Dear Joe:

I haven't seen Barney's adaptation yet so I can't comment on it. I'll stand up in the back of the house some night when I get up to town and see it. That is, I hope I'll have to stand up.

You wanted to know about how the play was written. I thought I put all of that into the preface when I published it. The war was still on then though and there are quite a few things you can't say while a war is on. (Some you can't say for a long time afterwards too). But maybe I can add a few facts to that preface now.

The old Florida was a great hotel. When we first lived in her in the early winter of 1937 she was just a little hundred yards as no crows were flying it, from the first line trenches in the Casa del Campo. But the Government made a six day offensive starting April Fifth of that year, that ended up with around nine thousand casualties and the Florida eighteen hundred yards from the first lines. There were those who said it wasn't worth it. It was at the start of that offensive that I was asleep one night with the window open knowing that it was all right to sleep because when you had to go down there the noise would let you know. What woke me, though, was noise of glass breaking. It was a machine gun bullet that had come in the open window and hit the mirror of the armoire. I moved the bed over to a more secluded angle in the corner of the room, being careful not to waken any of my friends, and that is all there is to that story except that the management put in a new armoire and apologized for the barbarousness of the fascists.

- 7 -

in that room. But each time I came back to that room I had
learned something. And the shelling and the rest of it were very
good to keep you from kiddinging yourself about many things.

Best,

Ernest Hemingway.