landlord who hates my ideas and keeps trying to make me pay for
damages etc. In Cornwall I was a different person, free and happy. I
lectured in London to a most enthusiastic audience (hundreds couldn't
get into the hall) and felt happy and useful. It is the exile in a strange
land of rain and cold and a foreign language that gets me down.
I keep hoping to have a lecture tour in U.S.A. when the war is
over... if it is over in time, for I was 60 the other day [October 17,
1943] and want to see U.S.A. before I am too old. Sadly enough I had
hoped to see my wife's first husband, Dr. Otto NeusHitter in Baltimore,
but he died the other day. I loved him and he loved me.
I still don't understand the Einstein affair. Pestilent rumours will not
or should not affect a man's attitude to truth. I find quite a few who
say: "Reich is right; one fears he has got the truth about psychology
and sex and cancer, but he spoils his case by saying controversial things
about rubber gloves and twinkling stars which scientists seize on and
then dismiss his fundamental and great discoveries as bunk." My friend
Prof. J. D. Bernal, the leading and most original scientist in Britain,
simply says that you haven't produced enough evidence of your dis
coveries. Haldane dismissed your Bione as "too unorthodox" which is
about the silliest thing a scientist could say. So that it isn't only a case
of Einstein. But knowing you as I do, I am convinced that you are
right and that in time you will be acknowledged as right.
Have you any connection with that magazine Sexology?* It reads
well and seems to be sound on fundamentals. But, oh, this sex business,
Reich! The logical result of S'hill freedom is of course sex freedom, but
I find of the parents only one, Zero, is ready to believe so. Parents of
boys, yes, but of girls, no. So that one cannot simply go far ahead of
public opinion. Martyrdom for a cause isn't good enough, for it destroys
other causes at the same time... i.e. the freedom from fear and
moulding in small children.
My new book deals with education, demanding that emotion must
come first, and that if emotion is free the intellect will look after itself.
I hope to write again soon.
All the best, Reich. I believe in you and hope to live long enough to
see the world do so also.
- ••
* An American journal, still published; it was one of the first to deal openly
and seriously with sexual issues.