AIR MAIL

T-4 Victor Kumin, 31469239
Special Engineer Detachment,
P.O. Box 180, Santa Fe, N.M.

a sort of arc to be worn in the hair. However, the card enclosed explained the symbolism involved, and surely, four roses are lovelier than one. I'm sorry it wasn't just as you planned, tho, because I know you will be sorry, but had they been gardenias which I heartily dislike having long since reached the saturation permit on goddenia corsages--- even gardenias from you would have been very precious to me.

Once upon a time ago (this is completely irrelevant) I was in love. I was 17 and now on looking back I do not really think it was love, in fact I did not really think so then but it was part of "the game". This ardent suitor used to address all his letters to me with a variety of warm greetings, mostly dearest darling. I cringed even then because I knew I was not his dearest darling and he was not my dearest darling and I was beginning to see that the whole idea was outmoded. Dearest darling was the beginning of the end, and I almost abruptly decided that I could never love aman with that expression. I resented the familiarity of it, I guess. And familiarity breeds contempt. I was a long time in getting over that antipathy to terms of endearment any more intentional than Bob Nusbaum's favorite line; puddles of purple passion that threatened to envelop my whole soul. That murmured in a southern accent, really used to get the women... or at least at 17. But this is not what I began to tell you. Oh yes I always meant to tell you this too. (Parenthetical clause or something) You know the night that you "threw away" the rose-colored glasses there in Harvard Square and came back with that magnificent orchid (which was what really did it!!) I wanted so much to thank you with a kiss. But I was so embarrassed and overwhelmed-- and awkward-- that all I could do was stammer about how you shouldn't have. Remind me, won't you, Vic, to make up for that one? To get back to the original subject under discussion (ahem) we were talking about talking about love, no? You of course are the relation and the revolution, oh great one. Honey and darling are very nice but sometimes they are not adequate. Now there is a family word that is not bantered about by appalled with all full respect by husbands and wives within the clan and long previous to the white satin shotgun brigade, it slipped out betwixt parties of the first and second part. Therefore it has a very warm and special connotation and is chief of all the affectionate terminology currently employed by less imaginative souls. It generally appears

under our Xmas tree on presents as; to snooky from
snooky with love; or; to snooky from snooky with
much love; or; to snooky from Santa Claus. It has
been modified by some to read; to snooky from baby
which I do not like nearly so well. But I don't know
what you think about snooky, snooky. It requires some
adjusting to.

I do not understand about your looking for a part
time job. Does the Army know you have so much time
or your hands? Shh! I am tremendously glad that you
have some leisure, tho, but I did not think that in uni-
form you were allowed to hold down any other job.
Dear Robert Saint John... the army is totalitarian.

I too have been counting the Sundays till the
fourth one which will not be this Sunday ( already
passed by the time this reaches you) or the next one,
but the one after that. I will not only be there, I
will be there. How else? Now if you were only Alex-
ander Graham Bell, what wonders you could wrought.
Like a direct and free wire.

Dolly waltzed blithely out of the house early this
ayem en route to A. City with a; now Max all you have
to do is make your bed and see that Daddy gets fed...
to which I dutifully replied of course, yes, dear. I
spent an hour with brillo and grease cleaning that
GODDAM roaster this morning and came to the unhappy
conclusion that NO roast beef is worth it. Then washed
several dish towels for the coming week. And cleaned up
the proch which was in late-party shape, coped with
the huckster, milkman, laundryman, and then Mr. Mosley
who is papering Pete's room over arrived. Practised.
Read. Got the painter and the paper hanger out of the
house by five and scooted in town for a piano lesson;
met Pop at 7 for dinner and we went to see "Bell for
Adano" which we both enjoyed immensely. I was agreeably
surprised that they did such a good job with it. and I
think that if the better books continue to be popularised
via the movies, the public might get a fair education
after all. Hope springs eternal.

We got news today of Russia's entry into the war
with Japan but no one seems particularly excited about it.
It's hard to see now what possible material difference it
will make and there no doubt will be a good deal of talk
about Russia's joining in the defeat of Japan just in time
to get in on the peace settlement in Asia. At least we can
count on Pegler...

It seems impossible that the end can be more than a
matter of days now-- or at most of a very few weeks. I
remember after Pearl Harbor the Navy announced that it
was planning on 1946 as the earliest possible date for
victory and at the time we were very disheartened by that
thought. The road back has been such a long and tragic
costly one; it seems hard to believe that we are almost
there. Pop and I continue to snatch up every conceivable
article on the atomic bomb-- and there are plenty of "auth-
orities" on the subject. Frank Kingdon (who aint bad) said
tonight that the world will now go one of two ways-- atom
split, big 5 split, civilisation split, mankind destroyed.
Or, atom split, big 5 knit, civilisation knit, mankind
advanced. This new power is definitely "for adults only".
Whether human nature will profit or lose by it-- well, as
I said before whichever it is to be, I would like to be
there. These are such tremendous times.

I'm sorry that you can't see Germantown in the
summer or at least in the spring, dear. The park
(the Wissahickon valley) is so beautiful now, and the
sight of people strolling, lolling on benches or beside
the creek makes me wish so much that we could share a litt-
le of it too. Someday tho, we'll wander over the old trails
and where Washington fought the redcoats and Valley Green
which is all that its name implies. Always someday.

Ever since the "monsoon season" we had, the skeeters
havebeen fierce. I look more as if I had hives that mos-
quito bites, but bites they are. I do not see that they have
ever performed any useful function. (Me mosquitos, I mean)

And I'm so sleepy at this point that I'm not per-
forming any useful function now either, so with a yawn,
I'll desist. Oswald is so docile he surprises me.

Goodnight (snooky). I love you.

U.S.ARMY EXAMINER

UNITED STATES OF AMERICA

AIR MAIL

T-4 Victor Kumin 31469239
Special Engineer Detachment
PO Box 180, Santa Fe, New Mex.

Friday

Honnee:

We're all a little on edge today as I know you must be too
waiting for further word on the proposed Japanese surrender. I'm
quite sure that by the time this letter reaches you, the war will
be over. And having written that, a few Brahmin moments to think
on it. I can't do justice to the idea. These are such tempestuous
times that we learn, however gradually, to take even the most moment-
ous events in all history, if not lightly, at least sensibly.
I can't even try to grasp the significance of the V-J day that at
this moment seems so imminent. We've trained our minds so desperately
ahead for another winter of war that peace now will seem unreal.
To a nation geared to war, peace must seem unreal regardless.
Equally as unreal as war seemed on December 7th, 1941. We have to
assimilate and adjust to these ideas in our own personal spheres
of thought, and altho we are conscious that they are true, they
don't have real meaning for us at first, until the anesthetic of
the shock wears off. Pearl Harbor seemed too fantastic to believe,
atomic bombs are even more incredible; the end of the bitterest
most bloody and destructive (all understatements) war that civil-
isation has yet withstood will be very hard to believe. Moreover,
I can't remember when there wasn't a war, or at least an impending
one. What it will be like to live in a world that is not a
constant frying pan out of which fish continue to jump into the
fire-- it will be so good to find out. What a cost we have paid to
learn lessons that our history books could so easily have taught
us. But humanity are not historians and none of us are quite bright.

Meant to send you an article on Dr. Oppenheimer, that appeared
in today's Jewish Exponent (Explosion, we call it) and will cut it
out on the morrow. Darling, you look so fetching in your fatigues.
AND your crew haircut. Tres charmants! It was awfully sweet of you,
and thank you so much. By now you must know too that I didget the
cigarettes. As for pigtails, and for fantastic beauty, you know some-
day Vic, you are going to shake the star dust out of your eyes and
wake up to see an unidealised very human looking gal. (Byt that I
did not mean to imply that you would literally wake up to see her,
but now that you ask, I have no objections.... ) That is my Sunday
sermon to you, sunshine. It's all very nice to be flattered, but at
the expense of plain honesty well, that's too much. If I can find a
picther in pigtails, I'll sned ya one. Perhaps then you will be sorry.

Spent most of the afternoon within the bonded pale of the kitchen
working on a dinner to end all dinners-- cold roast beef with hot
gravy, tomats hollowed out with cucumber-india relish-mayonnaise fill-
ing, carrots prepared in a speshul sweet and sour sauce, fried onions,
and la peice de resistance, my first pie. it was a Peach and Plum Pie,
and it was so successful that Daddy ate two pieces, altho I really
think he only did it so he couldhave another piece of cheese to go
with it. I was so pleased.

But I had a colossal accident today, just to prove that accidents
do happen in the home, just like the insurance companies say, also to
prove that Dolly's forever adage of "don't run" for the phone is true,
and just to prove that I am an A-1 jerk--- tearing light heartedly
en route from piano thru hall to phone I skidded on the rug and took
a flyer. I wouldn't care if it were just my vanity that got hurt, but
I'm slightly afraid that I broke my nose... it bled most angrily des-
pite ice and violent imprecations and has now swollen to alarming prop
ortions. It doesn't hurt much, and I don't think it's serious-- but
it's the only nose I've got and I'd rather like to keep it the way it

was...

Jeannie arrived late this afternoon in time to comriserate
with me and fry the onions and Dolly got hum 'bout six so we
had a very pleasant evening. She now lies close to snoring in
the next bed and just muttered something about sending you her
love. It's so nice to have her here to talk to-- all about you--
and she said so many nice things about you that I told her she
could stay for two weeks.

If I could only find some Swiss @chocolate I'd make you
some lovely chewy chocolate cookies. Buttomorrow we're going in
town andI shall look most searchingly and if I can't find any,
I'll just hafta make you some other kind of cookie. In fact if
sugar weren't so damn hard to get I would make you cookies every
day. It's a strange desire, and I can't quite tie it down. I
asked Jeannie about its pathological implications, and she agrees
that it is definitely symptomatic of some Freudian complex or
other. It might be love-- but of course I hesitate to say anything
as rash and outspoken as that. After all, love is a very serious
affair, it involves sleepless night s and restless days, people
lost weightand have nervous breakdowns and have been in and out to com-
mit all sorts of drastic deeds in its name. That is why I hesitate
to call it love. It is undoubtedly a feminine mania known as dom-
esticity. That's all our relationship is-- a platonic kitchen
range friendship.
( This I should see!)

Jeanie and Bob really havea nice set up. They hope to be
married next March whenever Bob getshis vacation, and live in Bob's
apt... if Summer will graciously concede to move out... Bob gets
a tidy govt. allotment, Jean will get a job, and from here it
all has that ineffable (whatever that means, I never did know)
rosy glow.

Oh yes, I am at last sending you Schumpie but not with any
injunction to read it in toto which is something you could only
do if you were Maxine Winokur and were taking the entire summer
off à la civilian. So skim it and pick out whatever appeals to
you; you can skip the Marxian section as it is highly technical
and not very interesting, but do find out why capitalism is on
its way to the grave and then the last part on thehistory of the
socialist parties I enjoyed, but that's the damn historian in me
again. It's a very long winded book and I found it awfully tough
going. Consequently, becuz there was so much I didn't understand,
I gleaned only a few grains of knowledge from that vast field. Per-
haps you will do better. Take care of it, tho, cuz it belongs to
Mack and sometime this fall, send it back to me at Cabot.

But I'm sorta tired and achy and a good night's sleep would
not be amiss. It is not flippancy when I say, see ya in my dreams.
I hope so much that I will. Goodnight, my darling Vic, with a hug
and a kiss...

S. ARMY EXAMINER

U. S. ARMY

AIR MAIL

Thurs

My darling:

Gosh but Town Meeting was terrific tonight, and Orson Welles, for my money, is wan good man. Topic for hair pulling was the significance of the British election with Nyland (Calif. conservative attorney) and Rep. Henshaw of that state holding down the great red blot of fear, and Welles and Manchester Body, of the Los Angeles (what is it, Times or Despatch) upholding the leftward tangent. When listening to such controversial subjects with Pop I hafta restrain my cheers, for my cheers are his jeers and vice versa; but the nice thing about Town Meeting is that it always gratifies both of us even though we inevitably uphold different sides of the argument. Will send you the reprint of the program soon's it arrives...

Put in another rough day keeping house on my lonely own again and not only will I be glad to see Dolly return on the morrow to help me figure out how to plan a main course around something as unsubstantial as watermelon seeds, but when Lucille and Zacks return around the 15th I shall kiss them both on either cheek. Nat arrives late Sunday to spread a little sunny cheer, and Jeannie is coming down from Boston tomorrow for a few days. My personal tragedy tonight was the scorching of the string beans-- our own hand grown string beans, too. Daddy only grunted and didn't eat them but I wept a few silent tears at the loss. I am so good at burning things. Everythings. It's my sadistic nature-- I enjoy scraping out the pots and employing brillo so vigorously that I can't resist the impulse on occasion.

Your truly wonderful Monday letter on a note of triumph (and with illustrations, which are not bad but you are so much better looking than Kodak would have me believe in this case) arrived this afternoon my cagey mailman friend went thru a lengthy routine before he finally handed it over. By now you must be scratching your head in immense dismay at my obtuseness and wondering about my empty witted response to the atomic bomb. Truth is, I knew damn well that it was YOU but I was afraid to say anything I shouldn't which may account for the circumspection. I am so glad that you are not a secret anymore, or at least only technical details are secrets. I almost turned into an india rubber

ball on Monday when the news story broke and Santa Fe and Los Alamos made the front page, and somehow, probably irrit

as I am so proud that you had a part in this. Oh well, I suppose our epitome's fool's waitress mistress is inordinately proud too of her laddie who stoked the furnaces. I figured I might as well deprecate and not give youa chance to...

It is a test of greatness-- and of altruism-- to give and not expect reward, even recognition which has an inner satisfaction greater than the great god gold. It is a test of greatness but it certainly is not human. As civilisation will attest. So don't be so fast and loose with your new stripe becuz it may come in very *nny* handy some day. What I am wondering is how longthese three atomic projects will continue to operate and if any of them will be discontinued or merged. I suppose I might just as well askthe luminous statue of Jesus Christ that as you... won't life be wonderful when it is no longer full of uncertainties... on second thoughtit will probably lose more than it will gain. My thoughts are always about a year ahead of me, and everything of the present is projected into the sphere of next Feb.

And now Truman. Certainly not a dynamic speech, certainly not an orator, but there is a quiet sort of confidence in his voice and his way of stumbling over polysyllabic words has I think a greater appeal to his "common man" than FDR's magnetism. But how I would have liked to hear Roosevelt tonight. He is **so fell** sorely missed. The Potsdam agreements are I think rational and sensible. Of course

tampering with natural boundaries - I mean national-
cannot help but create irredentism, but we are faced
with an impossible alternative of keeping a pre-war
status quo that was not only unsatisfactory but unjust.
In 20 years a good many people will have outgrown the
immediate crisis and avenging spirit and crocodile tears
will be shed for an unbalanced German enonomy. If it is
unbalanced we will have failed just as surely as we would
have failed with a soft peace. It is like the progressive
parents of a small boy armed with all their theories and
textbooks on modern child psychology who are confronted
with a child who steals or cheats or had done something so
wrong that there is no way to deal with it but drastically.
They are faced with the alternative of curing his misbe-
havior for once and for all by whaling him-- and then they
may be faced with all the Freudian complexes that are said
to result from corporal punishment-- or they can deal with
him ineffectively via adult reason which cannot penetrate
his undeveloped mentality and be faced with reoccur(r?)en-
ces. I think that is a bad analogy because I do not believe
in my example but it was the only one that I could think
of.

I think that if I had to choose a profession I would
like to be a milkman or a mailman or a breadman. They are
so pleasant and it is a pleasant occupation. Suddenly all
the appeal of life à la little suburbia is being brought
home to me. In a rare idle moment today I watched several
little boys assembled at the tip top of Carpenter Lane
(which is a lovely hill for skates, bikes, and handmade art-
icles that roll down) in a frenzy of excitement and com-
pletely absorbed in screeching down at breakneck speed.
They had two wagons, two passengers apiece, two scooters
manned by husky 8 or 9 year olds, and then trailing far but
courageously behind, a little button of a kid who couldn't
have been more than 6, pumping away on an outgrown tricy-
cle. They barely tolerated his presence and he kept a res-
pectful distance. I felt so sorry for him, but he was a won-
derful sport. Each time they trailed up the hill again,
first the wagons, then the scooters would appear, and then,
'way behind, came the tricycle with the little fellow puff-
ing and half trotting to get up the hill before the others
started down again. He never had a minute's respite-- but he
kept it up, all the way. I could have watched them all day.

Air Mail

T-4 Victor Kumin 31469239
Special Engineer Detachment
PO Box 180 Santa Fe, N.M.

XXXXXX Whoops!

Saturday

Vic darling, if I can still call you that now that I am in
such disgrace. I'm so thoroughly ashamed, Vic, and if I am
ever XXXX tempted to succumb to that low ebb again, I'll
just trot out your masterful letter, glance at it once over
lightly; then perhaps I'll know better. I was sorry the min-
ute I mailed it; I ought to have better sense but you know
how sometimes I can't resist following my heart instead of my
head. Which is fine sometimes, and then sometimes it just re-
flects this rotten instability I can't always get around on
my own. That is one of the reasons that our love is so might-
ily precious to me, because altho I try hard I can't always
manoeuvre on my own and I get so terribly lost then in the
abyss of my darkest thoughts-- the ones we generally keep in
the lower right hand drawer of the bureau of the mind. My
bureau drawer often seems so crowded that they won't stay put,
and once the insidious little idea gets loose it just shakes
up anything else in the bureau that was sane and there you
are! And then I sound almost like a headstrong little tramp
which is just the farthest thing from what I would like to
be in your eyes. Now take Jeannie. After all we are all human
and we are all subjected to the same emotional crises and
trials. But Jeannie hasthat one trait that I admire so much;
if she is not sufficient unto herself, at least she keeps that
bureau drawer locked from any eye but her own inner one, and
in that way she stays out of more jams -- the jams that Pris
and I are forever in. And Vic I never really doubted that our
love was a great deal more than mere physical attraction. What
you said was very succinct and sensible. If it hadn't been
more, we'd probably both be still in Room 311. That's certainly
simple proof, and there's so much more that the proof seems
superfluous. I never fell in love with you because you made
love to me. I still don't know why it happened the way it did;
I thought you were a pretty fresh GI that second date. But I
didn't argue very long; and gosh arguing used to be a fine art
that the Radcliffe gal perfected early in the freshman year
and wore as the knight wore armor to the battle, only she wore
hers with the Harvard boys. You see I know so well why I love
you. It was the zebu that cinched it most of all. But we have
so much to share and so much to build on and so many beautiful
castles full of ideals to dream on. And then it was sorta meant
to be. We both know it. Vic, it's what we all dream about from
the time that we are old enough to understand what love must
mean until we find that love, and that understanding. There is
such a wealth of things spiritual that the physical only height-
ens this, and it is not pyhical per se. That we are human
beings and capable of enjoying the spiritual aspect as well as
the human refinements of making love to one another-- well, it's
just a ANDYNEW TENX 1066 Good Thing. I disown whatever I said
then in haste and despair. You are so right-- tho I'm glad that
I came round to it myself even without your letter. But I'm
even glad that you wrote what you did. I feel humble and very
much ashamed, and I have taken your suggestion to heart.

Much to heart. Today was a scorcher and Jeannie and I spent
it swimming at the Grossmans' till came the usual daily rain-
storm, at which point still in our bathing suits we gamboled on
the lawn playing a mad game of ball and turning handsprings
until we were both pretty bushed. Tomorrow we'rein for a long

tramp in the Wissahickon, next week to Atlantic City for a day if we can swing it, and if it cools off at all, a horseback ride or so. Tennis- except that it's not Jeannie's favorite sport, and God knows, not my best. It was good to get in the water again and to swim to the point of exhaustion. I am a pretty black and blue sight today, tho; my chin and my poor nose who never did nobody no harm are still pretty grim to look at the some better and my side feels the way it does when the horse refuses the jump and I go over it, shoulder foremost. But even this will pass away.

Dolly insisted on taking us out to dinner tonight as we couldn't face the kitchen with any equanimity again, and thence to see what I consider Hollywood's greatest fiasco from the word go-- the Clock. Boy meets girl-- in Penn Station-- and marries her on a two day pass and according to H-wood it's just ducky. Now maybe you see where I get it?

To get back to that; in a rational moment I know damn well that finishing college is first and foremost. In fact, I even have cooked up a few strange resolves for next term like getting good grades while you're away and aiming (tho the aim is cockeyed) at that magna. Once that chapter is closed, and closed without hacking up the last year of what has been a tremendously rich and happy college career, we can begin to outlinea new chapter together. The very fact that we can go right on building our private dream castle even tho we'reapart makes being apart just that much easier. And how selfish I've been, too, succumbing to the lonesomeness and weighing you down with it. I know that you feel it just as acutely as I, and you have more reason to chafe at it; far more reason than I. It was a pretty stiff letter, Vic. I cringed a little... but then I'd glad for it. Just chalk it up to a little temporary insanity, won't you and don't hold it against me. I love you so very much that I could never resent anything you might say to me, simply because it is you who has said it, aside from it being so true. And that just about finishes that bureau drawer. Whenever I miss you which is always I think of you which is always and think that you are thinking of me. It is the Formula, to say nothing of the New Leaf which is a personal matter of standing on my own two feet. Can do-- and will.

I am so glad that the allies refused Japan's conditional surrender terms which were obviously intended to preserve the ruling power of Shintoism and the military clique. Americans have not learned to identify worshiping the emperor as a god with the Nazi deification of Hitler and we lack the personal hatred that we have of Nazism. But essentially I think they are very much the same, and I think any compromise we make with the fascistic absolutist element in Japan (which I eventually ill) is bad. So-- the least possible compromise. It can't be longer than two days at most. It's the end, the long, tattered end that once seemed almost humanly impossible. I like to think that the atomic bomb with all its terroristic power has saved untold thousands of American lives that would have been lost in an invasion. I know that you have thought that too, because it supplies the reasonable answer to why you are here and not in the infantry. It is also the reasonable answer to an early discharge, oh happy day. Soon, maybe not tomorrow, but soon...

And so to bed, cuz my eyelids need toothpicks now. Good-night, sleep tight and pleasant dreams. I love you.

AIR MAIL

T-4 Victor Kumin, 31469239
Special Engineer Detachment
PO Box 180 Santa Fe, N.M.

promise with Japan in any way since we so obviously hold the
cards now. It should never have been anything but completely
unconditional, no strings or emperors attached. Possibly the
responsibility for that compromise restsmost heavily with Jo
Grew who has been, is and always will be a bastard. One atomic
bomb dropped on Tokio... would have done it. Suddenly we are
faced with the unwilling responsibility and we hold back. For
better or for worse, I do not know. Max Lerner was lucid as
usual tonight and dwelled at length on the necessity for making
the atomic bomb the property of all men everywhere under
an international commission. It could not and must never be
otherwise, for the discovery belongs to no one man or nation.
It must be a universal knowledge.

This is I know teribly short and doesn't say very mucho.
But I'm off to help Nat unpack and get settled and then in no
time atall I'll be up to fix Pop's breakfast. So, my darling,
goodnight for now. Jeannie and Nat both send their best, and I
will always send my dearest love.

Wednesday

Hailoooo again.

translated that means hello again my
darling Vic, hello again for the second time today only
it's not today it's tonight. We've just come upstairs
after an hour gathered round the piano listening with
admiration while Dolly played Mendelssohn's Rondo Cap-
riccioso, and a Chopin prelude and finally Debussy's
Claire de lune which is her mostest favorite. Nat and I
are just about beginning to feel like human beings again
and we were only too willing to finesse the old fashioned
Dolly wanted to fix. We were overjoyed at the prospect of
going out to dinner so after a small feminine conspiracy
we ganged up on Pop and he conceded graciously. Drove out
to the country to Fort Side Inn which is a rather lovely
oldish spot 'n had lobster. Right now Nat and Jeannie are
doing each others' nails while I look on a bit begrudgingly
having only recently sacrificed my most prized personal
possession of ten elongated claws, polish and all to the
demands of keyboard finger exercises which these experts
don't do any more. Jeannie was feeling no pain last night
but some time this ayem in the vague grey dawn she stumbled
into the john to dispense with the champagne; and I, at best
an ungracious hostess, didn't even get up to hold her head.
I figured that if I made the gesture, she'd probably have
to hold me in return and I rationalised that it was better
for one of us to be sick privately than for us both to be
sick together.

We had an argument tonight. I was immensely
glad that Jeannie was here to help me hold down the fort
when Pop begins to rail about ungrateful employees and rack-
eteering labor unions and poor dear management that has been
caught between price control and sky rooketing wages which
have made it impossible for him to make any sort of a profit.
Good old Jeannie. I cannot weep for management when we drive
past huge landed estates that probably cost 25,000 a year
a lone to run. Well, it all depends which side of the fence
you're on.

Just hadta hop up and try on a dress the hem
of which Dolly just altered and was dubious that it was
straight. 'Twas.

Well when I'm reduced to writing that in
order to amuse you, things have come to a pretty pass. It's
impossible to concentrate in this girl's domitory anyway.
Besides, I have a very important letter to write- to Willyum,
and I know you wouldn't want me to neglect him. Now that
that's settled, bon soir mon cher until tomorrow. I hope you
had today off and that it was a good day. I love you so very
much, and especially when you smile.

Wednesday

Darling:-

Well I certainly missed up on a letter yesterday, but
anything I might have written a short time after 7 pm yesterday
would have been just so much gibberish anyway. We got the wonder-
ful news while at dinner; in fact, just as Dolly was turning the
steaks a la charcoal grille. We'd been glued to the radio the en-
tire day and had just gotten word that the press had been alerted.
Dinner suddenly lost flavor and appeal and we were a pretty sober
bunch. That the second world war is over is still not easy to be-
lieve, but our immediate reaction was pretty close to tears. The
personal element means so much to this family; it means that Herb
will certainly be replaced now and possibly discharged; that Pete
will probably not have to go to the CBI but may be reassigned in
the States, and it increases Fred's chances of getting out soon.
We went a little wild at that thought that before very many more
months have passed, 152 might see a reunion comparable to the one
that took place SUNDAY. Thanksgiving eve 1941. Pete and Nat
weren't married then, nor were Herb and Margy (in fact it was one
of the times that they weren't speaking), and Fred was a second
louey stationed in Baltimore. God but that was a long time ago
and a good deal of the Volga has flowed into the Caspian since
then. Nothing I can think of would give Dolly and Pop greater pleas-
ure than to have all of us revolving round the dining room table
again and living agreeably if not peaceably under the same roof.
Roof means the USA. It's been a pretty tense four years.

You can see that it's hard for me to transcend the person-
al implications of peace and to grasp what the cease fire order
must mean to a dozen battlefronts. I think today only of what heart-
ache there must be in some homes where peace will not bring back
the dead and victory bells ring falsey and hollowly. All in all, I
am thinking very soberly (in direct contrast to last night) and my
thoughts, verge on the morbid. I'm so skeptical, Vic, skeptical that
we have won a permanent peace despite our supreme sacrifices. Skept-
ical because reconversion will be painful and chaotic and so many
of our boys will come home to unemployment and inflation and bitter-
ness. Skeptical because I am not sure our children will live in a
world any better than ours and ours is still very much a sick world.
How the Chinese must view this peace with mixed emotions; they are
so caught between the big powers and our vicious compromise with
Hirohito and with the Soviet Union whom they have every cause to
suspect of encroachment. And how they have suffered thru this
long tortuous struggle. We still have so much to learn and we
learn so slowly.

But we weren't thinking of that last night. Dolly put the better part of a case of champagne on ice; Uncle Joe and Aunt Bea (that's my dignified aunt) came over, Marcia came up, and about 9 we started to drink. Nat and I were determined to drink straight into oblivion, and Aunt Bea wasn't far behind us. Jeannie was two sheets to the wind, and Nat and I were thoroughly, madly, happily tight. We got up to number 8-- which meant killing 5 bottles. After every glass was drained, it turned it upside down, and marched around singing, this is table number --, where is table number--? And we drank incredible toasts to humanity, to our children and our children's children, to the prolific Winokurs, to the juniors and the IIIs, to the sense of the esthetic, to transcending the physical, to each of the Winokur boys individually and unanimously, to our Allies, and etcetera. I vaggely remember spouting Russian poetry, and Nat and Aunt Bea did a Russian dance and at regular intervals

much. I would rather have a set of Zola (or Hansen) (if I could
understand him) than a mink coat, good records than aforementioned
silver service, and a house full of paintings than a well stocked
liquor closet. I don't think that is in the least unusual, and
certainly it makes good sense. I suppose the happy medium is the
ideal. But I'd prefer Winnie the Pooh at home to the Copacabana--
and I do like the Copacabana. Now I'm gooding very muddled so I'll
desist.

Your sweet words of the 9th after yesterday's letter were
balm to an anxious soul. There is nothing in our way that we can't
work out together, Vic, you are right, and as long as we stay will-
ing to try working it out that way, we can't go wrong. You can see
what's happening to me; as soon as I'm in Philly for any length of
time, my precious second bureau drawer of values begins to get
tossed and turned a bit, but then it always comes out unscathed so
I can't say that I'm worried- just pleasantly perplexed becuz there
are things that I can't put my finger on and I'd like to, altho no
doubt it's just as well, cuz nothing in this world-- as in this
house-- is ever all black or all white.

We scampered in town tuhday- we four- for lunch on the Nitz
roof (which sounds ritzier than it actually is) and thence to shop.
I really did very much all right with a new dress, all to the good,
and a new suit, all to my liking. It's a black and white small shep-
herd check. (Do you know what a shepherd check is?) and it's sporty
which is the only way a suit should be after all, but still dressy
in that it is dress-able. All incoherent to you, I'm sure. Well, I'll
show it to you in Feb., but twas a good buy and it's sorta good
looking. I can't tell you about clothes, anyway. Are you women's
clothes conscious? It always amuses me to see the way my three
brothers have each in turn waxed very conscious of the latest style
after an era in which they didn't know a wool dress from a silk one
or a tailored suit from a dressmaker. Then Dolly as ever has begun
to needle me with the necessity of buying a hat and wearing it and
hats which have ever been my personal loathing--- well, she's un-
doubtedly right.

Of course big excitement of the day was Pete's call from Puer
to Rico tonight. Nat was a complete psychiatric case before it fin-
ally came thru and she finally found out that the news was neither
good nor bad, becuz there was no new news-- orders to return have not
yet come thru, but they apparently will eventually. Pete just wanted
to talk to all of us so we all got a few words in and then Nat coll-
apsed into a semi-coma for the next hour after which the vice-pres
and spouse dropped over and we all had a few drinks on the porch.
We're still a pretty nervous bunch waiting for the news that never
comes, of surrender. As the waiting continues and no ultimatum or
time limit is delivered by us, the American people continue to grow
impatient and less willing to negotiate. How long we will continue
to be duped-- hours or days-- is hard to tell. I rather hope Tokio
refuses the terms, but the stall, I think, is just a stall and will
soon be over. It's a pretty poor way to do business with a defeated
or near-defeated enemy. In fact, what a colossal mess.

Marcia got home this morning after four weary days on the
train from the coast and tho I didn't see her today we schmoosed
on the phone for a half hour. I had to hear all about Phil and the
apt. and cooking on a hot plate and too, a bit of the forlornness
with which she is left now that he has gone to sea and she is barely
more than a three weeks bride. Plan to go see her tomorrow for an
extended visit; am so glad she's back cuz she's really a wonderful
gal and marvelous company.

It delights me to be pedantic becuz I know it always calls forth a why you little stinker from you. Did you ever hear of a split infinitive? I just wondered... now I better never split another one-- and how I love to.

Honey I just can't figure out whether you're going to call me this Sunday or next Sunday?? It all depends on how you count up to four and whether you count the Sunday I talked to you as Sunday number one or Sunday number none. You haven't said anything about it yet and if you by chance haven't said anything in a letter that will get here by next Saturday and are planning to call maybe you'd better send me a telegram, cuz otherwise I might not be here. If I go up to NY Friday I'll probably beback by Sunday eve but possibly I'll drop in on the Yaswens or Puss Willard or most anybody and not come back till Monday or so. Am hoping to get to see Roscoe and Mike while I'm there plus the Museum of Modern Art and a Russian movie and where the great god captain is going to fit into this scheme of things, I don't quite know. It sounds rather as if he were little more than an excuse for me to get to the big city and see some camp friends and wander around Picasso a bit, but actually that's just to throw you off the track becuz fact of the matter is, I am carrying a tremendous torch for him and have every intention of carrying on a passionate illicit love affair behind everybody's back. So there. Are you worried? Gosh I hope so! (And lest you think I said 'no'-- is said so only OS only OS only so.)

Nat and I had a long long talk last night, way past sense and sensibility, mostly about the family and ideas and ideals and the like. It's a little funny but we've talked very little about you altho she undoubtedly knows a good deal more about you than I do. I feel so strange and strained talking about you to anyone; sometimes I feel resentful and that you are nobody else's business and sometimes I just plain feel embarrassed or abashed or shy and then I don't want to. I can barely get past telling Nat that I love you and even that's a tough struggle. It doesn't seem to be long.

Gosh, meant to buy the Nation today and walked right past it with my mind a mile away, but will do tomorrow if I can find one. You know I haven't read PM in about two weeks now and I miss it. Then again maybe being a liberal without being a doctrinaire one will be a good thing for a change.

Jeannie and I are determined to take up skiing in a big way this winter, and I have vowed to submit myself humbly to Mack's tutelage on a few weekend excursions as soon as the New England snow begins to fall. Would dearly love to learn and have always meant to even before I met you but now that it's one of your pet sports and you've taken to Dostoievski, I'll really have to learn. I couldn't bear to have to start from scratch with you, so perhaps in time I'll have graduated to a gentle and uncomplicated slope or two and that will be a step in the right direction. It's another thing we'll have to do together someday.

Well, Nat is still scrawling sweet nothings to mon frere, her husband, and I seem to have run out of things sensical and nonsensical. Brief pause while I dash madly round the new wallpaper tracking down one lone mosquito, who just met a sudden and inauspicious end, and in the process squish the cigarette, maul the first page of this volume and create a furor all because Nat and I mutually dislike mostquotes ever so much-- as we ruefully itch and scratch alternately.

I'm now determined, as Ozzie grinds out the final lines for tonight, to wait until I turn the page to tell you something of the utmost importance, without which the night would

indee be a restless one and life would indeed be a meanigless
thing. It's just that I love you Vic a thousand times over, and
that my admiration and love for you grow each day by leaps and
bounds. That's not a new idea-- it occurred to me quite some
time ago and I rather think I've practised admirable restraint
in waiting all this time (at least 24 hours) to tell you about
it. Are you surprised? Or have you perhaps heard that song be-
fore? I can't ever remember saying anything similar to you but
then my memory is short and it mightpossibly be that I once- or
twice- hinted at this before. Surely this is a brazeness unknown
to our worthy ancestors who never got further than a fondly or
an I kiss your hand. A kiss- but not bestowed on your hand- and
a dozen fondlys of increasing intensity- and all my love, my
darling Vic,

May

"squish"? Not squash or squash-

PPS - Isn't this a long letter?

PPPS - You know, it's a long letter...

N.B. sign!

Thursday

Honey,

don't quite know how it always manages to get late
so early but it'd gone and done it again, and we are three
exhausted little chickens tonight. Today was cool and sunny
and really beautiful, so I sorta dragged Nat and Jeannie head-
long on the coattails of my enthusiasm into the Wissahickon
and we tramped and tramped for miles thru its wooded glory.
I can't possibly, Vic, begin to tell you how beautiful our
woods are, I can only hope that I can show them to you myself
someday and that we can stroll along together down the drive
and scramble over the rocks 'n rills of the creek. Then 'll
show you all our favorite bridle paths, the place where I
broke a few bones, the place wherewe forded the creek on horse-
back, the jumping field-- a hundred little glades and streams
that keep their changeless loveliness year in, year out. Jeannie
was very favorably impressed and we had a pretty fine time
knocking ourselves out climbing up 'n down and round for half
a day.

oh yes we also took lotsa pitchers in pigtails which I
will with trepidation sned you if they turn out a-tall.

xongixhxwex tonight we roasted hamburgers over the char-
coal grille for dinner and made a mad excursion around Gtn. try-
ing to find some ice cream for dessert. Town Meeting wasn't worth
a plugged nickel (le? I' ve forgotten again) so Jeannie and I
played duets again and we found one very schmaltzy German piece
called springtime which it is our pride and joy to perform with
resounding emphasis on every damned plaintive note... more fun!
Also might add that I was up at 6:30 to get Pop's breakfast this
ayem and practised until 9:30 when the rest of the hive finally
began to stir whereupon I took Dolly breakfast in bed and scurr-
ied with Nat all hopeful up to the P.O. to see if we could get
the mail but it was locked tighter'na safe. Tomorra... whee!
mail again....

So wind the procession of days. I feel as tho you have
slipped a few extra hundred miles away these last two letter-less
days and then the one before you had had none from me and whether
consequently or just not, you didn't have much to say. But I
know that tomorrow will bring a bumper crop-- leastways two--
and then for a little bit it will be as if you were right here
with me. But then of course I nearly forgot that tomorrow I am
off to NYC for the weekend to raise a little hell. but I can't
even tease you about it; I don't feel like teasing you about it.
So I'll save it for later.

I have a very guilty feeling that my letters have grown
increasingly short of late, but the reason lies somewhere between
this female convention that last so late each night and Pop's
inexorable early morn demands, and I'll make amends, starting
next week. Meanwhile snooky, I'm almost too tired to miss you
but I see your face before me in a pleasant subconscious stupor-
and maybe if I hurry, I'll meet you in my dreams. It's that
captivating smile that gets me; the smile, the zebu-- in facto--
all the things you are, now and always.

Max

AIR MAIL

T-4 Victor Kumin, 31469239
Special Engineer Detachment,
PO Box 180, Santa Fe, N.M.

INER U. S. ARMY EXAMINER

AIR MAIL

EXAMINER

U. S. ARMY EXAMINE

AIR MAIL

T-4 Victor Kumin, 31469 239
Special Engineer Detachment,
P.O. Box 180, Santa Fe, N.M.

# Treasure Chest

## The Nature of Love

FOR one human being to love another: that is perhaps the hardest of all our tasks, the ultimate, the last test and proof, the work for which all other work is but preparation. For this reason young people, who are beginners in everything, are not yet capable of love: they have to learn it. With their whole being, with all their forces, gathered close about their lonely, timid, upward-beating heart, must they learn to love. But learning-time is always a long, secluded time, and so loving, for a long time ahead and far on into life, is — solitude, enhanced and deepened loneness for him who loves. Love is at first not anything that means unfolding, surrendering, and uniting with another (for that would be a union of the unclarified and unfinished, the still subordinate), it is a high inducement to the individual to ripen, to become something in himself, to become world, to become world to himself for another's sake; it is a great, an exorbitant demand upon him, something that chooses him out and calls him to vast things. Only in this sense, as the task of working at themselves ("to hearken and to hammer day and night") should young people be allowed to use the love that is given them. Unfolding and surrender and every form of living their lives together is not for them (who must save and accumulate for a long, long time), is the ultimate, is perhaps that for which human lives as yet scarcely suffice.

Rainer Maria Rilke, in "Letters to a Young Poet," translated by M. D. Herter Norton. (W. W. Norton & Co.)

U. S. ARMY EXAMINER

AIR MAIL

T-4 Victor Kumin, 31469239
Special Engineer Detachment
P.O. Box 180, Santa Fe, N.M.

THE ATOMIC INSIGNIA

The shoulder patch which the Army will issue to approximately 3,500 officers and enlisted men assigned to work on the bomb. The Army interpretation of the patch says the blue field represents the universe, the small army service star signifies the command, a question mark indicates secrecy cloaking the project and the tail of the question mark becomes a lightning stroke splitting an atom.

Associated Press Wirephoto

ARMY EXAMINER

U. S. A

T/4 Victor Kumin 31469239
Special Engineer Detachment
P.O. Box 180
Santa Fe
New Mexico

WOODS HOLE OCEANOGRAPHIC INSTITUTION

WOODS HOLE, MASSACHUSETTS

September 17, 1945

Cpl. Victor Kumin
Special Engineer Detachment
Post Office Box 180
Santa Fe, New Mexico

Dear Vic:

My congratulations on your part
in ending the war. You boys certainly did the business.
We are now trying to wind up the NDRC phase of our
activities although the Woods Hole laboratory will
continue, at least for a while, under Navy auspices.

We are getting a good many nibbles
concerning industrial jobs and I certainly will be glad
to keep your name in mind.

I should like to suggest that you
make up in several copies a form containing your name,
birth, marital status, citizenship, training and college
education, any honors, experience and especially your
preferences regarding types of work. We could then have
that in our file so that as inquiries come in we could
make suggestions for suitable positions. I am particularly
interested in learning what type of job you would prefer
since I remember that at one time you were thinking of
going to the business school and using your chemistry only
as a background. Have you changed your mind since then?

With best regards,

ebw/rf

U.S. ARMY EXAMINER

U.S.

PARIS
AVIATION

VIA AIR MAIL
CORREO AEREO

To: Victor Kumin, 31469239
Special Engineer Detachment,
P.O. Box 180, Santa Fe,
New Mexico.

October 2, 1945

"Dearest Snookie",

This is a big surprise, you'll never guess what--
I'm not Max at all, This must confuse you a little
to say the least, but it's this a way, I'm Mack. This
all came about because Max and Janey and I decided
that our respective men were getting too used to our
respective styles of writing letters ( not, of course,
that we mind that at all) so we decided to do a gen-
eral juggling act. To wit, I am writing you, Max is
writing Janey's man, And Janey's writing mine. The
smoking room at this moment resembles the New York
Times office three minutes before the deadline--
three typewriters banging away, that smoky atmosphere,
and a few off duty people lounging around catching up
with this mornings news (reading of course *The Times*).

And in true newspaper style, I shall start off
with the news later passing to the editorials. Max
has been valiantly attempting to read some book or
other all evening. As a first hand witness to the
attempt, I can only report that her heart wasn't in
it and I'M afraid her eyes all too often weren't on
it. (it referring to the book) I can verify this
because I was turning pages much faster than she was
which is something when you are trying to struggle
through economic theory. And also whenever I looked
up (what was I doing looking up, just turning the page
of course) her eyes were looking somewhere, could be
towards New Mexico.

Now, Vic, really--you shouldn't do such things
to Max, after all before long all she will be able to
spell is your name on an exam paper. That's bad!
But maybe Max will survive, anyway until November.
She really is working and is carrying a heavy load -
regardless of what else I may have been saying.

You'll also be glad to know that Max is absolute-
ly wasting away. Comes the day that she refuses
candy inbetween meals and doesn't eat desert when

(believe it or not) it is good -- some awfully pwerfull influence must be at work. (Tell me what volts, watts, and amperage is necessary to do the trick?)

Incidentally, before you start getting bad ideas about Max, she did not tell us about your title of "snookie". Jane and I discovered it one evening all on our own -- more specifically Max was typing and seeing as how I am near sighted and can only see what is real close up and Jane's eyesight is perfect, we couldn't avoid seeing the opening salutation on the letter she was typing.

One other thing, I hope you realize your full responsibility towards the morale of one Max and thus to the whole floor. Even when it has been raining cats and dogs for several days and no planes could possibly get through, Max seems to expect miracles of commercial airlines re: delivering of mail. Some day Vic, will you please explain to Maxine about the imperfections of flight service even if we are living in a modern age, we just can't convince her at all. Probably because we don't know the right terms to use.

At any rate, it is a blessing you came along. After having to listen to Max rave against men for a whole term in close quarters, you just don't know how it restores my faith in the male sex to hear her rave about one.

Love,
by right of being proxi for
Max

Mack

IT EXAMINER

U. S. ARMY EXAMINER

VIA AIR MAIL

T/4 Victor 177. Humin 31469239

Special Engineer Detachment

P O Box 180, Santa Fe, New Mexico

# Poets' Column

## Are You There?

EACH lover has some theory of his own
About the difference between the ache
Of being with his love, and being alone.

Why what, when dreaming, is dear
flesh and bone
That really stirs the senses, when
awake,
Appears a simulacrum of his own.

Narcissus disbelieves in the unknown;
He cannot join his image in the lake
So long as he assumes he is alone.

The child, the waterfall, the fire, the
stone,
Are always up to mischief, though,
and take
The universe for granted as their
own.

The elderly, like Proust, are always
prone
To think of love as a subjective fake;
The more they love, the more they
feel alone.

Whatever view we hold, it must be
shown

Why every lover has a wish to make
Some kind of, otherness his own:
Perhaps, in fact, we never are alone.

From "The Collected Poetry of W.
H. Auden." (Random House.)

T
and
mu
th

It Happened in the U. S. A.:

# They're Not Tenting Tonight on Boston Common

By JAMES T. HOWARD

At Boston, three chorus girls pitched a tent on Boston Common and were reclining therein when a passing policeman gruffly ordered them to depart on the grounds that it was against the law to pitch a tent on the Common.

The girls told him there was no such law either and, if there was, to prove it. He searched through his rule book, while the crowd gathered, but the best he could find was a statute prohibiting the digging of holes in a public park. That, he said, was good enough for him.

However, a gallant passerby put in his two cents' worth, pointing out that there was no evidence that the girls had dug the holes for the tent pole and stakes themselves. The policeman allowed there was some merit to this argument so he would call a patrol wagon and leave the whole thing to more astute legal minds.

When the wagon arrived, the girls scampered away lugging their tent with them. They had just enough time to tell reporters their names were Mary Bingham, Lillian Wells and Candy Montgomery and they did it because there were no hotel rooms.

Daily Worker' Editor Quits
Job for Catholic Church

Louis F. Budenz, president and managing editor of the *Daily Worker*, announced last night that he had resigned his connections with that Communist Party newspaper as well as Communism and had returned to "the faith of my fathers, the Catholic Church."

Budenz, a prominent Communist leader for the last 10 years, said he would leave to go to South Bend, Ind., to join the faculty of Notre Dame University in the department of economics.

Budenz confirmed the report that he had left the Communist Party after the *Daily Worker*, which carried his name in its masthead as president yesterday, refused either to confirm or deny his resignation.

Earlier, an editor on the staff said Budenz had not resigned, but that he had been out of the office for the past week because of "illness."

Budenz, his wife and three daughters, were received into the Church by the Rt. Rev. Monsignor Fulton J. Sheen of Catholic University, Washington. Sheen, a leading Catholic foe of Communism who had attacked Budenz's writings in a pamphlet five years ago, also instructed the five converts.

Budenz said last night that he had "always been a Catholic" and he had returned to his Church. In announcing that he had left the Communist Party, he said:

"Communism and Catholicism are irrevocable. Communism, I have found, aims to establish a tyranny over the human spirit; it is unending conflict with religion and true freedom."

A spokesman at the *Daily Worker* said the newspaper planned to carry no story about Budenz in its edition today.

Budenz was a member of the National Committee of the Communist Party for six years. In a written statement he said it "was with deep joy that by God's grace" he had returned to the Church. He said:

"My wife, the companion at every step of my spiritual journey, and my three daughters have become Catholics with me.

"Reason and faith have led us to this happy step. In a storm-tossed world, the Catholic Church is the great rock upon which human beings can find refuge and a tower of strength.

"From St. Peter to Pius XII the Papacy has brought light to mankind, and despite all the pulls and tugs of his cry, has continued in its divine mission."

Budenz, whose home here is 29 Lincoln Circle, Crestwood, N. Y., has been active over a long period of years in labor work.

He was associate director of the Central Bureau of the Catholic Central Verein and secretary of the St. Louis Civic League before he became a Communist. He helped to lead a number of strikes against the Street Railway Co., in St. Louis.

A descendant of one of the early settlers at Indianapolis, Ind., he was a leader in a number of other midwest strikes, including the strike in 1928 at Kenosha, Wis., the Toledo, O., Auto-Lite strike of 1934 which paved the way for organization of auto industry workers.

He joined the Communist Party in 1935 when it announced its "People's Front" policy.

Rather, the cue has been to get them to talk about certain
practices which they like to call "obnoxious" in the abstract,
and then let them point out themselves, by judicious question-
ing, that such sins are common to all men and by no means
exclusive to Jews. It has really been fun, because so many
of them have felt uncomfortable. That has been my real
objective, because it denotes the working of that something
we call "conscience."

Sometime I must send you a copy of a little thing I wrote
about ten years ago and sent to one of my Boston Jewish friends,
after he told me that the young Jews in his community were
not going to have children, in order to spare them the
unkindnesses to which his contemporaries had been subjected.
He was gracious enough to call my poor effort a "poetic
prayer", and even had it published somewhere in a Jewish
periodical.

His remarks had disturbed me, as I, among many other Gentiles
know only too well what the world owes to that magnificent race.
The horrible thought, that, if any such movement as he sug-
gested ever did take root, the whole world would be the suffer-
ers. So the title was "Forgive Us, Israel," and the plea was
that we be forgiven because we knew not what we had done;
that the Father had promised Abraham that his seed would
bless all nations of the earth, and that we should not now
be denied the healing hand and counsel of Israel.

A few copies were distributed here and there among Jewish friends, as Hersch had indicated approval; and I think it was well done, if for no other reason than that some Jews, at least, knew that they were loved and appreciated for their contribution to our civilization and were comforted thereby.

And that is the thought I want to leave with you tonight.
I know you have been hurt, but I bid you be patient and undes-
couraged. Let us talk of other things; the political and
moral forces, the economic effects of present world conditions.
But I warn you: I may be a bore, because I shall emphasize
the place of loving-kindness in man's relations with his
fellowman and the responsibility for fostering it among us all,
if we are to have a better understanding among men.

Now be of good cheer; don't work too hard, and don't bother
to write to me until and unless you feel like doing so.

Always fondly,

Ol' Pappy Ryan.

Prague: "Symbol of the Whole World"

# Ogden Nash Nosegay

MANY LONG YEARS AGO. By Ogden Nash. 333 pp. Boston: Little, Brown & Co. $2.50.

By RUSSELL MALONEY

MANY long years ago it was, indeed—fifteen, I believe—that Ogden Nash's first published writing appeared in The New Yorker. It was the immortal lyric entitled “Spring Comes to Murray Hill,” which contained the couplet:

> The Pilgrims settled Massachusetts in 1620 when they landed on a stone hummock.

> Maybe if they were here now they would settle my stomach.

The depression had produced a poet. Since then Ogden Nash has been, at one time or another, a magazine editor, Hollywood writer and musical-show librettist, but students yet unborn will find him listed in their History of English Literature as a poet.

Nash is the laureate of a generation which had to develop its own wry, none-too-joyful humor as the alternative to simply lying down on the floor and screaming. His ragged verse is remarkably like Ring Lardner's unpruned prose in effect—a catalogue of the annoying trifles that constitute our contemporary civilization, set down with a friendly leer. Lardner wrote about prohibition, golf, the stock market, Americans traveling abroad, million-dollar prizefights and similar nostalgic nuisances; Nash runs the gamut from the depression

to Hitler, touching upon such disparate subjects as detective stories, crooners, the theatre-ticket shortage, Father's Day, knitting, colds, fruit salad, bankers, the circus, rain, strong drink, marriage and children's parties.

“MANY LONG YEARS AGO” is a sort of retrospective volume, representing Nash's published work to date. Any but the most well-read and retentive-minded Nash fan would find it difficult to separate the early verse from the recent. Both rejoice the innocent reader's heart with their leisurely tempo and indifference to formal scansion and their miraculous quasi-rhymes. Further, Nash is one of the rare people who can make a pun and make you like it. He can write sentimental rhymes about his children and make you like those, too. In short, he can do almost anything in the poet line, and he has been doing it for fifteen years.

A hair-spring sense of outrage is Nash's most valuable bit of professional equipment. He can be as angry at marshmallow or whipped cream on a salad as at an absconding banker, and as mad at the absconding banker as at Hitler. He is an urbane and articulate Donald Duck, an Alexander Pope with a hangover, a Rabelais whom you could introduce to your sister.

THE HIG

Nordhofer 230 pp. Co. $2. Book.

By B.

THE work of a voyage-ric has done islands—per- —remain still four centuries the inspiration by the autho- r Trology." The rators have terial on which inations work tale of Captai- tinous crew, they have appealing es-

Their spring which appears "Yardley's" about "Turf of land or between Caroline except of a ce- been formed the

4

Wednesday

It's love honey-- love that sends me drifting into your
back letters when I know damn well I shouldn't. But accomp-
lishments today relatively large; finished the Fine Arts paper
and read lots more Red literature-- the history of Bolshevism,
no less. And then the granting of a new lease on life to Os-
car here which required fifteen minutes of fumbling to set to
rights-- hope I don't have that much trouble braiding the grand-
children's hair someday. Am absolutely determined on two things-
that after tonight I am not going to mention or think about the
Great Grave Impending Event of Your Homecoming until three days
before, and secondly that I am going to study like mad (well,
moderately so, anyway) and get all my course work way out of
tha way. I've really gotta settle down. If we've waited all this
time, surely we can wait this little while longer? You don't
think the wordl will end before Nov. 3rd do you, honey? And the
sun will rise and set and rise again on the days between now and
then-- somehow, won't it? My only comfort is knowing that it's
just about twice as grim for you with less solace, less occupa-
tion, and less lebensraum. I've been having impulsive tho'ts all
eve-- the latest of which is to zip down to NY to meet you there;
and I probably would if, a, I thought you wouldn't disapprove
heartily, and b, if I didn't think that your mother might quite
lawfully object to my impetuosity. I thought I might cook up a
reason for being opportunely in the big city that Saturday but
then I can't cook up reasons for you and so I suppose we had bett-
er let things go at that.

Had a nice long chat with Jeannie on the phone tonight--
she's been offered a rather nice job with the market research dept.
of Gilette Blades(!) at 30 a weekwhich does not cause me to sneeze
at all-- but as usual she is "undecided"-- so she's going down to
NY this week to visit Bob's family and then to poke around a bit
to see if there are any NY firms with Boston offices that might be
interested in a nize brite collitch girl...

No mail from you today but yours to Mack arrived and vic-
arious tho it was, twas almost as good. We both chucked longly
over it; Mack's curiosity is decidedly aroused; she is anxious to
meet you. Something of my state too, flatly put, grossly under-
stated. enuff of that.

Bumped into Prissy, too, as I stumbled myopicly out of
Widener near sixish; she's all a-flutter becuz the Navy points for
officers have been lowered to 46 and Pris is such a help anyway.

A grim excuse of 'a letter; I shouldn't have written it.
Tomorrow bubbles and mirth, on mah honor. And now doggedly back
to the books for an hour and soon tomorrow will be another day;
one day less to wait, one day more to love you all the more. And
that, my darling, I do, I do.

Thursday

Big day today, honey, a little letter to you, and thus to bed
with the firm resolve to put in a little more time tomorrow on
the books than I did today which even then won't be much of a
maximum. Did get to see Levin today for an hour, my but he's a
shy and retiring person or mayhap he just doesn't bother pro-
jecting his personality around for lousy undergrads... anyway,
he was quite nice. Altho I felt like an intellectual nonentity.

Govt 8 seminar this afternun hopped right along with a
hot and heavy discussion of finding constitutional means to
limit the potentially vast power of the military during which
time we all of us civilians rather abruptly came to realise what
a damnably totalitarian ruthless machine the army must be. I
wish you could have been there- you would no doubt have had a
great deal to say. I found that I did, m'self; but how can I tell
you about it when there are, lemme see, nine of us giggling wimmen
in here, all pretending to do a little work or write a little lett-
er and all of us infected with needless hilarity. As a matter of
fact, my high resolve to read 90 pages tonight disintegrated into
less than thirty 'cuz the freshman next door to me was weeping aud-
ibly thru the wall and something had to be done. So good *Pamaritan*,
her subway voice and all, I spent two hours talking her out of leav-
ing Radcliffe, went over her *Eng*. I assingments with her, read most
of the auld *English* (which I love) to her and tried to make her see
just how one goes about reading literature anyway. It's a damn ec-
lectic process, I see now, but I don't think you ever realise it
consciously once you've grasped the method by yourself. By compar-
ison, I think our class was much better *prepared* for collitch than
this crop of freshmen-- we knew how to take notes after the first
few lectures and we learned shortly thereafter by not too bitter
experience how to study. Well, I don't know. It was all so very
long ago! How you do run on, Max! By the way, isn't Jane *Austen*
a riot? Half the floor is dozing thru *Eng* 5 with Bush, Austen at
this pernt, and we've been acting out the love-dialogues.

Jeannie came to class this afternoon with me and then we coaxed
her back to dinner. We sat at head table and had a most pleasant
chat with Mrs. Martin who is really a dear and a right modern dear
at that.

Your Tuesday break-of-dawn letter came this afternoon which is
really a record for ole Hannegan. Well! *Farley* was never like this..
Your technique of rhyme is nothing short of miraculous. Maybe you
ought to try it at 7:30 all the time! Anyway, nyah, I am no longer
sore, and think of the "muscle tone". Yes, think of it!

Had an awfully sweet letter from Dolly- the first one that
hasn't been simply a resume of what *Fred* and *Herb* and their wives
and children have been doing and what shows they've seen and what
they've been eating and drinking.. this one was about the *Wissahickon*
in the fall and how *Dolly* and *Pop* are getting along.. And, quipped
*Dolly*, in a very short time, *ladies* and *gentlemen*, think of it, we
will finally meet the man whom so short a time won the heart of
our only daughter. I'm not sure who she means, but maybe you can
set me straight.

Mike's father graciously sent us a bushel of apples to take
the place of cream puffs and choclit cake. Mike is Mike (*Ann*)
Barry of New Jersey who is a rootin tootin liberal of good liberal
stock, pert, outdoorsy and fresh-looking and an awfully good scout.

I have just decided something. I have decided that altho I
know I am emotional and that you are rational, you are emotional
too. I never quite considered it in that light before. How are your

reflexes? You're missing a fine set of nudes these days.
(which should not follow on the tail of emotionality) Goya's
and Ingres' and David's. Fine arts lectures are lots of fun,
I wonder why I never took a course before?

Discovered today that all my pictures of you are terribly
dusty and on reconnoitering around abit I also discovered that
the maid might just as well not even make the gesture for
all she accomplishes. You know the hierarchy around here is some-
thing fierce. Some of the miads won't spit on the others but
one thing they all have in common is a love of cating which they
do on and on and on and on-- with their broad Roxbury accents
and their good homespun observations on mice and men. But they
are so good to us-- dear Lucy saw Jeannie and merely winked her
a hello instead of coming round to collect the fee. And then they
go to all lengths to see that we get the best the kitchen has to
offer plus occasional off-hour snacks.

Well I can't go on. Rumor hath it that retiring now will be
useless as soon after the witching hour there will be a damn fire
drilland for the last three fire drills I've been lucklessly in
the shower.

So, my love, until tomorrow
(creeps up this petty pace from day to day
to the last syllable of recorded time--
and all our yesterdays have lighted fools
the way to dusty death)

with apologies to Shakes.
and much much love to you.
Mar

Mar

CAMBRIDGE
A
OCT 19
11:30 AM
1945
MASS.

VIA AIR MAIL
CORREO AEREO

T-4 Victor Kumin, 31469239
Special Engineer Detachment
P.O.Box 180, Santa Fe, N.M.

U.S.ARMY
EXAMINER

Vic dear, it's a sunny Saturday morning and I practically
fell asleep last night under the soothing influence of a
large glass of tomato juice and young Rogal's slightly
drunken babble so I thought I'd put ya off till the ayem, and
this is really ayem; not quite nine o/c yet. Things have
indeed came to a purty pass when your Sunday letter arrives
on Friday and your Tuesday one on Thursday! How about a
purge??? Party discipline is what we need...

I won't even tell you again that I've been studying the day I
have and yesterday Janie and I spent an entire afternoon
going over prints in Fogg until we were nearly blind. We're
having a bit of Indian summer which has the same effect as
spring fever and is almost as difficult to resolve. I noticed
a vehement letters to the end of Time from your friend Wilson
in this week's issue. I am trying to write an article of sorts
on the findings of the International Tribune on the war crim-
inals but somehow writing to you is easier and requires less
mental exertion. Last night Casey appeared near tennish fairly
looped in his new civvie clothes and eager for a beer and a
willing ear, which I a little reluctantly supplied. He got
quite maudlin and began to tell me about his buddies who got
theirs, about various and sundry missions, and when that well
ran dry, about various women he had known. It was a little
 soupy but not too hard to listen to; I am so sorry for him and
for everyone of us, for everyone he us has lost new and old
friends and the nation has lost much of its vitality thru our
more personal loss. I am sorry for a kid like Casey who has
had to grow up so quickly and done such an uneven job of it.
And I think he's too lazy mentally to go very far.

Going to the game (Motor Patrol Boat #3 or something!)
this afternoon and out to dinner which will be a welcome div-
erusion.

Do I ever get to know what mission you've accomplished
in Alby? I'se awful curiouser and curiouser.

Got a fabulous letter from the Roscoe-- (Roscoe (Irene) Lar-
ner-- a fourth floor cohort of yesteryear who married the Sugar
Loaf (Mike Freedman) in July and had not been heard from since
then). They have a converted one room apt with kitchenette in
a big brownstone house on west 81st; no refrigerator; they put
a 30 lb. block of ice in the sink and the sink broke, they have
since been washing dishes in the bathroom. No iron, so on Sun-
days when they sojourn to Great Neck to the in-laws to escape
the kitchen, Roscoe takes her laundry with her. Mike gets break-
fast, markets and does the dishes; Roscoe zips in about 6 pm
and throws the chops around for dinner. She has a good job as
bacteriologist in the Margaret Hague hospital; Mike will be
a civilian after next month, no more Navy subsidy thru med
school and they think they'll go on relief.... if we get an
hour or so en route to Philly, mayhap for old and new times'
sake they'd meet us for a drink. They are two of my favourte
people. I think I would like a refrigerator and an iron,
tho....

Waal, honey, into the mail with you. Avez-vous vu la
lune? ! With lots and lots and lots of love.

Monday

My darling Vic:

Surely there could be no nicer present than three letters from you in one day- last Wednesday, Thursday and Friday's. And even knowing that it would mean a dearth of mail from you tomorrow didn't lessen my appreciation of them. It's now just after ten; Radio Radcliffe is broadcasting Hadyn's 90nd-- the Oxford symphony, and I am sitting at my desk looking at the reflection of a pair of horn rimmed specs in the window pane peering out over a mound of books. (Very bad construction- that, m'lad, is a dangling participle, I think). I've been wandering in a maze of metamorphic rocks this live-long day, geology lab, quiz, and reading all night. To be perfectly honest, it's almost interesting. In lectures I sometimes forget to watch the clock. Do you think you could be transported out of this world on a carpet of intrusive molten magma?? Do you realise what an incredible part of the country you now reside in? All the examples in our text come from New Mexico; there is a marvellous dike (which is a discordant intrusion against the lines of stratification and schistosity of igneous material) at Alamillo creek, and a terrific volcanic neck on the Zuni plateau. In fact my curiosity is so aroused that I would be willing to go <u>all</u> the way to NM to see for myself...

I enjoyed your excerpts from Time very much; they were the very ones I paused over m'self, and just proof that our great minds are in the same channel, yestiddy I sent you a clipping from same issue. Now about Jim Ryan's letter; I don't know as I agree with you. What you say is precisely what our rabbi at hum has to say, and to me it looks like the line of least resistance. I don't think making the average gentile conscious of the problem of anti-Semitism aggravates the sore; people who have prejudices don't let them lie dormant waiting for exposition. I don't even think it makes them more conscious of the "difference" between gentile and Jew. I think you are right is assuming that re-education must begin with the child who has not had the opportunity of taking on his elders' prejudices, but until you reconstruct society in such a way as to remold the opinions of the elders, you won't make a nickel with the new generation. Most intolerance is the result of ignorance, plain and simple-- old, blind tales that are baseless and taken for granted. People have got to be conscious of their prejudices before they can be destroyed. That's why I think Pop Ryan does his share in the society in which he travels; the average upper strata Gentile is not a violent anti-Semite; he looks down on the Jews socially and very often he goes from cradle to grave without having come within ten feet of one consciously-- if you think that's not true, try living in the south or a small midwest town for a while. I'm rather in favor of an all-out campaign; of vigorous anti-defamation leagues, and as many Gentile crusaders like Jim Ryan as feel called to the banner. Look at the number of Gentiles whose eyes have been forcibly opened to the Palestine problem since the war and have felt it their duty to speak up in favor of scrapping the "hite paper. Those things seem small but they count. The more people bearing the cross, the lighter it gets. As for the ubiquitous "you" he used in his letter; the reference wasn't to me personally but to the Jewish people as a whole. I've never run into any open bigotry altho I have encountered some pretty petty things, yes, even here at school where I am so very little conscious of dividing line. Among our close friends-- Katie, Mike, Jane, Joan and the lot,

there just is no such animal. But I have lived to be told by
one obnoxious female that I was a "nice" Jew in direct con-
trast to all others who seemed to wear horns. That and "I
would never have known you were a Jew" I have heard ad naus-
eam and both bring me to a slow seething boil. I'm a damned mil-
itant about it, Vic, and I believe in the direct frontal attack.
Wolsey (Rabbi W. of Rodeph Shalom in Philly) is a hush-husher,
combined with being one of the most clannish of the clan. He makes
a huge mistake; his methods encourage his "flock" to avoid the
taint and rebuffs of the Gentile world and cultivate their own
garden; I'm all for standing right up to society in general; good
bad and indifferent, and never sinking into the narrow clannish
Hebraism that excludes Gentile friendships. I think too that if
fate had had it that way, I might have made a successful go of
intermarriage. And if it had happened that way I know I would have
gone thru with it, conscious as I am of the heartbreak it would
cause my parents. Needless to say how much less complicated and
adjustable this is. My friendship for Joanie has ripened consid-
erably because of the minority problem she faces with K.C. She is
a violent little crusader.

And speaking of that, she came back from DC and the big weekend
this ayem; not in dark defeat and misery as we had expected; oh no.
Of all the invincible luck, what does that guy get but a 21 day
proceed time to Frisco!! He has his commission now; will be in
town next week and they'll both be here while we're here too so
p'raps we can work something up.

As for your Friday letter, darling, what can I say to you?
Haydn is saying it so much better than I could pretend to, and how
then should I presume? Shall I say-- I have watched the days creep
past one by one with inexorable snail's pace for four long months,
and I have watched us struggle not to grow apart over those months
and I have lain awake at nights closely remembering our little
summer-time. I have grown impatient and discontented but always
you have brought me back with words and with heart to show me that
what has gone before was very genuine and very sure. I know too
that our love is new and strange to both of us and that we have a
great many adjustments to make. I would go to the end of the earth
and back if it meant that I could be with you always. You are my
whole life, Vic; it's as simple as that. I cannot find the words
tonight. Your letter is very dear and precious to me, and if it
is possible I love you the more for it. I always will.

May

Wednesday

My darling:

I feel so damn talkative tonight-- so full of things

of weight and import that I doubt if Oscar can keep up with me.
Mack has been using this typewriter and I see from glancing
upward that she double-spaces. I almost never double space. Some-
times I think it is a personality trait, becuz tonight my mind
is just as cluttered as this page will be. We goofed off the work
before it had hardly begun and the foursome has been in the thick
of a very close bull session for three hours now. What were we
talking about in our small confused way? Life and love, how diff-
erent we four are and yet how very much alike and how mutually
sympathetic and warmly close we are. I can't tell you the things
that we said-- it would take too much doing and they would prob-
ably be valueless. I can tell you though that there is so much
value is this-- in the sense you finally get with a certain amount
of maturity-- variable with your mood-- in finding that even the
most introspective troublesome parts of the bottom drawer of the
bureau of the mind are not peculiar to you-- that we all have
lower bureau drawers and we all have ugly obsessions and uncomfort
able conscienceful issues to debate there. I wonder so much how
you'll like those three; altho how well you can get to know people
in so short a time and so superficially is debatable. I don't
suppose anyone can see in another person what you yourself can, and
that is probably why I go to such lengths talking about them-- be-
cause like everything else I know or sense or feel or do, I want
so much to share it with you-- to make it a common fund we both
can always draw on and to build on the common fund so that it will
always be a strong bond between us. What we got to pondering over
was distinguishing between love and passion and the four of us
drawing from our not too meagre stock of experiences had quite a
discussion about it. There is a Bible quotation-- the faith hope
and charity one-- about then we saw darkly as thru a closed door
but now face to face. That is a little of what I feel-- now quite
face to face and very capable of distinguishing between passion
and love- and very much the wiser for it. There is so much to
tell you, darling- littlebits gleaned from here and there- and
soonwe will have all the world and time to talk about all of them.
That thought makes me very happy tonight just as the thought of
returning a bit to you quite closely after the uncertainties of
mood our bull session left with us.

Corey came over tonight after supper and is spending the night
We just make no headway at all- there is no reasoning with her and
we are no help to her aside from what companionship we may be. But
we are engrossed in our own personal worlds and they are a gulf
apart from her own unhappiness. there is very little that I can say
to her and I was perhaps closer to her than the others.

I am reading the '24 and '34 drafts of the Soviet constit-
ution and thinking very heatedly about all sorts of things-- mostly
about the neat cleverness of the Gigantic Fraud. That may be my
Western viewpoint. I am sure it is not a fraud to its citizenry
and that they believe and respect as well as fear it. But from
our philosophical point of view, what a hoax it looks like! After
much to-do about complete democracy in the proletariat which is to
co-exist with the dictatorship of the proletariat, we come to the
army. This too is to be different from bourgeois oppression- it
is to be democratic thru and thru. But when we come to the quest-
ion of electing the officers instead of having them appointed, we

find that there is no need to elect them; since this is a proletarian army and not an instrument of oppression, we appoint them instead since all are equal and all are equally competent. or on the subject of nationalities and the right of secession from the USSR- this right is guaranteed and underlined, but only lightly underscored is the fact that the Central Committee reserves the right to consider the merits of the case and ascertain whether it is to the interests of the working classes of the state asking for secession or if it is just a bourgeois plot- and you can bet your bottom dollar it is a bourgeois plot.. likewise with freedom of discussion of Committee policies in the All-Russian Congress of Soviets-- freedom of discussion and "Bolshevist self-criticism" are carefully underscored as vital to the health of the institution-- but only such discussion as will not make it possible for minority groups to undermine the prestige of the Soviet.. in other words, you can say anything you want about the government. provided it is good. Bad is treasonable and a life or death matter. I think with you that if this be bread, then let me starve. But I think too and awfully sympathetically of the ideals of Marxism and the struggle it has had to maintain itself and the sincerity of its early leaders. And if I could just detach myself from the world scene long enough to take a good solid historian's point of view I do not know what I would think. I will try some other time.

I am going to try to send you a little yellow pamphlet put out by the League of "omen Shoppers on the labor situation. Gosh but it's good. I will ask the owner if she is thru with it and peruse it again and send it on. Darling I love you-- what would I ever- what could or can I ever begin to do without you to pour all this incomprehensible incoherence out into what I hope is your kind receptive ear-- or eye?

I bumped into a copy of Cass Timberlane in Joanie's room and thumbed thru it once over lightly and read the prescribed material and I think he has a nice easy style which I always enjoy in people. But now I will never think of Cass T. without thinking of sex and let us not think about sex tonight.. let us not..

Damnit all that your leave can't begin a couple of days earlier-- we might have had a really phenomenal gay weekend- Mack! Bobby is coming up over the 3rd and 4th, KC will be here, Janie has a date with someone in whom she is more than remotely interested and there's a big formal dance at Radcliffe the night of the 3rd and I think all too wistfully of a certain slinky black velvet dress now hanging lonily in mah closet. Well- there will be other years when you will be jaded and not give a damn about my trying to look slinky and I will be fat and perverse and not care about trying to look slinky and we will be complacent and roundly companionable and god forbid we should ever begin to bore each other. How remote that seems. I don't think I could ever get enough of you. I want to spend all my days so close to you that I could unzip you from head to toe, crawl inside and zip us up together. Not so that you would make love to me and never stop but so that I could be a part of everything you think or do or feel. What a morass this is! Written in white hot heat heaste and too many cigarettes.

The very best of best news today from home-- Pete is getting his leave and it begins we think the 1st of November which might very well mean that Pete and Nat will be in Philly when we are there. Had a fine old letter from him and a snapshot and he looks awfully fat. Quite like a thug too. Golly, do you realise that this will be the first time in four yearsthat the four of us will all be together?? Only we have enlarged so much that we

are now four twice over and then some, counting the tots. I
don't give a hang about very much except seeing the Big Bro.
again and that, will be very good.

I don't think you take the army seriously enough. The
gen'l would positively squirm if he thought you were treating
the GC with so much disdain. But then everybody does and every-
body seems to connect it with an absence of VD. Why, daddy? Is
that really true? I am so worried about the effeminate lad across
the way. You just stay out of dark movies with him, d'ya hear!

I have said everything except what Candide said and Vol-
taire put the infamous words in his mouth-- all is for the best
in this best of all possible worlds. Soon it will be all for
the best. Come quick, snooky, I think of nothing else. I love
you.

Mau

Friday

My darling:

Golly but it's grey and wet and it's been grey and wet for three days now. The same dismal patter of rain and the same bleak sky closing in on us.. but I'm not grey a-tall 'cuz I just got your nice Tuesday letter and hour exams are straddling your furlough very neatly well on either side and I'm up to date and then some in all my work. Got a big cheery hello from Hector when Joanie and I bumped into him as we went in search of a missive and we both rewarded. He said to thank you for your little greeting of some time ago but that he's been so bogged down with so many letters that he hasn't had a chance to make notations lately. And then I just discovered how I had put the typewriter ribbon in backwards and more important, how to fix it which is a small step in the direction of manual dexterity of which I possess only the barest minimum...

Rather glad you're reading Wolfe. I enjoyed him tremendously four years ago this winter but I was too young and too uncritical to get much out of it. Something I'll have to reread one of these days. It has been said of him that he was notoriously anti-Semitic-- I don't know if it's the Web or Look Homeward Angel that led to the accusation. I only know that I never noticed it at the time. I have a collection of his letters; some when he was here at Harvard- he was always desperately short of money and the letters are almost valueless since they reflect nothing else. There is nothing of Wolfe the artist in them.

Dear Robert Benchley: I do not have a middle name. I do not have a middle name because I was such a small baby and the two names I have already were quite enough at that age and have always seemed sufficient to me ever since. In a way this is a bad thing; my cousin Billy was named after my grandfather too; he was named Max but he was named Max William and he rebelled and took to his middle name but I did not have any middle name to took to. This has for many years seemed like an unfair advantage to me. He is also six months younger than I and so he always got to read the three questions on Seder night until I went and learned them in Hebrew so that I could say them instead. I was a precocious and aggressive cheild. Billy says I must call him Bill; he is too growed up for Billy and indeed he is. He smokes and drinks and is a greenensign fresh out of Middle school and apparently makes passes at so many girls that it worries him. He is quite tall and quite dark and hands down walks off with the family prize for beaute.

I did not write to you yesterday either. I cannot remember that anything of import happened yesterday anyway except that Fainsod's lecture was unusually good and the hour discussion lengthened itself into the shadows. We were talking about Marxian theory and where its prognostications have fallen down. It was fun but I do think that every last one of us "mohdens" is far more de- than con-structive. Fainsod included.

Mack tells me that she has written to you a few days ago and doubtless she will amuse you on one of the days that I only just thought about you and got no further..

I hate to think of you holding your head in all the noisy ranting of a barracks full of discontented fellows. Communal life can be so much fun, too, when it's constructive and roomy and allows for some privacy. What gets you down most I guess is the senselessness of accomplishing nothing now beyond getting thru day after day. How about you and Mack taking up Yogi??

Had a sweet letter from la mere again today; she and Pop
are just about bursting till Pete really gets home. Nat is
going to meet him in Miami which is where he'll land, and
then once they've seen Nat's folks for a bit, they'll high-
tail it north in a hurry. Dolly says she is turning some of
the rooms chez 152 into dorms with three beds in each (now
I quote): and wives and husbands wiii (not Nat and Peter)
will have to separate for those few days... this is an out-
standing example of Mother's remarkable simplicity, honesty,
and charm. Even down to the parentheses which are hers. None
theless I do not think the dormitory x wiii idea will go
over big. I do not really worry about the family's possible
opinion of you, darling. I know that I am sadly prejudiced
but how can they help themselves?? I only worry- and then in
minute doses- about their effect on you. I care ever so much
more whether you like them than whether they like you. The
former might be disasterous but the latter is only incidental.
Now don you dare get your formers and latters mixed! But
then again I was never one to object to being fixed up with
nice blind dates. Look what happened to the last one!

Macko bought a copy of the Little Prince today for her-
self but we sat down and read it over again together. Every
time I do that I find something new until now I am convinced
that this is not a child's book at all, or even a book for a-
dult children. Some night you might just mull over the signif
of baobabs, and the exquisite way in which he explains about
them.

I spent most of yestiddy between classes tearing lickety
split thru Soviet Russia, that paradise of paradises, as seen by
Sidney and Beatrice Webb. No wonder everyone laughs at them. I
must laugh too-- altho their early historical works are really
quite good. But they just went a little beserk over Russia-- the
dawn of a new day's life (that's Shakes!) and all that.

No jitters at all now, honey. Just waiting-- almost pat-
iently.

Maj

AFTER FIVE DAYS, RETURN TO

VIA AIR MAIL

T-4 Victor Kumin, 31469239
SED, P.O. Box 180, Santa Fe,
New Mexico.

T-4 Victor Kumia, 31469239
SED, P.O. Box 180,
Santa Fe, N.M.

T-4 Victor Kumin, 31469239
SED, P.O. Box 180
Santa Fe, New Mexico

T/4. Victor Kumin. *31469239

S. E. D.

P.O. Box 180.

Santa Fe.

N. Mexico

air mail

T/4 Victor Kurnier 31469239
Special Engineer Detachment
P.O. Box 180
Santa Fe, New Mexico.

who was Japanese in December 1945, would speak English at 8:15 P. M. at the church under auspices of the World Service Council.

## GOD FOUND GUIDING WORLD TO GOODNESS

No matter what Russia, England and the United States do in the atomic age, there is "a hand upon the helm of the universe, the hand of God," that is guiding it toward a goal of eternal goodness, Bishop Charles C. Selecmann of the Dallas area, chairman of the Council of Bishops of the Methodist Church, declared yesterday in a sermon in the Church of St. Paul and St. Andrew, West End Avenue at Eighty-sixth Street.

"Our minds have been so attacked by problems of war these last few years," Bishop Selecmann said, "that to see the goodness of this world we need to get above the clouds, above the fog, where we can see a landscape pure and serene. At the heart and origin of the universe there lies the constant and palpitating heart of eternal God. This is a good world, this is our Father's world. We may rejoice that we are living in this great and beautiful world."

"In some way the Lord will provide. We have the right of way to the whole domain. Whatever may come, the clouds that have gathered will scatter and break with blessings on our heads. Every cloud is smoking with His presence, every bush is ablaze with His glory, every breath is laden with a hallelujah chorus and every star leads to Bethlehem."

## BOND WITH CHRIST URGED

Gerard Swain
David Sarnoff
New York
Lessing J.
Philadelphia
Bernard G.
James Roach
Gardner
Barry B.
Raymond
New
Norman
Cecil Broach
Albert D.
F. O.
Watson
Guy Emeren
Anna M.
Benedict
Consultor
Mrs. Sidney
Edwin R.
Fund, C
George C.
Intermission
David H.
Fred M.
Evans
Fund
Howard
New
Elizabeth
Leon
Ted
Herbert

Tuesday

If this letter, my darling, is smudgy it is becuz Oscar just had his
face lifted and I absentmindedly did it all bass ackwards and even
now that I think I had fixed everything, I obviously haven't. Which
of course finds me very out of patience with it. So all I do is say oh
damn and struggle with it and I just obviously have no mechanical apt-
itude at all. Parsons just came over and magically pressed a jigger,
but it didn't help, did it. Aha, it taked Mack, I always said it took
Mack, and now for the first time in its career, your woman understands
the fundamentals of the system; hitherto, I always did it by guess work.
God but I am stupid! For its career read her. Oh what did we do today--
well, we, meaning Bronston and I, went to see "The Southerner" cuz there
it was at the Ut and how could I pass it by. We caught the 5 o/c show
and sat their with true hunger pangs gnawing at our innards, right in
sympathy with the story. I didn't mean to be atall flip-- young Renoir
has done a superb job of restraining Hollywood exuberance, and I think
the result is one of the best things yet to come out of California since
the gold rush of '49. Thanks for a good tip, honnnee; wisht I'd hadda seen
it many long moons ago. Once out of the movie we pooled our resources and
discovered that we had exactly one dollah between us for dinner. So we
dined, if not in state, satisfactorily at the Wursthaus on frankfurters
and cole slaw. I have finished Management in Russian Industry and spent
all evening copying over back Govt. 8 lectures of which there were lots
'n lots.

It's gotten good old Boston 15 degree cold and that precious has. river
wind makes sturggling along to classes a full-sized chore. I allus wished
I wuz a boy cuz then my knees wouldn't get so chapped. My chief objection
to skirts. To say nothing of ears. And noze. But as Pooh said, it's not
so much the nose as the toes (tiddeley pum). It's a song; Pooh wrote it.

Most pleasant surprise to find yet another letter from you this morn-
ing; yours of the sixth, of football and reply to dissertation no.#1...
30 or 60 days, darling, of course, only makes sense. In that case I will
go back to Philly and find some sort of job to keep me busy while I gnaw
my toenails waiting for your discharge. But if it is going to lengthen
into 90 or 120 days, you'll need a battering ram of a new argument. As
for be it Santa Fe or the Hill; I favor the Hill becuz I think it makes
better sense as well as better budgeting, and commuting that way will only
be a rotten chore foryou. But we can settle the details later, as long as
we can agree on the fundamentals. Perhaps somewhere around April, you'll
have a better idea of Oot and we can worry about it then. I s'pose I made
a mountain out of a molehill, but I felt kinda up in the air on the sub-
ject when you left. Even 60 days seems too long to me, honey. You're very
encouraging and encouraged about June- and I'm so glad. I won't fret any
more.

Am posilutely bushed tonight- can't seem to soak up enuff sleep no
matter how I work it; getting up each morning is a helluva tough job. All
a matter of self-discipline.

Pris and Hank called me tonight and we held a charming three way con-
versash. Hank has been accepted into the Feb class at Law school, they
still have no place to live and according to all reports, they still do
cross-word puzzles in bed. And god but they sound happy. Am going over
there Sunday.

o snooky, a pleasant goo'night with all my love.

Honey, can ya spare the cash to call me in Philly one night? I will
be sure to be in the 20th and the 21st in case you are agreeable. It
would be so good to talk to you a little.

Incident, am taking Eng 60b and Ec 81-- the latter becuz Matty is
not giving it next term-- he is writing a-nother book I think.

Incident, my darling, I love you. So much. May is far away and we
haven't done so well by ourselves, have we? But we'll make the grade-
and my major consoling thought is always: next year at this time...
I leave that to you as a precious legacy. Well, I am terribly tired
and very sobered but tonight I think sleep will be a sweet dream of
peace. Hang on, honey. Just hang on tight and five years from now all
this will seem like a silly dream we once had. Five years from now I
will love you just five times as much, if that is possible. Goodnight,
darling.

May

Saturday

My darling Vic:

I was so glad this afternoon, when your special delivery
came, that I had written to you as I did a few days ago with the same
conclusions. It was awfully unfair of me to put you on the spot this way
darling, and leaving it up to you to make our decisions. But you know
how I am inclined to weave across the road instead of following it straight
at times, and just like a good union-management dispute, I need a cooling
off period. There are times when I just can't think rationally and it's
no use trying-- the best I can do is to postpone making a decision until
I have cooled down-- and of course by writing to you daily I inflict
the uncooled moments on you a good deal too often. As miserable as I am
tonight when I think of those six months apart that we have ahead of us,
I'm terribly glad that we both agreed on the matter separately. And your
letter was wise and sensible and it meant a great deal to me. When I am
in Philly next week I expect to drag the matter out across the living room
floor for a while since it has never been discussed yet in my presence,
but I intend to do it without heat or emotion, and altho I have very little
hope of converting them, at least I'll have the satisfaction of knowing
Why they object, and the satisfaction of having them admit to what I think
is slavish devotion to "propriety". I am very much afraid that the impasse
of which you speak is going to come sooner or later; it won't come over
this issue since we have decided that it will not, but I think it is in
the offing and I will be sincerely sorry if it does come to that. I only
hope that you and I will profit by others' mistakes and that 25 years from
now if we are faced with the same dilemma in some other form, one of us
will have the sense to go back to our youth and remember our own resentment
and most of all, that it won't even be necessary to do that-- that after
raising our family to the best of our ability, we will have sufficient
faith in their own judgement to let them very much alone in matters of the
heart. I will probably care very much for the first 12 years if Vic jr.
washes behind his ears, but by the time he is 16 or 18 he will be a ration-
al human being in his own right and the choices he makes then will have to
be his own profit or loss. Similarly with Susie or whatever she will be--
and I hope that 25 years will not dull this present pain so much that we
will have lost sight of it. Needless to say, I love you very much, but I
loved you just twice that much for your letter. No tears, either, honey--
I had enuff of those when I thought it over last "ednesday and I think it
just adds up to feeling sorry for myself so I have abandoned that tack.
Henceforth I will only cry when you must leave me, and if that must be at
all again, then let it be only once... Nights were not made for weeping
but for sleeping.. and if you are tired enuff you do sleep.

And wot did I do all the live-long day, my little wee croonin' do'o?
The Brothers Karamazov, of course, and besides the other gems that I have
noted for the thesis, I found one apt phrase which I pass on to you-- youth
must concern itself with the eternal questions.. Dosty meant, in this case,
immortality, and I stopped to think how much that question perplexed me
four years ago when I first came away to school and how night after night
we used to hold forth on it in the Eliot library, with great earnestness
and dismay. I have, like Ivan, stopped being dismayed about it altho I
never resolved the matter to my complete satisfaction and I am content now
to think that it is unresolvable by the human mind and that there are
mundane matters of greater import to puzzle over. But I am still always
ripe for a good philosophical discussion tho I wax more cynical than Iusta
... tonight, Janie, Joan, Mack and I escaped the Cabot formal dance fest-
ivities by retreating to Joanie's uncle's home in Belmont. Unk is Talcott
Parsons, prof of sociology at Harvard. He has a channng wife, and three
wonderful kids, ages 9, 12. and 14. We studied a good bit, listened to
symphony which was Beethoven's Emperor concerto, tended the fire, and drank

T-4 Victor Kumin, 31469239
SED. P.O. Box 180, Santa Fe, N. M.

Sunday

Darling: Let me struggle up out of the slough of despond long enuff
to write to you and to live quite half-heartedly for tomorrow which is
another day and mayhap a brighter one tho I don't know why it should be.
My mind lets go a thousand things I might think of to tell you and yet
so little happens either exteriorally or in the mind that days begin to
look quite like each other and the Lord's day very little from the day
that preceded it. I know that it is mostly becuz I am tired that I am de-
pressed and I know full well that I oughta go to bed and simply not write
to you tonight; then you would be spared a small frown or several when
you read this, but stubbornly enuff, I do not. Tomorrow night, tho, Mack
and I are going to see Bertie Lawrence and Raymond Massey in Pygmalion,
and that should certainly be something to look forward to. It might even
give me thru another abominable afternoon in the geol lab which I have
learned to hate with a passion. And at 5 this afternoon I climbed out of
my thinking clothes into more socially amenable ones to trot over to Cleve-
land house where the 14 odd assorted freshmen that Student Govt. blandly
handed over to me as little sisters were having a Christmas party. It was
cocoa and cookies and a lot of Christmas carolling which was rather nice.
There is one little girl in particular-- Adrienne Desjardins-- who is more
than bright and pleasant and pretty. They are all thoroughly nice kids;
Mr. and Mrs. Cleveland joined the festivities; the former with his resonan-
bass and the latter with her quavering soprano and the rest of us some-
where in between but unmistakably hearty. I don't know why freshmen seem
so young to me now. I don't mean at all to be condescending! But I have
forgotten that phase of my yesterdays, anyway.

I am still struggling over the same sonnet I mentioned to you long
ago, and it is getting along no better altho I put it away for several days
in hopes that I might do better by it now. It would be fun not to do any-
thing else but cultivate the Poetic- not to study or to work, but just to
seek the Muse. How to become A Hopeless Introvert in one lesson, I think.
It's just as well... and I am afraid that there is less poetry in my soul
than I care to believe.

We did pore over the crossword this morning for a bit but we are all
hopelessly rusty and we didn't make out too well. I noted in the NYTrib
a Jensen ad for a goldilipstick, priced at 200 dollars. The incon-
gruity of it in this hungry world of ours makes me seethe, all too passive-
ly. Saks will advertise Russian sables at 5000 bucks and the whole Nero-id
upper strata will go right on fiddling. Today, tho, the Chinese situation
looks a little more hopeful- tho Truman certainly waited long enough. It's
sortof I don't want to set the world on fire-- but I can't spare any fire-
men until I am in danger of getting burnt.

But tomorrow, believe me, I will find a shining lining and mail it to
you. And sunny or grey, I love you always, my darling,

MAY

AIR MAIL

T-4 Victor Kumin, 31469239
SED, P.O. Box 180, Santa Fe,
N. Mex.

acute. People would wonder indeed how two people can build on a
love that has practically been rushed and hounded out of breath.
Marcia's mother who is a wonderfully understanding sort of per-
son once told me that our generation had developed a unique
knack for living a lifetime in just a few days. I like to think
that we are mature and responsible enough to have done just that.
I've really known you all my life, haven't I? I've been close to
you and confided in you and been with you always. We've had to
live quickly because we've never had much time and always the
inexorable hand of the Army has been hanging over us. Someday
when we don't have to fight that anymore, we'll have the leisure
to begin slowly all over again to know each other, and I don't
think we'll find that we overlooked very much. It has a nice happy
magical way about it, our love, precisely because it doesn't make
the best common sense in the world. I don't feel the least bit
logical about it and I don't think it is any place for logic...

I guess I rather abandoned the dissertation on culture in the
middle of it. So don't hold off any longer-- I know you didn't--
and I'll hold my peace till you've gotten started. Which I hope
will be next letter.

Re: Grew-- ahhah-- awwwl gone, thank god. And where he is
now he can't do too much good but certainly less harm. Looks like
the state Diet. is in for some indian summer housecleaning which
will not be amiss. But what you say is very reasonable and temper-
ate and it's a good argument. Only I wonder, Vic, if we have saved
American lives with a conditional peace. That's something we can
only speculate about for the present.

¹his isn't very much of a letter, is it? I'm so darn sleepy I can just about blink awake enough to tell you about it. You know that all day every day wouldn't be long enough to write to you nor a direct wire to SF long enough to talk to you. I will have to be content, then with telling you what you already know and what I already know but which has as much new significance every day as the sunrise. I love you more dearly than anything else in life and I ask anything more from life than that love. Your letters are so very wonderful that I don't know which I love the more-- you or your letters. And February comes a little closer every day.

Jan. 13, 1946

Dear Vic,

Yes, we're really on our way. As a matter of fact, we've been underway for about two weeks and are due to hit Frisco in about ten days.

We're making one of those top speed Great Circle runs. Unfortunately our time has been lengthened by a stretch of bad weather the first week. But since then it has been comparatively smooth sailing. It was so bad that our New Year's dinner had to be saved for the following Sunday, as too few were in condition to eat it, let alone prepare it. However, it kept well enough and was enjoyed with no attention paid to the fact that it was delayed.

Of course I had my period of mal de mer, when it got rough, but then so did 80% of the ship, according to the doctor's estijate. That of course didn't make me feel any better.

We've got about 100 passengers, about a quarter of which are officers. We have the facilities, so it hasn't been particularly burdensome. It's quite different travelling during peacetime. Ports may be kept open and there's plenty of air with no fear of the fact that lights may be showing.

We've been eating extremely well, trying to finish up our excess supplies. Consequently, we have either steak, chicken, turkey, or the likes almost daily and ice cream every day.

I don't be anxious for any big meals, when we get in. All I'm interested in is a glass of milk, a salad and some fresh fruit. I don't care if I don't see a piece of meat again for a month.

We're now going through that period of "first". I slept under a blanket for the first time in 20 months and it felt like a laed plate.. Previously, if it ever got cool enough for anything, we just pull up the bedspread.

We're also beginning to pick up radio broadcast on the long wave band direct from the states

Commerical advertising is strange to us. The only
a dvertising we ever heard was " Remember, fellows,
a Rubber before and a Pro after", and"V.D.M.T."
I guess we won't be hearing that anymore.

The day before yesterday we began wearing
ties to meals. That was the queerest part of all.
At first that cumbersome string around the neck
felt like a rope. Even now, nearly everyone takes
his tie off as soon as he leaves the wardroom.

Although it isn't definite as to what's
going to happen, it looks as though the ship will
be put out of commission in San Francisco and I'll
be held till sometime late in February. I don't
suppose I should object to that. I've never seen the
place.

Naturally, everyone aboard is eagerly
anticipating the first look at the states in a long
while. It's more than a year and a half for those
of us who put the ship into commission. We also
look forward to plenty of mail, since we
haven't had any in the last seven weeks.

As for myself, it's going to take plenty to
ever get me to go to sea again. I've had enough.

And what of you? With your love to keep you
warm, I suppose that you spend your free time skiing.
I'm not familiar as to how the discharge system
works, but maybe I'll be able to route myself via
Santa Fe and stop a bit on my way back, sometime
during the end of next month or the first of March.
There's still a little time. Mail service will
now be much more satisfactory.

11 Windsor Avenue
Westmount, Quebec

18 January, 1946

Dear Vic:

How is the nearest and dearest of bastard
room-mates? Should have written long ago, as I
felt genuinely impelled to congratulate you ---
but you know how it is!

Was (1) surprised to hear that you bit
the dust (2) sorry that I came so close to seeing
you but didn't (3) glad that you were so fortunate
in your choice of a long-term female. Always thought
your fussiness about women, which amounted almost
to cynical misogyny would keep you a bachelor for
years more, but having met Max I can understand.
She is indeed a fine gal. I met her very briefly
one evening when I was almost too fagged to speak
two consecutive words, and was impressed. Spoke
to your mother --- what with previous commitments
I didn't have a chance to get out to Brookline to
see her as I should have liked to. Saw Bob Frankel,
who seems quite chipper --- had a pleasant little
bull session with him. Also saw Mark Linenthal ---
same old Mark, despite being shot down and POW'd
for a while. Spent a bit of time with my kid brother,
Rick, and saw the Littles, Jim Healy and sundry others.
Had some good and some bad luck --- they gave me an
additional credit, thus taking care of my A.B., and
saving me time and shekels. However, the B. School,
with between 4 and 5,000 applications for 280 openings,
said "No!", and when I dropped in in person were kind
enough to say that there was nothing wrong with my
record (that an odd "A" wouldn't have helped) and that
they were very sorry, and if I wanted to I could
try again next Oct. I sincerely expect to endow a
chair of economics at Arkansas Agricultural College
with my first million! Take it back --- my second!

Your letter arrived after I returned from
New York and Cambridge, so there was little in it
that I didn't already know about. As for my more
recent doings --- spent their best part of the holiday
season (including New Year's Eve) in bed with the
flu. Have been taking flying lessons myself --- just
have 5 hours 15 min so far --- cold as a witch's
tit --- was flying in 15 below morning before last.
They use Tiger Moths (deHavilland) which are old
biplanes that land at 45 and cruise about 30 miles
faster. Joined a local flying club --- in fact, have
become a regular joiner ---Airforce Vets (Canadian

Legion branch), Airforce Officers' Club, Board of
Trade (they run the flying club, you see). Club has
four Months in various states of serviceability, but
we haven't gotten out yet --- all ground lectures,
etc. so far. Worth belonging to, though, as the
Canadian gov't isn't doing anything to encourage
private flying and only through organizations like
this does one have a chance for a small field, hangars,
etc. not to mention low rates. Meanwhile, my lessons
at the regular airport cost $14 per hour, with the
club giving me a rebate (in future free time) of
a couple of bucks.

Have also started music lessons with my girlfriend,
who is quite good (at music), and have been spending
afternoons in pursuit of business knowledge at
a stockbroking's outfit on St. James St. (Montreal's
Wall Street). Managed to wangle my way into the
Exchange and Curb market. All worthwhile knowing
from the viewpoint of future business dealings.
Actually, I believe I'll be going to work in New
York with a large cleaning outfit (largest on the
continent) next month --- work in various departments
there and then come up here to compare with ours.
That will continue until I get into Columbia, Wharton,
Chicago, N.Y.U. or one of other B. Schools to which
I have written. It's something I had to do either
before or after B. School, so it might just as well
be before.

Regarding the eternal quail --- have been doing
pretty well. Am trying to modify my tactics --- I
want to get back to the stage where rape does not
occur on the first date. Have more women than I know
what to do with, and am weeding them out most heartlessly
--- that probably sounds shittily conceited, but it's
the truth. This girlfriend who's giving me the piano
lessons is one I've gone out with for about 9 years,
and she has me bothered. She'd make me an ideal wife,
and yet I don't especially feel like getting married,
or rather, I don't see how I possibly could, and she
being only 9 months younger than I, will be snatched
up before I get economically settled. She's not beau-
tiful, but is damned attractive, has a terrific person-
ality, is extremely clever (but doesn't act at all
intellectual), and is thoroughly nice. Why she goes
out with me at all I'll never know --- in my effort
to avoid getting worked up into a romantic froth
I often act like a clod, and she almost makes love
to me. She's the only gal I know with whom I can enjoy
just necking --- that is, more often than mere curiosity
demands. Of course, she's a terrific flirt, and probably
acts the same with more than just myself --- she's

almost too popular (dated about six days of every
week), and has turned down at least several serious
proposals. If her old man were a millionaire I'd
probably marry her tomorrow --- that isn't as
disgusting as it sounds --- I'm thinking purely in
terms of security for her, etc. Oh well, I'll
undoubtedly end up kicking around for another couple
of years. There are enough wenches around to satisfy
my libido, ego and occasionally, my intellect. What
with spending my allowance and war savings on flying,
I've started a "Take Benson Out" club among some of
the more understanding types, and already have
a few promises of dinner, movies etc. from the gals.
For a while, between late dates and early flying lessons
I could hardly tell a vagina from a ball-bank indicator.

In summation, I'm enjoying a relatively useless
existence at the moment, and feel the need of something
more constructive and permanent in the immediate
future.

How are things with you, Vic? Let's have some
late gen. At least I'll no longer have to ask you
if you've been good!

CLASS OF SERVICE

This is a full-rate
Telegram or Cable-
gram unless its de-
ferred character is in-
dicated by a suitable
symbol above or pre-
ceding the address.

WESTERN
UNION

A. N. WILLIAMS
PRESIDENT

1201

<table>
   <thead>
    <tr>
     <td colspan="2">SYMBOLS</td>
    </tr>
   </thead>
   <tbody>
    <tr>
     <td>DL</td>
     <td>= Day Letter</td>
    </tr>
    <tr>
     <td>NL</td>
     <td>= Night Letter</td>
    </tr>
    <tr>
     <td>LC</td>
     <td>= Deferred Cable</td>
    </tr>
    <tr>
     <td>NLT</td>
     <td>= Cable Night Letter</td>
    </tr>
    <tr>
     <td colspan="2">Ship Radiogram</td>
    </tr>
   </tbody>
  </table>

843A

The filing time shown in the date line on telegrams and day letters is STANDARD TIME at point of origin. Time of receipt is STANDARD TIME at point of destination

SF9 NL PD=TDB CAMBRIDGE MASS 18

SGT VICTOR KUMIN=

31469239 SED FIRST OFFICE BOX 180=

JAN 19 A.M.

DARLING SUSPECT SOMETHING COOKING FROM WEDNESDAY ATTEMPT
DO YOU WANT TO CALL WILL WAIT SATURDAY NIGHT YES EVEN
AFTER TEN IS OK LOVE=

MAX..

THE COMPANY WILL APPRECIATE SUGGESTIONS FROM ITS PATRONS CONCERNING ITS SERVICE

T-4 Victor Kumin, 31469239
SEO, P.O. Box 180,
Santa Fe, New Mexico.

T-4 Victor Kumin, 31469239
SED, P.O Box 180,
Santa Fe, New Mexico.

<table><tr><td>THIS SIDE OF CARD IS FOR ADDRESS</td></tr></table>

<table><tr><td>BUY U.S. SAVINGS BANKS</td></tr><tr><td>ASK YOUR POSTMASTER</td></tr></table>

YOU DID VERY WELL MAXINE. HEC.

3 CENTS 3

THOMAS
1804-1869

UNITED
STATES
POSTAGE

T-4 Victor Kumin, 31469239
SED P.O. Box 180
Santa Fe, New Mexico

T-4 Victor Kumin, 31469239

SED. P.O. Box 180

Santa Fe, New Mexico

T-4 Victor Kumin 31469239
SED P.O. BOX 180.
Santa Fe New Mexico

T-4 Victor Kumin, 31469239
SEO, P.O. Box 180
Santa Fe, New Mexico.

CLASS OF SERVICE

This is a full-rate
Telegram or Cable-
gram unless its de-
ferred character is indi-
dicated by a suitable
symbol above or pre-
ceding the address.

WESTERN
UNION

116P

A. N. WILLIAMS
PRESIDENT

<table>
  <tr>
    <td>SYMBOLS</td>
  </tr>
  <tr>
    <td>DL=Day Letter</td>
  </tr>
  <tr>
    <td>NL=Night Letter</td>
  </tr>
  <tr>
    <td>LC=Deferred Cable</td>
  </tr>
  <tr>
    <td>NLT=Cable Night Letter</td>
  </tr>
  <tr>
    <td>Ship Radiogram</td>
  </tr>
</table>

SF 38 8=WOODSHOLE MASS 11 239P

T/5 VICTOR KUMIN 31469239=

SPECIAL ENGR DET PO BOX 180

FEB 11 A.M.

OFFER IN THE MAIL AT 225 PEA MONTH=

PAUL M FYE

225 FYE

T-4 Victor Kumin, 31469239
S.E.D., P.O. Box 180,
Santa Fe, New Mexico.

into it again someday.

Have the funniest feeling about the old crowd- I see so much of them, of Murray and Bert and Don and Bob and everybuddy else who has come back... I feel two ways about it, and becuz I am a little transparent fool I am telling you this. One half is feeling as the eternal woman always, ti seems, must, desirable and wanting to be that way, at least a little bit; the other half is feeling so secure with you behind me and so happy in and with you that I can be natural and gay and honest with all the fellows and enjoy their company doubly this way. I can play no more games, darling, becuz you and I are grown up now-- you have been for some time, and I am just beginning, and becuz of all the other little reasons why people go getting engaged, namely, becuz we are in love. Partly, true, I miss playing games, but it does not haunt me becuz I have heard a dozen other engaged girls say that same thing. I think it is the eternal female who is afirad she is missing something. But becuz seeing these other guys with whom I once had some emotional ties only confirms again and again that you are a Supreme Being, I can be glad about it, and not perplexed. You see, as long as I can end up with the positive and never with the negative, I grow more and more secure in you, and not less so. I think, altho traditionally I always feel a little as tho I shouldn't be having beers and lunch and so on with this one and that one..

Flash of the day-I yam dropping Ec 81. In view of what I said last night, this must sound like defeatism, but leave us be sensible enuff to know when we are beyond our depth. I can't take that course without at least one preliminary course in ec which I have not had- and anyone taking the seconf half ought to have the first, anyway.

Soooo I went to see about getting into A-2 after all, and was delighted to find that instead of Kemptom, Guerard is back from la armee and giving a section of it. I spoke to him about it and don't know if he'll let me in or not as they are terribly overcrowded and conducted a competition in short stories to admit the 25 they have signed to date. However, he did put my name down on the role conditionally and I hafta hand him a paper on Thurs after which he will consider the matter. He is good, baby, and I would like so much to know if freshman stories were just a flash in the pan with no serious foundation or IF I can do it and make something of it. I don't particularly want to write short stories, but I shall try, if I can get in.. and if I don't get in- then I will have to hie me to a hist or eng or french course at a verra late date.

No mo Mo- poor Mo-- I know what Mo needs-- a good woman to captivate his interest and make a decent clean human being out of him. Not that I really think such is the power of a woman... but it's wot people traditionally say and tonite I yam a traditionalist.

Dream- je ne sais pas!!! horseback riding, yes, you know wot that means-- the shoes-- stamping them on-- I have only a lewdly analytical mind and I can only draw lewdly analytical conclusions..but you- or any other man- would look funny with four- tho it might be the answer to a verrry capable woman's prayer! Hokay- hit me over the head! and the stirrup- some physiological incompatibility, maybe-- which wasn't serious since you so matter-of-factly put it to rights. This is surely all wrong, tho. But I had a fine one- a simple one to analyse- all last night I was flying- between Mack and Joan who were teaching me how- see it's easy! they said- and by gorry, it was easy- and in no time at all, I could fly as easily as a bird. It was like swimming, all the different strokes, crawl, back, side, etc-- only instead of swimming thru water we were swimming thru air. It was terrific- and then, (blush) you and I were flying together- soaring like birds.

Somehow Herb and Margy and Pug got in there too but I can't remember
in what connection.

Re: your letter facing four more months of army, and why: I know. I
sympathize. But it is spilled milk, honey, and warming it over won't
help any. All we can do now is try to plan on the earliest possible dis-
charge date, which you say is May 1st, but I rather tho't would be the
17th, one month previous to Tech's summer session. And that is not too
bad. I'm really glad you've decided not to stay on at the project as a
civilian. I could rationalise and say I am glad you are not here this
term to make things difficult for both of us to get thru our last few
months of enforced celibacy and collitch and thesis and orals and such-
but I would be a damn liar. Spring would have been fun together, darling,
but there will be yet another spring and that will be infinitely more fun.
And I don't mind the ups and downs- I am an up and down gal myself, far
more so than you. I think too that we profit every day from the things we
learn even if they are only painful things about how we might have gotten
out and didn't. If it is to be May- well it's only two months and a little
away, and that will be good. Woods Hole I sadly fear as I think you realise,
is not going to materialise. I only hope you'll get into grad school at
MIT now that you're pretty sure about wanting to go, but I know too that
it is a tough proposition and a lot of tech grads have already been turned
down, so honey , let's start thinking about second plans in case the orig-
inal ones fall thru. I am sniffing cautiously around for an apt as of June,
looking for nice people who will be leaving them, and perhaps there is
hope somewhere we shall see.

waal snooky, time to hit the hay- slate, too late, and ah is bushes.
I love you, yes I do, and tonight (on one tomato juice) I want you too.

XXXXX

T-4 Victor Kumin, 31469239
SED PO BOX 180
Santa Fe, New Mexico

Wednes

'Ello' oneee-- gee you must get tired of hearing me tell you how
tired I am alla time, allatime, but then I mostly am, but it is
good for something-- good for keeping busy and staying content,
or a reasonable fascimile thereof. I'm low on sleep, poddon, I
mean sack time, that's why. Mental exertion?? Wall, I wrote or
rather rerewrote a short sotry which I must deliver at death's
(Guerard's door tomorrow and then pray he will see the light.
It isn't much; it isn't quite good, but it takes a huuLuva lot
of pen-chewing to get it done. I am reading a book called "Gen-
eration of Vipers" by Philip Wylie, and I will tell you absol-
utely no more about it till I am thru. That is a form of self-
abnegation, baby, but you know how enthused I am likely to get
over something that I think is a goodthing. Well, I will hold
off for at least another day... spent most of the afternoon and
a good part of the evening trying to be of some help to poor
Macko- god, darling, you should just see the tables that go into
that thesis! Would you like to hear all about it? I think it is
terribly interesting; perhaps if Mack ever gets thru it, she can
sit down and writeyou about it. But right now she is completely
sunko behind Monroe calc and adding machine and thousand's of
peices of graph paper with mountains of forbidding little figures
on them which are checks, cross-checks, percentages and totals.
Certainly no two undergrad theses could be more different than
ours... mine so ethereal and impractical, Mack's all hard-headed
facts. Then too Janie is with us today and we have been trying to
help her go thru four years' accumulation of material possessions
which range from aVD poster (which we fouhgt for!) to a ougie
board which we really think she ouhgt to take with her.

No mail except a tibit from Dolly- they spent a day at Hileah which
is my idea of a complete waste of time, and appropriately lost some
money like most of the damn fool suckers. They are apparently
quite bored with Fla. parasitology and anxious to get back to the
exigencies of Philly (parasitology.) In wan lump som, wot I think
of both. Well, I don't really, but tonight I am too lazy to differ-
entiate... Had a pc from Mom as well from something springs, Fla,
and seems to indicate that they are en route home, tho she didn't
specifically say so.

Wish you could hear the smoko discush right now- there are six of
us powwowing in here-- and topic for the day is-- bosoms... it's
good, baby, but it lacks your trenchant comments...

mad stark raving mad

no i cant i cant write you a coherent letter tonight, tomorrow i
will, but leave us not lose sight of the fact, that my darling dar-
leeng i loff you, i do so much much much - hunerds and tousans of
kisses, they are ethereal I know but wait till the day of reck-
oning, how many kisses do you think people can kiss in the course
of a lifetime, i wonder--

May

T-4 Victor Kumin, 31469239
5ED P.O. Box 180
Santa Fe, New Mexico

Old St V day

Darling darling: what a glorious day you did turn out to be! Spring,
pseudo tho it may be, is here, with that malicious high March wind
circling skirts, insinuating itself in the hair, blinding everything to
smithereens and me into a high flown good humor. I love to walk in
it, it's so fresh and so grey. And altho it is a thoroughly grey day,
this is not a grey mood.

Your good news this morning is so beautifully encouraging and I'm
having the devil of a time with the psyche which had a rough enuff
time getting attuned to the sad fact that you would not come hom un-
til June.. now that it looks so much like that is going to be reversed
there is just no holding the psyche. The sheer thought of your smiling
face, my darling Vic, - ah to have and to hold, snooky ah loff you.
Now shall I try diverse means of incantation to contact the spirits
above, the spirit of heavenly pity and love, or whatever It is that
does such good and evil as tho blindly. Fingers, toes and teeth cross-
ed against the day of reckoning in Dallas, isn't it? oh may they see
fit and if they do may their bed above be aisy... here's to it, honeee,
it was that last drink to OOT that did it!

Not only that, but Guerard has condescended and I is in England A-2
as of today tho I shifted on an uneasy two feet for fifteen minutes
while he read the paper I handed in without a single change of express-
ion, not so much as an eyelid or a hairsbreadth or something-- and then
wearily said that he guessed it was all right.

Saw Perk over coffee a little while ago, he can be such a dearsweet
man when he tries. All is in order altho I don't suppose it'll ever learn
how to make transitions from pgh to pgh. By the time you get back, darl-
ing, thesis will be over and done with, courses will have settled down
to a nice slow tempo, weekends run from Thurs noon- oops, at 3- to
Tues ayem at 11, a fabulous schedule, isn't it? It will be spring, dare
we think of spring in Cambridge- oh god, it all sounds so good, too
good to be real. Now we have got to sit tight and wait and be prepared-
ouch- for disappointments. I will call Edy tonight and pass on the word,
tempered with ifs and maybes, but won't bother to tell the folks until
it's a sure thing.

Poor Janie is desperately trying to get things in order amid nostal-
gic breakdowns and much tears over leaving the alma mater... god knows
we hate to see her go; it won't be the same without her, and she is at
the stage now where she really doesn't want to go at all. I know how she
feels, as I can picture Macko's and my reaction in June on that last dread-
ful day when it is really all over forever. Despite the many times we
have reviled it and longed to get away-- it has been a good life.

When you do get back there will be so many things for us to do and
unfortunately so many many things to plan and decide. That I don't look
forward to any more than I do to spending amiserable week in Philly over
Easter being dragged from shop to shop; oh well, at least I shall get a
new pair of dungarees in my trousseau..

Soo baby, just buzz me oncet, be it South Station, the airport,
greyhound bus, or the post office (third class), aboot a month and a
little from now--- and I might just happen to be there. It will be a
great day. I am almost praying that everything will go well, but it
is awfully hard to type with crossed fingers. Here's looking at it-- and
at us, glory be. lovelovelovelove

but mucho-

T-4 Victor Kumia, 3/469239
SED P.O. Box 180
Santa Fe, New Mexico.

THOMAS
1801-1809

Frydey

M'darlin': Today I got a candle which I can't burn at both its ends
becuz it is an endless candle, but it's such a purty one I couldn't
bear to burn it anyhow. Except I am thinking of combining it with a
little incense and an ikon (haven't got a luminous statue of you know
who or might try that) and seeing wot the efficacy of prayer will do
for us. I also got a lovely Valentine from someone called T. Bear, no
doubt the same T. Bear who grew stout from lack of exercise and fell
out the window only to meet the King of France. Tut tut, and nasty fall!
Thank you darling, for both, Valentine's day is a very nice day, but then
every day will be Valentine's day for us...

From thee also the letter before the Flash Flash letter, telling
about your skiing weekend. I am so anxious to learn, baby-- next winter
vacation we will really go, won't we? Sounds like you had a terrific time
and I'm very glad- I envy you, I wish I knew how!

Called Edy last night and told her about the "might" get out
of next month and she was delighted. Mean to try to get over there one day
next week, would certainly like to. And meanwhile await more news of us
impatiently- the next two weeks will seem like a mountain of days...

Had dinner at Winthrop with Casey and afterwards sat around his
room which he shares with a pleasant Irish charcter named Dougherty with
red hair. Pudgy and pleasant. Their suite is really a beauty and they have
shown the most discriminate of boyish taste in furnishing it-- very slick.
Full of air copps, tho, which they both were, and of soft couches and
deep chairs and a full green rug and pictures and a fire in the fireplace.
It is a good atmosphere for a seduction.

Tuhday, wot did I do-- waal, ye these mostly, and the first few
pages of what I hope will turn out to be a whopper of a story. Joanie and
I turned records and worked quietly most of the even, me over the story,
she over the Brothers K, which has shaken her considerably, as much as it
shook me the first time I read it. We talked about it a great deal. There
are three chapters in it that I would somehow like to read aloud to you.
It is because I am tired of thinking them thru myself and want to unset-
le you, too. That is why I want you to read Phillip Wylie too - because
he is unsettling and nauseating and searing. It's not a good book, never
sold too well, but it has no popular appeal, becuz it is anything but es-
capist. It hits out wildly at everything, everybody- every American inst-
itution, every convention we own- and like Hardy, it leqves you right
there, solutionless and limp. I don't like getting limp by myself. So
hurry home, honee, and les get unsettled together...

Prices are on the way oop with wages, inevitable eventually I think,
with the nation in this state, anyway. Glad to see Bowles at the reins
now but I'am afraid that like all god men, like Wallace, he will be ham-
strung by the old dealers and finish by quitting in disgust like Ickes.
We shall see.

Don't know why these letters of mine seem to be getting more inane
and briefer every day- i think it's just the waiting for a break soon and
thinking that perhaps soon, mebbe not tomorrow, but soon, there will be an
end to letters and a beginning to words. The days have a way of slipping
by, engrossed in their own little problems and doings which sometimes seem
almost too petty to pour out to you, darling. Janie got off this marnin'
in a taxi to South Station with Mack and Joan and I lugging her bags out
to the cab and clutching her and each other with large large tears while
poor Jane wept buckets. We were really too sad to eat any breakfast and
that is pretty sad. Well, no eulogies, no nostalgia- but all the same we

will miss her so much. We gave her a going-away present-- two pairs of reliable and not very pretty stockings, and two pairs of snuggies. I bet you don't know what they are, do you?? They are woolen underpants with long legs that come down almost to the knees and they are every bobbysoxing college gal's prized winter habit. We don't know how cold it will be in Munich, but we just thought they might come in handy. And we stood there waving them unwrapped in the middle of Walker Street, too distraught to think of putting them in one of her suitcases, weakly hugging Janie goodbye, wishing her all the best. It was not a very careful goodbye. I know why you hate them so. They ache all over.

We bumped into Bob last night when we were all walking to the square where we took Janie to dinner at the Chinese restaurant and he sends you his warmest hell and sez write. I practically sed tough! but I didn't. How's Jeannie... oh fine... exams coming up next week, nawthin new---

"Our pseudo-spring has vanished. A blizzardy snow came up out of a huge black cloud in the west today and blanketed us over. It has stopped, but the wind has come up instead and the thermometer gone down with a violent thud. It was so windy this afternoon that walking was really a hazard. It about turns you upside down; we will not discuss what it does to the hair."

I have my eye on a print in Olssens-- Henri Rousseau's Sleeping Gypsy-- you know the one of the gypsy lying prone with the lion standing over him in the middle of the desert. You know what will happen. Dolly says I am a tightwad but I willingly spend three dollars on that for no reason at all and another two having it framed-- and then I am afraid that you won't enjoy looking at it. It's not profound, it's very primitive, good color..

Well, snooky, ah's just about all wrote out, between thesis and story and a late letter to you. Am leaping on the mail every day now, hoping for good news and fully expecting the worst, so there! Hector was in rare form this afternoon-- insisted on making me open your pacakge so's he cud see what it was. He looked a little puzzled. But he is such a beneficent postman! And his pictures are terrific.

I am replacing the vision of a winter weekend for the present with that of a summer week; of sun and nudity and water and you. And clean sheets and a large bed and feeling your arms around me... god. this will never do. darling darling come back to earth; until we can soar together-- i love you, my sweet, and send you a warm kiss on the wings of a cold northwest wind.. goodnight, sweetheart.

May

T-4 Victor Kumin. 31469239
SED. P.O. Box 180,
Santa Fe, New Mexico.

plan every inch of the way becuz I know that altho there will be evils
and abuses in any general system that is accepted, medical aid will
be extended to people who need it and get only the very lightfingered
touch of charity clinics, and becuz under socialised med, enuff bright
young things may get organised enuff to exert pressure for general health
programs and general research. At least 3 people die of cancer every year
to one who is crippled by polio, and yet the Dimes fund becuz it is
so well organised and becuz it has the magical touch of FDR, exceeds the
cancer foundation fund - the total is something like 6 times as great. No
argument for non-support of the March of Dimes-- but there is so much that
should be done and never will be.

Dept of deep thought-- I have just found out that I don't have to take
any final exams or go to any more classes or do anything but loaf after
approximately, the 10th of May. Once my orals are over, the only thing I
have to do is to appear at graduation exercises on the 5th of June. Don't
you think that is an awful waste of almost a month?? Haply think on it
a little bit.

And now anon to work, darling. Enclosed is a little offering that I
found in Oscar this morning, which indicates that some bright soul was
thinking of you- twaren't Mack Joan nor Me neither. Dunno WHO.

I love you baby, and I am a pretty slothful
lizard. Wouldn't you like to deliver a tirade on first things first?

XXX

Monday

Sweety: Your letters are such a blessed pick-me-up with their hail blithe
spirit note- a positive lilt and one capable of lilting me right out of
the gloom for quite a while. I'm so delighted that you're delighted about
Al's island; every time I let mahself think of it, good god- it is akin
to one's mouth watering at the aroma of a charcoal broiled steak. I won-
der a little about you're being a helpless male when it comes to living
with Nature. Aha incompatibility! I am an old woodsman from Watitoh days,
an ole camperouter, cookeroveropenfire, slleeper under gawds blanket of
stars, ~~more likely rain~~, with mice and squirrels running over your face
in the wee hours, and rain seeping downward in a sudden summer squall.
Nine years of camping taught me all of that, but not to be tolerant of
outdoor johns. There is a fundamental male-female reason for this; some-
day (when you're old enuff) I'll explain it to you.. I can see Dolly when
we break the news to her about our choice of honeymoon suite.. the cabin
would be her idea of exquisite agony, just as it is ours of bliss. I think
we had better take crossword puzzles and Schumpeter or at least Fitzgerald
providing you haven't read all of him by then, with us. May rain- and
just what can you do on a honeymoon when it rains? Write a 600 word theme
on that, I dare you.

Dollink, dollink, where in hell is that letter from the Hole? And baby, why can't you stay out of trouble for a change? You're a big boy now! But as long as it's only a staff sgt in the mps, it can't bee too bad. Well, here we go to the latrines again- or can't they do that to you?

Joanie and I both enjoyed your letter to her immensely. I would go so far
as to say that it is a masterpiece. I gather that you hadn't gotten her
tome to you re: James at the time that you wrote it. She also got seven
letters from KC today after a week's famine, and the glow is carrying over
even to me. I go thru whole days feeling completely happy about the whole
thing, and it's all becuz of you. It's such a wonderful change from the
old melancholia and unstable waverings. Gone is the id, born is the new
heart, and it has so much to live for. Now if we could only start living
it...

The story I have been struggling over and knocking myself out about for
some days now has ingloriously flopped. I drug it across the smoko in an
audience to little P and Elaine Limpert- the latter whom I don't think you
met, is a damn nice gal from Brooklyn, creatively and dramatically inclined
with a nice sense of humor and a grotesque sense of the dramatic. I've nev-
er felt so frustrated and balked in my life as over this stupid little
piece of pen exercise; so we started thinking up endings for it and got
completely hysterical over the most fantastic crises. Elaine and I to-
gether might turn out a credible knowledge-- she supplies the action and
character development; I will do the descriptions and analyses. We tho't
we'd write it this summer, honeee. You won't mind an extry woman around
the house, will you? If she is as much fun in bed as she does otherwise,
she's gwina make some lucky duck a remarkable wife someday.

But nevertheless, I feel mopey about the sag in my creative ability. The
nadir- today. Maybe I had better go back to poetry. Sometimes I think I am
just fooling myself; if it's in you, it ought to show itself without all
this agonising. But then some great author, damn and I've forgotten who
so this will necessarily sound vague, wrote only 350 words a month- or mebb
e less than that, and each word was forged in the crucible of inner fire.
It isn't the words I have trouble with- only the plot. Situations are so
easy to cook up and get yourself into and then so damnably inextricable!

Had a nice letter from the Roscoe things haven't gone too easily lately.
Mike's mother has been in the hospital and Roscoe had to leave her job for
two weeks to look after things, which they doubtless could ill afford.

T-4 Victor Kumin, 31469239
SED. P.O. Box 180,
Santa Fe, New Mexico.

3 CENTS 3

THOMAS
JEFFERSON
1801-1809

UNITED
STATES
POSTAGE

T-4 Victor Kumin, 31469239
SED P.O. Box 180
Santa Fe, N. M.

18 FEBRUARY 46

BQN FLD P.R.

DEAR MAX:

TAKING TIME OFF FROM "SO WELL REMEMBERED" TO ANSWER YOURS
OF THE 11TH. ALSO TO THANK YOU MOST PROFUSELY FOR THE LOVELY
VALENTINE. I HAD THOUGHT OF SENDING YOU ONE BUT THAT COUPLED
WITH THE THOUGHT OF MAKING BOTH VIC AND NAT JEALOUS MADE ME
HESITATE UNTIL TOO LATE, (SOME BULL - ISNT IT?) ANYWAY YOU
KNOW THAT OURS IS A LOVE THAT DOESN'T BEAR EXPRESSION BY
MATERIAL THINGS OR SEASONAL GREETINGS.

YOUR WORD FOR BOBBIE WILLIS CAME SOME HOUR OR SO AFTER
MY SEEING HIM OFF FOR THE STATES. HOWEVER HE PROMISED TO CAON-
TACT NAT IN MIAMI AND I FOREWARDED THE INFORMATION TO HER TO
BE DELIVERED TO HIM. AM AWFULLY GLAD CAUSE HE'S SUCH A FINE
FELLOW AND EXCELLENT PILOT.

DOUBTLESS YOU'VE HEARD BY NOW THAT MY APPLICATION FOR
DISCHARGE WAS REFUSED IN WASHINGTON. IT MADE ME FEEL PRETTY LOW
AT FIRST BUT BY NOW I'M RECONCILED TO IT. SINCE YOU ONLY GET
A FORM LETTER OF THE REFUSAL IT LEAVES MANY QUESTIONS UN-ANS-
WERED SINCE IT WAS APPROVED BY TWO HEADQUARTERS BEFORE REACH-
ING WASHINGTON. ALSO, AS IF IT MATTERED, THE COMMANDER IN CHIEF
IS ASKING FOR ALL KINDS OF HOUSING IN THE NEAR FUTURE.

THE OFFICIAL NEWS OF THE F WINOKURS MOVING BACK TO 152 CAME
IN TWO LETTERS TODAY, FROM NAT AND MOTHER. BOTH SAID THEY THOUGHT
THE OTHER WOULD WRITE THE DETAILS SO I'M STILL IN THE DARK.
HOWEVER I HOPE TO GET MORE INFORMATION FROM NAT UPON REQUEST.
MOTHER ALSO FOREWARDED A LETTER TO HER AND POP FROM VIC. A
VERY NICE LETTER INDEED AND ENOUGH LIKE YOUR STYLE THAT I
BELIVE YOU TWO COULD GOHST-WRITE FOR EACH OTHER, IF THE NEED
EVER ARISES.

NOT SURPIRSED AT YOUR ONCOMING SORROW AT THE THOUGHT OF
LEAVING CAMBRIDGE. I TOO EXPERIENCED THE SAME SORT OF FEELING
PRIOR TO LEAVING ITHACA. HOWEVER THAT'S WHAT THEY HAVE CLASS
REUNIONS FOR, ALSO WHY THE MIND INVENTED A DEVICE CALLED
MEMORY.

CONTRARY TO WHAT YOU BELIEVE THE FOLKS WILL THINK, I THINK
YOUR HONEYMOON PLANS ARE EXCELLENT. WHAT BETTER WAY IS THERE
TO ACCOMPLISH THE EXACT PURPOSE OF THE VENTURE? ON THE
WAY THERE I'D TAKE A FEW DAYS OR SO IN NY JUST TO SEE THE BRIGHT
LIGHTS AND FEEL SPORTY.

NOT A THING NEW. THE CLUB HAD A FANCY DRESS PARTY THE OTHER
NIGHT AND WITH MASKS ON THESE JOKERS WERE ALMOST GENIAL. STILL
SPEND MOST OF MY SPARE TIME READING. SPARE, BECAUSE I HIT MOST
EVERY MOVIE THAT COMES THROUGH. STILL HAVE HOPES OF GETTING
HOME SOON BUT ITS TOO SOON TO GIVE DETAILS. HOWEVER, HERE'S
HOPING.

T-4 Victor Kumin, 31469239

SED., P.O. Box 180,

Santa Fe, New Mexico.

3 CENTS 3

JERFERSON
1804-1809

UNITED
STATES
POSTAGE

T-4 Victor Kumin, 31469239
S.E.D. P.O. Box 180
Santa Fe, New Mexico

AIR MAIL

58 Cabot Hall

February 22, 1946

Dear Vic,

Your long and interesting letter deserved an equally long
if not as entertaining answer. So I've waited until this day
of comparative rest to settle down and write you a scorcher on
my beloved H. James. But I still love you, Vic, don't misunder-
stand me!

We seem to disagree on the most fundamental question of all,
which puts rather a hopeless veil over trying to convert you to
my idol, but ever the reformer, I carry on despite overwhelming
odds. By the end of this discussion you will probably be of the
opinion of the Helen Hokinson lady who returned her book to the
librarian with the remark that "Well, if you really must know,
Henry James isn't worth a forty-seven cent fine". So it goes -
Anywho, to plunge in at once, I, like Max, believe that the
dramatization of the eternal struggle between good and evil is
not something common-place at all, but a very realistic and ever
present thing in the minds of many. To be perfectly frank, I have
faced the very same thing myself in a situation which I understand
from Max you know all about, so I needn't elaborate any further.
The consciousness of evil in the world may indeed seem too obvious
to warrant discussion, but the beauty, if it may be called that,
of both the problem and of James, is in the very multiplicity of
its manifestations. (Which sentence could do credit to M. James
at his worst, I suspect!) It is that multiplicity with which my
thesis is concerned. The Turn of the Screw is a bad story to
take as an example of James' works, because it is in so many
ways different from his greatest works. It is, however, the
climax of one phase of his portrayal of evil - his belief, whether
you wish to accept it or not, that the greatest moral evil of
the world is the domination of one soul over another, depriving
that person of all freedom of action and will. It is this dom-
nation, personified in the ghosts, which he seeks to portray. To
intensify the horror, he uses children as the innocent victims,
rather than adults as in his later novels. Your complaint of
James seems to be that he is too much beyond the world of reality
to carry much weight. That again is a matter of opinion, and
certainly yours is as valid as mine. I believe that through the
very presentation of his material and through his almost veil-
like style, he is seeking for the reality which lies beneath the
surface of mere actions. You will feel this even more strongly
if you read his other works, especially The Golden Bowl and The
Wings of the Dove. He is trying to get at the motives behind
men's deeds and explain the reasons for their actions and almost
for their very thoughts. He does not have the immense psycho-
logical panorama that Dostoyevsky has, nor his passion, but he has
something else which appeals to me even more than the crashing
discords of the great Russian. It is a kind of muted music which
seeks to hide the rough edges of evil and show only the faint
suggestion of it to the reader. To me this is very effective for
it serves to increase ten-fold the horror of this evil. The
realization that it exists is the more powerful because it creeps
up on you so to speak and builds up slowly until his beautifully
staged moment of crisis occurs in which all is revealed through