plans to print PROD in Bologna under his eye. Costs may be ½ of those here. Also he is interested in publishing the Elements in Italian. He will moreover make inquiries about some investment possibilities in electronics & pharmaceuticals in Italy, in which I know there is American interest. I asked him many questions about life in Italy, about places to live, costs of major items, transportation, etc. He wishes to set up an international project on the growth of the Italian economy. At first we talked of how to get $50,000 for the survey and plan, but then I advised that the whole matter could be done well with little or no cost and explained how, so why waste a year and hundreds of hours trying to obtain funds? We can get famous and qualified men, put these together, use one or two basic contributors and easily turn out a report as good as the Rockefeller Brothers Fund Report on the American economy.
Like most Italians, Cavazza rates his own country lower than either the facts or a decent loyalty would indicate in order. For instance, he cites case after case of bad bureaucratic behavior that are universal, but regards them as peculiarly Italian. He complains that the economic disadvantage of the South in relation to the North of Italy is increasing, not considering that if a hungry man gets $1 and a rich man $10, the former is relatively much better off. I suppose that one of the most endearing qualities of the Italian scene is this willingness of Italians to criticize and endorse others' criticisms of their country. One largely escapes the constraints placed upon, say, Americans, who must so often give credit to their own places, customs, and artifacts where credit is not due. All the more impressive, in Italy's case, because it is so loaded with beauties, accomplishments, and graces. Yet when pressed, can name numerous "good" characteristics. He is strongly anti-Catholic. He travels much, and has irregular habits of sleep, eating, and movement that, he says, made him decide not to marry.
On Friday afternoon, I met with Father Morlion. The Executive Committee agreed to our plan. A Father Fierens was with us & will work with me too. He is a Belgian priest who was forced out of China in 1953 after 15 years. Before meeting Cavazza at "King of the Sea"for dinner, Jill attended my secretary's wedding reception at the Vassar Club. All of the Center for Applied Social Science were there. René Wile indeed discovered that she and Jill had been childhood playmates and their mothers had been close friends. Herb & Stephanie Neuman were on hand too, she with a husky voice that I playfully asserted came from being choked by her husband. He is an aloof and constrained young man who could not possibly visit such excesses upon her. She introduced me to Bill Rosenthal, a stockbroker and active reformist Democrat who engaged me in an exposition of politics. The Democrats are divided into 2 antagonistic factions. If the Republicans had any large regular vote in NYC and could attract independents and liberals with dynamic candidates, they might possibly win the City. There is little chance of such, however, in 1961, and by 1965, who knows what will have occurred. Because of the difficulty of establishing a family residence in NYC and because of the press of other affairs, it does not appear that I shall be able to make any set of moves to advance my personal political candidacy in the next two years. The champagne and canapes at the reception were good and plentiful. I had to telephone Cavazza and discovered the only phone was in the women's restroom of the Club "This is what happens when women who complain it's a man's world get on top," I argued to a group of drinkers standing by, "when they take over, they ignore the rights and needs of men!"
8 AM Memorial Day, Monday May 30, 1960
I got Cavazza to the train smoothly, but with one minute to spare. I carried three extra, small passengers for the ride to Trenton. Later I joked with Jill as to why she hadn't taken C. aside & explained my aberrations about train-times, as one does with other quirks, viz "Let me warn you, Jim can't drink martinis without acting badly." "Peter won't admit it for a moment, but he simply cannot be trusted with money," etc.
What gets children to do chores? Blandishments, persuasion, threats, nagging, and slaps. E. g. getting the boys to wash the car. Again, to carry the screens up from the basement. Also, getting both boys & girls to clear the kitchen & wash the dishes. Can we do without force? Yes, but so we can without anyone of the means. Is one means ethically superior? No, not even persuasion, unless the end is good. Raising children well is as difficult as operating a business, directing an army, governing a State. In the melée of daily life, the pursuit of principles falters. Even when they are possessed and valued their application is far from automatic. Jill, for instance, understands the need to teach children to tackle disagreeable tasks, but she hasn't the heart for it. Converting trivial subjective goods into important objective ones is perhaps the hardest of all tasks. One must assume the child's perspective first & discipline the child in terms of childish things. Then gradually higher and more general levels of desire have to be introduced and substituted. The formerly important have to be displaced, surely and reliably, so that an adult, e.g., doesn't regard a clean floor as important as an orderly State. So one must continuously educate to changing values and practices, and while bringing about the change, use all means of enforcing the momentary state of things according to the rules of the moment. So, speaking politely, not slamming a door, and tying one's own shoes are enforced alongside not striking a brother hard and sharing good things with others, although the relative importance of the several actions changes in time.
The whole process of education is greatly facilitated by a spirit of charity. If children are secure in the affection of their teachers and elders, they will listen more, obey better, and accept the new. There is a true universal element to "charity". It is at once of great value in itself and of great persuasive force. It also can underline otherwise hostile acts, letting them have their appropriate effect without a lingering resentment and reciprocal hatred. Hence, more important than the type of educative instrument is the spirit in which it is applied. A parent should have a slight cautionary shame after every application of discipline. He should not delude himself by the seeming absence of compulsion when, for instance, an apparently logical ethical system is explained to the person being trained. The explanation is usually within an objective framework, which is not presently accepted by the subject, and therefore contributes an encroachment upon the value system of the subject. All education is making over another in one's image and, while it may be hoped that one's image is a good one and is itself an image of God, say, the elementary invasion of "privacy" should be admitted. In this sense, persuasion is no better than force. persuasion may have utility later on, of course, because it is more flexible & usable, in the complex affairs of modern life, but we should always remember that behind "authority", which permeates a million transactions of life, lies brute force. The submergence and sublimation of violence visited upon infancy work throughout life and lend to the million acts & voluntary quality of devotion. Authority is an invisible frame of steel for life in society, in which charity and other virtues function to give more human and higher meaning to man's existence. The too heavy subjection of men to authority is to be avoided but the way to its avoidance is not by restricting to sub-normal limits the use of force in disciplining children. For authority can be over-subscribed by all of the other means of enforcing change in the young. I have known men who were subject slavishly to authority, whose fathers never laid a hand on them and I believe that their attitude tends to be pathological in the face of adult world problems. But here is subject for a book. How little we know of the transformations of personality from beginning to end, despite a million works in psychology!
Much talk of the terrible Chilean earthquakes. "Waves marching at 500 mph. give one pause," I said to Jill yesterday morning. "It's for all those movies," she replied and we had to laugh. "Well, you know," I added, "when a vengeful Hand strikes from billions of miles away, it's not easy to hit the right target." And that's about all one can say if he's trying to connect earthly events with a divine hand wielding Just Punishment & Reward. It's a form of reasoning that can't lose, like the Freudian theories that explain any event as either a response or a reaction, thus glossing over opposite behavior in the same setting.
Two sets of tennis with Joe de Grazia. We divided them 6-4, 7-5. he is catching up to me. Yesterday I won 6-3, 6-2.
Discussion w/ Sebastian re piano lessons for the children. His spritely daughter of 13, Greta, is playing the piano poorly & he claims there is no good teacher in Washington. Be that as it may, I praised Mrs. Nora Greenblatt, our children's teacher to the skies. He was impressed & asked Cathy to play a piece for him. She refused. I urged her to, & then asked her why not. She said she played for her own edification. I became angry. I said it was well to be happy w/ one's work. But music, like painting, is a communication w/ others. She added then that she didn't know a complete composition. I scoffed and requested her to ask Mrs. Greenblatt for a prediction of when she would be able to play something. Then she finally added in exasperation that she didn't want to play for Uncle Bus because he is so depreciative. This reason was persuasive. Forty years of experience lies behind my accepting it. So I replied. "Very well. That I understand. Why didn't you say so at first?" "Because," she responded, "it wasn't a nice thing to say." "On the contrary. That's the best of the three reasons, and much better than the first." But then a small charitable thought. Shouldn't a young lady humor her uncle? It wasn't she who suffered belittling for a generation; she has always been praised by those who have had her life in keeping.
Six-yr old Christopher searched for his shoes to be put on early this morning. "The tanks get hot and burn," he declared. Each year 2 huge army tanks assemble for the Memorial Day Parade in front of our house. At ten they rumbled up and parked. The little children scrambled up their sides. The sergeant said "Watch out for those plates! They are hot." And Christopher, one of the first up, looked down to his mother significantly and stated didactically, "You see what I mean?"
Today felt like the beginning of summer. The day after a long weekend. I played tennis with Joe. He had me set point on 5-2 in games and I ultimately won 8-6.. Never give up the ship! The day had a trivial quality about it, deriving from a series of phone calls over appointments, travel tickets, and mail, but lunch, with the boys home from school, was pleasant. Boiled joints of veal with barley soup and white wine. Also an excellent ham sandwich, with English mustard, the ham being a locally smoked product of a pair of rascally-looking men who peddle to us regularly. At 5:30, I had about given up the day as a lost cause when I stopped by Sebastian's house to borrow an easel. He fed me Jack Daniels whiskey & we talked about plans for the Pro Deo program. I was mollified by his awareness of my problems in directing the program. I am concerned lest Father Morlion ask too much of me and Sebastian on the other side give a little. it would not be new for him to adopt an intransigent attitude, forcing me to make demands upon him, in short, being dependent on him in this peculiar inverted way. But at this moment, at any rate, he saw eye to eye on the balance between the personal compensations & obligations of the work to come.
Then Livio Stecchini came in and we talked of the plans for PROD. Livio at first was cold and then warmed up to the proposed evolution into a "journal of social invention." He named Santillana and Paolo Milano as possible friends of the journal. I invited Sebastian home for supper, and since Livio was going nearby to fetch a typescript of a chapter to his book, he moved along Nassau Street with us, drawing winy air into winy throats, and stopping to purchase a Louis Martin Burgundy, we accomplished the several blocks and found several hungry but cordial familiars awaiting us. Jill had a fine potage and excellent spaghetti with fresh tomato sauce and Romano cheese for us. Livio came in again and we all sat about the table eating and drinking while we talked of Stecchini's History of Measure (I promised to print an article upon its appearance), and of the lowly character of the Encyclopedia Britannica, & of the national character of Italians. Livio told of an astronomer named Menarone (?) who lived in Milano when he was a student and who preached that the earth was flat; each year the students would at some time raise a celebration and ultimately parade through town leading Menarone until they came to the Astronomical Observatory, where they shouted challenges to the Director to emerge for debate with Menarone. We guessed whether 99% or 99.9% of the people believed that before Columbus everyone thought the earth was flat. Jill confessed that she had that impression. All the textbooks say so, claims Livio, and he launches a diatribe against the books that regularly change their jackets and update their photographs, but leave essential materials of mistaken emphasis or in error unchanged. We were all in fine form in the dying light of May evenings. Stecchini is a thick-set, big-looking man, with a heavy accent not fully Italian, more Slavic, as is his face, for he could sit on the Politburo as a pure Russian. I understand his mother was Jewish -- from Russia perhaps. He even speaks Russian, but also Hebrew, Greek, Latin, Italian, German, French, Spanish & English. He is a good teacher, with experience at Brooklyn College & U. of Chicago, but now has no offer of a professorship. The criteria for selecting professors, in America as elsewhere, are disgraceful. However, by one means or another, he will make out all right. His wife is a well-respected elementary school teacher here. The most critical children look up to her.
May 1960
Bob Young & Yurur Cavazza -- speech to Stanford
[U. of Willus - Elvis Expiters]
Lunched with Bob Young on smoked salmon & scrod at that fine India House with its stooped, retired ships' stewards as waiters, uniformly dressed in the heavy woolens of a century ago & possessed of the independent deference of men whose diners were often sick and green but whose responses were cultured by strict maritime command. Bob brought along a Chilean businessman, Alfredo Yurer and we talked mostly of skiing and of the high interests on loans in Chile. Save that chances to invest money may be more readily available, he was not able to offer much evidence that an American investor could make more in assured interest, income, or capital growth in Chile than in the USA. He estimated 9% on loans (Chilean banks get 15% up to 24%) + 2% for bank guarantee, and an annual rate of growth of 15%. His company is interested in the kind of arrangement that I note many businessmen here and abroad are beginning to seek, that is, joint integrated operation of an American and a foreign concern, where the advantages of 2 domestic and the international market -- in raw materials, mfg., sales, & finance can be obtained.
Lucca Cavazza, Editor of El Mulino of Bologna phoned and we spent the late afternoon together, first at the office, then at 12 Perry, finally at the Museum of Modern Art, where I arranged to meet Stephanie Neuman who had purchased a traveler's alarm clock for Cathy on my behalf. I must say that the Museum is a bore. It holds only a few worthwhile paintings and sculptures. It has some amusing experiments and utensils. Still, because of its convenient location, its garden and cafeteria, and its relative richness by contrast with hotels and clubs and noisy sidewalks, it serves for a pleasant brief retreat.
Cavazza is a smart, fast-moving chap, abysmally anti-clerical, self-assured, physically a hairless Cisalpine Gaul. He has the vigor & ideas of Giovanni Papini before he wrote his Confessions of a Failure. His magazine is the organ of a Liberal Party way of thought and action. He publishes good social science and has, competitively with Father Morlion, the design of uniting modern American-style social science to political beliefs & operations. He calls Morlion a racketeer, and pours invective upon the big-business connections of Morlion. Amusing since he himself depends upon some financial & capitalist interests in his publishing!
Moved from march 1960 where it obviously doesn't belong, the following:
At about 10 o'clock after few minutes of conversation on what might take place, (and where a man might be if they don't sell them [?] One day) last night went into the meeting of Venezuelan businessmen called at the invitation of Sr. Mendoza and held at a conference in his office building. Mendoza, a self-made man, is owner of several manufacturing plants and materials depots in Venezuela and is probably the largest of Venezuelan industrialists. Unlike practically all the others he is not dependent upon foreign business for his position, although he is of course cooperative with and cordial to outside business interests. Thirty three men, the most prominent known, were invited and I counted 25 in attendance. Incidentally, neither Delas nor Anzola noted precisely the number, although both have expressed grave concern ahead of time that not enough would show up. They were surprised and interested later when I reported this simple fact to them. Mendoza chaired the meeting and Delas, in fluent Spanish mixed with some Italian, explained the complicated, nebulous and not altogether real Pro Deo data while Anzola spoke for the need for concerted action against Communism and I deliberately had a minor role as planned, gave a forceful, brief presentation mostly consisting of general exhortation against both collectivism, statism and chaos and appealing to those present to take up the future of the country which is so rich and has so many possibilities in a complete plan, giving special attention to recruiting an elite class for extending opportunities to the masses, to the best ones of the masses, to arise, an old Jeffersonian idea, but one which is so difficult to get across in countries where a great gulf separates those of wealth and education from the mass of the population. It developed that there was another movement recently begun that was to concern himself with attacking Communism and collectivism, the leader of which mentioned to me afterwards that he was connected with the Montpelierin [?] society, the group of laissez-faire economists for which Von Mises and Hayek serve as models, whose headquarters are in Switzerland, and who were a couple of years ago in Princeton where I became acquainted with some of them. This is a movement again without not much appeal, I feel, and it seems at least from conversations and exchange of news, all of which was in Spanish and some of which I was not able to catch through my unfamiliarity with the language, the possibility of joining the two efforts [...?]
There was also considerable skepticism about how the tie-up with the Catholic Church, as Delas and Anzola have expressed it, would go over in Venezuela where anti-Catholicism is probably stronger than Catholicism, at least in the most active elements in the body politic. Furthermore, there was a question as to how international connections might conceivably help the group and I did not become specific on that point when I mentioned that the American Pro-Deo group had peculiar American problems to take care of, that I could not represent them, but that they could probably be of some help internationally and to the Venezuelan group, if only in technical know-how. I was not satisfied with the level of the meeting and I think it was principally because I am not satisfied that the Pro-Deo idea will work internationally. It is good to have the Catholic Church as an ally, many of the ideas that the Church represents are good, but active cooperation with church elements in any formal sense, in a constitutional connection, is a handicap for any movement in any country of the world. I think in a way this is appreciated by Delas, and probably by Anzola too, but it is a way of introducing a problem and of bringing support to bear for Anzola as I told them later. I said, "These men will follow you more now and listen to you and will make many concessions to you because they feel that you have lines of support and ideals behind you that they cannot control and that they must be aware of and take cognizance of." I think he understands that point. At any rate the group ended three hours of session with much fervor, and appointed an executive committee consisting of Anzola, Mendoza and one or two other men. I think that these men are ready to participate actively and will make some sacrifice, but they do not yet have a plan nor was a plan really given to them. All that was done was to say "We should make a group out of this meeting with money." Afterwards I went back to the hotel and took a swim, rested a while in the sun, burned myself a bit. It's a pleasure to have a little of natural color coming on the skin which has become rather pallid. I must try this summer to get to the more complete life idea I had many years ago, to restore more tone or quality in my musculature in general terms. I had lunch brought to me in the sun and had a club salad, hot dog and a beer. It was brought at the club's fine pool on a comfortable couch and I was ready to go again. It was 3 o'clock when Menzola [Mendoza?] came by for me. We went to the Creole Corporation Building, where he and I had a talk with Raitazee, an officer of the Corporation and a member of the Foundation Board. He had a southwestern accent, and I must say is a very handsome man, and a charming man. We led off with generalities and after a moment, I set forth the general idea most ambitious for a total plan for Venezuela. I did this when I saw that R. felt the need for action and felt responsible for taking some initiative and when he was obviously the man who thought that you could fight for a system of free enterprise, and that it did make sense politically, and that the risks would be not so great as to make successful action impossible. In other words he is not a floater within the corporation and will put his shoulder to the effort. Much heartened, I described how a combination of government agencies with the lending power and Venezuelan businessmen with Venezuelan bank and trust companies, with Venezuelan universities, foundations, all could be brought together to support a large plan to build up and recruit private enterprise in Venezuela, to get a number of new businessmen in Venezuela, to introduce new social forms of public action, according to the idea of politics, a word that everybody scorns
and this perhaps was the end not only of the vested interests but push forward with a creative solution to the problems of an underdeveloped society that is not socialist economically. We concluded our meeting right at the point of laying down a concrete plan and decided to meet again before we left. Then I went shopping with the help of Juliana and bought presents for the family, a white wool blanket and preserved Pirana Caribe.
Tentative Transcript of Venezuelan Journal, May 1960.
Hello, all. As one of my grampas used to say, "This is the life, without a wife!" I'm sitting in the hotel Cominaco. I suppose that's the one always used in Caracas. It looks out from a high mountain atop a valley up to other mountains, and there are all sorts of architecturally interesting structures, lots of cars buzzing around and then just below a flock of chairs, awnings and tables, umbrellas, and an enormous pool. I am wondering whether I shall ever be able to get down into that pool. Actually I could do it right now because it just opened up, but that would mean no letter to Jill and probably a state of torpor around 11 a.m. when I should be winding up a vigorous speech to a group of Venezuelan industrialists and businessmen. We have a meeting set for this morning at about 9:30 and I am being called for it at a quarter of nine. The room is very comfortable, and, oh yes, I should mention that I am dictating this in my light bathrobe with a big melon in front of me from which I take a piece every now and the, listen ... [note from transcriber: sounds like a cannibal's meeting] and a pot of very good Venezuelan coffee, they make it as well as you do, and also the jam. So it goes. Yesterday I had a pretty good trip, it was a little rocky going out of New York and absolutely miserable weather before we started out, sleet, rain, a little snow, and cold; but we got aboard the plane and I have a fine seat, sat askance while the jet took off very fast, very powerful, wonderfully, and then it bounced around a bit going into the clouds and settled down to its altitude. Even up there, about 30,000 feet, there were chimneys of clouds as Vicky would well remind you of, through which as we passed, gave us a few jolts, but then it settled down. We had a very pleasant meal. I sat next to a New York businessman who turned out to have landed in Sicily almost the same day that I did during the war and who was going down to Puerto Rico to look into a factory that he owns down there, that makes women's lingerie. I showed his my new book and he swore that he would buy a copy, whereupon I released him. I took a short nap which I needed for not having slept much the night before, and three hours, just think, three hours from New York, we were skirting down low over the beautiful beaches, hills and mounds of palm trees of Puerto Rico, and came to a stop. I got up, looked around, passengers began to file out, I thought: "Well, let me just stand there and see whom I might know coming up from the rear," where all the tourist passengers were, and there was someone, in fact a whole family of them. There was John Hess, and Jane and their two boys. They were as amazed as I was. then we talked about ten minutes before I had to go to my flight to Caracas and they to theirs to St. Thomas Island. They were to be there for ten days. They asked all about you and were actually sorry that they could not see you, even for a moment. We'll probably see them again later on, only because people like to get together to talk about the amazing coincidences of a chance meeting. Our DC-7B took off for Caracas and I spent the next few hours sipping champagne, looking out over the cloud-flecked Caribbean, reading a pathetic, stirring, and quite accurate analysis of the Cuban revolutionary consequences. It was written by Dr. George ---, who was staying with his whole family at Frank Moreno's little apartment in Manhattan after being exiled from Cuba voluntarily a month ago. There was a talk he gave to the Graduate Political Scientists the other night, Tuesday night. He is a little (meek) fellow but his article displays astonishing depth of feeling and perception. He ties the development of the Cuban revolution right into the mass democracy pattern that I depicted in my book, Public and Republic, that is, in the endeavor to do everything for democracy, to tear up old structures and institute democracy. The government goes on a frenzied search for the people till everything is in the name of people who never exist, the people are persuaded that they are not the people either, because they are individuals, and all finally become completely immolated and sacrificed on the altar to a God that nobody sees or can even draw pictures of, unless they fill great proletarian muscled posters of workers and peasants that you see around the propaganda billboards of a revolutionary regime. Finally, in this search for the people, the hunt becomes so desperate that every power is entrusted to the dictator and his faithful henchmen who are grand executioners and administrators of the so-called People's Revolution and absolute undemocracy and dictatorship and the loss of all the liberal nicenesses of the old life, with no more material comforts in the new. Aboard the plane I also read the Spanish and their translated English equivalent of some poems in the anthology I bought the other day in New York. I found a beautiful passage from a late medieval Spanish writer, Jorge Manrique, from a long famous beautiful ode on the death of his father. It was a translation by Longfellow and could be somewhat better, I suppose. It is not as brief and clean-limbed as the original Spanish. It shows one passage
If we could use it as we ought
This world would school each wandering thought
To its high state
Faith wing the soul beyond the sky
Up to the better world on high
For which we wait
The Spanish original is:
Este mundo bueno fue
Si bien nos hacemos del como debemos
Porque segun nuestra fe
Estara ganada aquel que atendemos
I wrote it into the flyleaf of the copy of my new book, American Welfare, that I was bringing to Alfredo Anzola, the head of the Creole Foundation, and my host, and when I gave it to him later, he was very pleased. He couldn't identify it, but turned very quickly to a man next to him who turned out to be Professor De Gracias of Spain, a professor of literature and now a writer and anthologist in Venezuela, a refugee from the Spanish Revolution, who however has been to Spain a number of times in recent years on the amnesty given former rebels. He, of course, immediately recognized the passage.
Coming into Caracas, the flight, running into an enormous continental land mass, you could somehow see it and sense it as you moved from the Caribbean, you know that you are no longer coming into an island and then you pass right over the beach and land, and you can see that the beach is quite undeveloped. At the airport I was met by Sr. Mendez, a brother-in-law of Alfredo Anzola, who in a hired care, took me to the hotel where I am now. This is about 6 at night, and was about 7 by the time I reached here. There is a long drive up that remarkable highway through the mountains and you have to rise to 3000 feet and arrive in Caracas in very short order. And then I had an hour or an hour and a half to rest and change clothing, from the winter clothing of New York to the summer clothing of Caracas. We feel the moist tropical heat now, even though the evening in Caracas high up is not at all uncomfortable. Then the chauffeur came back and drove me to what we would call the Hacienda style and what the Venezuelans call the Colonial style home of Anzola. Imagine our Paso Robles home in California, beautifully maintained, considerably larger and furnished with fine traditional taste, extraordinary, really extraordinary taste, and perched on a high mountain, well that is the Anzola home. Oh yes, it also has a swimming pool. Imagine too a half dozen servants and a very glittering company, no more than a dozen, with four or five languages going about, no beautiful young girls, but all of the women attractive like yourself, you know, not quite so handsome, but very well turned out and all of them with something to say, and the men were on the same order; we had fine food, fish, chicken with mushrooms, ice cream with long wafers: you put the ice cream at the end of the wafer, bite off the wafer and scoop some more ice cream with chocolate chips on to the end of the wafer again, and bite again, until there is nothing left of the wafer. There were two wafers, a foot long each almost, plunged into the ice cream like the horns of a skinny bull. We had cocktails before dinner and did not sit down until ten o'clock; we hardly finished dining before twelve and they took coffee in the living room which opens out just as our home in Paso Robles did to a portico with columns here and there on to the lawn which ran down [to] the swimming pool and then out over the cliffs and hills. At 12:30 the party broke up and my chauffeur drove me back to the hotel. At five this morning I was awakened by cocks crowing from somewhere. That combination of modern skyscrapers buildings and hidden huts, or what they call ranchos here, which are the small huts of the poor. There were dogs about too and besides, I discovered that cognac and coffee tug on me about four hours after I go to sleep and I find it difficult to continue to sleep. So I drifted in and out of sleep till 7, and got up and here I am and it's time to go. So kisses to you all. Bye.
Ponce, Sunday morning.
I woke, worked in my room, breakfasted quite as well, and at about 10 o'clock Harold Horan, Director of the American Chamber of Commerce of Caracas, stopped by with his wife and a few young people, a mad Pole, handsome, tall, an interior decorator and art designer and a very pretty Argentine girl, the mistress of the boy or the man, really. We drove rather erratically, making half the errors of driving ourselves but with typical hypocriticisms and disdain of foreigners, the Venezuelan drivers were blamed for all of the errors. We ended up at the Beach Club, where before the day was out, another dozen persons had joined our group. I walked along the beach with Horan, a good man, a gentlemen, a Columbia graduate in 1927, a friend of McKean in those days, much as McKean has them, an early collaborator of Henry Luce, and the last 15 years, a journalist with ups and downs in the Latin American countries. He had been 10 years in Venezuela. He and Bob Miller, a correspondent too, had been off and on in Venezuela for 20 years, a very tight, and yet kind of loyal and even sentimental person at the same time he is very hard set, who made the scoop on the story of the Santa Maria, the Portuguese fugitive ship, and is now about to leave Venezuela for Europe. We walked along the beach in the beginning then we struck out to swim around the several breakwaters that had been constructed for the security of the beaches and went in 500 feet for shells for Vicki;, there had been none on the shore and I was given to understand that many drifted. But I delved among the sharp rocks of one of the breakwaters and of course found them. There were several varieties of snail, too red sea fighters which I am afraid will have practically disappeared into this air through the desiccation of three days ashore, several fat slugs which I had to throw away, of course, some interesting seaweeds and plants, a couple of tiny crabs and works. They all wrapped up in a stinking package which when I drew it out this morning to pack it, was a scandal. I tried wrapping it in half of my clothing but I may still have quite an embarrassment when I open the suitcase for the customs officers in New York. The water was pleasant, not as warm as I expected, and I enjoyed myself greatly, swimming in and out the rocks, stepping gingerly among them. Everyone I turned over had a great variety of life thriving beneath it. I was little concerned, then indeed as I was driving along with my bag full of the specimens, my left hand, which is closest to the shelf of rocks, accidentally struck a sea porcupine, a heavy intense pain set in and I could feel my hand full of splinters. I went into the shore, removed those that were sticking out and obtained a lemon from the bartender which I squirted as well as I could into the path where the poisonous quills had entered. My hand then turned numb for a while, but within an hour, the pain had fairly subsided. The next morning my eyes were closed when I awakened because of some allergy or reaction. I was puzzled what to assign the condition to. The thought occurred that it might be a further reaction to the poison of the sea porcupine, but then again it might be a reaction to an excess of sea water, or then again it might have been one of the other plants or animals I handled, or perhaps something I had eater, the calamar and spaghetti that I had at the Beach Club, one of the pate de foie gras sandwiches I had eaten at the Oran and the cocktail party at the beach, the coppertone sun tan oil that I had rubbed on myself in the evening to ease the redness on my back and face, a kind of sleeping pill which I have never had before and which I purchased just before leaving New York. At any rate the swelling subsided somewhat. Oh yes, the thought occurred also that it might have been one of the plants that I had touched in my brief excursion into the jungle the day before. I noticed a bit of swelling and itching of the ears too which can come from a poisonous plant or a reaction to some chemical.
March 1960
Our beach crowd was exceedingly diverse, amusing, I could have been enchanted if I were younger, no, I should not say that, if I were less serious and exotic in my own interest. It was a fine specimen of international crowd, remarkably talented and polylingual. Mr. Horan, a pretentious, but at heart, good-hearted woman in her fifties, was obviously a kind of chieftain of the group let me see. There were only the Orans and myself as Norte Americanos, there were several Italians, several French and Belgians, an Argentine of several nationalities, including a quarter American, a Hungarian, a Swiss and only one Native Venezuelan, an army colonel on the general staff, who was a talented horseman just returned from the shows in America. I could add another American, Bob Miller, who was later in the same group, had some cocktails with the Horans in Caracas, two more Americans who had also been at another part of the same club during the day joined us, a couple of German embassy people, another Italian and what-not. If this were a good journal, I should describe each of the people in detail. They stand out very sharply in my mind, but I think I probably could penetrate to the nuclear personality of almost all of them.
I was up early on Monday morning working on my talk of the afternoon before the American Businessmen. I wasn't feeling too well because of the swollen eyes and ears, but by 11 or 10:30 I had dictated my talk following a fairly elaborate outline onto the portable Soundscriber. I brought it in and had one of the girls who was utterly unused to
transcribing work away at it. Actually, she did not finish it until half an hour before the talk was to be delivered and it was full of errors. I finally cast it aside as I began to talk and delivered the half hour or 40 minutes discourse without any notes. I think just about every dollar up to three billions that America is estimated to have invested in Venezuela was represented in the Boardroom of the Creole Oil Corporation that afternoon. There were the half dozen oil companies, all of the Creole Corporation board and half the department managers were there, the IBEK man was there, several individual entrepreneurs were there, Horan was there and some others. Anzola is to send me the list. There were about 35 in all and they listened attentively while Anzola introduced me and during my own talk. As always, I could not feel afterwards that I hd done justice to the subject. I had not made it as convincing, as logical, as necessary, as prudent with regard to all of the factors of risk, as I know the plan to be. But still generally I explained to them the innumerable programs of the American government for private agencies, the huge stake in America, the dire threat of Communism as represented by Cuba and by the activities of anti-American forces in the rest of the world. I said that in Venezuela although I emphasized that I knew very little about the country, but was speaking as a policy scientist, as a person who had spent most of his life trying to bring the social sciences to bear on what men wanted and to help them shape their goals, I said that in Venezuela the major obstacles, the major enemies who were the opportunistic politicians, often socialistically inclined, and the Communists who had a conspiratorial, highly organized group, I said that the situation was not much better in other parts of the world, that Venezuela, at least had a very strong intelligent American colony and good colonies of other European countries who were all allies, that the Venezuelans of the country were ready to go, as shown by our meeting on Friday morning under the sponsorship of Mendoza. I said nothing will do but a great plan, a big plan, they had to think big and had to put on it heavy costs, but that in the end, in from 10 to 40 years, the improvement of Venezuela might be very great. I said that there was a shrinking world in which no longer could man expect to pick up and leave and find something better elsewhere. There was nowhere to go, Gentlemen, I said, if you are ever going to fight in your life, you have to fight here. I said, you should organize a strongly cohesive group aiming at 100% of all the Venezuelans, Americans, and other foreigners who count, that you ought to use pressure to keep anybody else from competing with this group or deserting it. I said you must expect opposition, but I think you can probably overcome anything from the opportunistic politicians, because they will be forced in a position where they must approve to a large degree your efforts. Also the Communists would be strong, but they have only an ultimate resort to force, because they are the strong minority and that that resort to force one can expect help from the United States. I said that the plan must be social, educational, and industrial, that it must be cut out to create a new managerial class in Venezuela and if you can rely on taking kids out of college who were spoiled when it came to the law in the city that you must vote on taking kids out of a poor home from all races on the bases of ability in the philosophy of Thomas Jefferson, selecting a national aristocracy and bring it up from 10 to 11 years old all the way, giving them a fair idea of how they will work ultimately, how they will be helped to go into business, to plan their lives, careers, to build a country. I suggested that they organize a Secretariat, a [nonpolitical] plan covering the whole economy fitting perhaps into the government plan, but also competitive, more ambitious even, if they were to endorse such a plan unanimously, I said, as I advised and carry to Washington with all the boulevards that people with renewed confidence would put into the plan, they would receive a cordial welcome from the last quarters and the agencies in Washington, foundations, institutes, banks, developments, companies and international organizations would vie with one another to assist them. Here, I said, was real self-help, it was the kind of Venezuelan initiative that was required and encouraged, here was the way to start the Venezuelan economy in society once more forward, creating as it goes along some new small vigorous middle class, a new young managerial class, and thus in the end a country much more in keeping with the vast resources that lay underfoot in the land before us, the water. I urged the necessity of keeping the plan nonpolitical, if affirming against all allegations to the contrary, that it was not intended to get into party politics, but was a social, economic, and educational plan. So twisted is the word political that it was quite important to refuse the use of it in reference to this grandiose, veritably political plan. I ended by saying that it would be a model for the rest of the world if they could initiate this plan in Venezuela. So far as I could see they received the thought well. One Creole director questioned whether this was not another form of socialism, but no, I pointed out, this is not, it is the creation of numerous individual sources of economy strength in the country and insofar as possible, the profit principle should be attached to all the groups at the sources. To another questioner who asked whether this would not, inasmuch as it was a great plan, curtail freedom, I replied that freedom must be planned as well as restrictions on freedom. Two or three questioners harped on the question of politics. I pointed out that they should refuse to engage in arguments on the politician's terms and insist that all any and did put emphasis on the nonpolitical label. It was asked if the program would be nonprofit and I replied that some of it would be, that there would have to be several channels for the parceling of the plan, the foundations and universities should enter into it on the nonprofit end, and that things could be done on those channels receiving grants and bequests that could not otherwise be provided to the commercial enterprises.
Insofar as can be said, the meeting was a success, at least several of us thought so afterwards. Now we shall see, let the matter settle and Alfredo Anzola will write me about the next step, if any. I am not averse to devoting some time to the project, if it is to be so important, although I will probably insist on good remuneration for it and Jean Deals is agreed on the principles of the plan, and we have divided certain responsibilities on his participation and mine. I can say now that I am satisfied with the visit; I am also glad to be getting home so promptly. The waves of revolutions in Venezuela makes one possible any day. Anyway my American life is too rich to want to spend too much time abroad.
