Record of a Friendship

Forest Hills. New York
January 21, 1946
My dear Neill:
A few days ago I received a letter from Eastmond concerning
their plan to issue a periodical Work Democracy. Of course, I like their
idea and I said so. They can have all my support. But the danger is
that not working practically on sex-economic educational and social
problems, they may slip into ideological, or still worse, political talking
of the old type.
N ow I must take your time for something else that concerns not only
me, but everybody who is in touch with me and my work: a meeting
with a federal judge at the office of naturalization in Brooklyn. It
brought again to my consciousness something of which I have been
aware for a long time: that my life is swinging back and forth between
police actions on the one hand and honorary memberships and future
Nobel prizes on the other hand. It is a rather interesting, though
dangerous mixture.
When I received the document that conveys upon me the honorary
membership of the International Mark Twain Society, I felt like the
criminal Huckleberry Finn. I felt that I had done wrong in accepting
or receiving this document of honor, that the illustrious gathering of
well-known names on the letterhead would soon feel embarrassed about
this new and strange honorary member.
I have to confess that I am not what is called a solid member of good
society or a "good citizen." My name, though beloved in some quarters,
is hated and detested in others. When I see a policeman, my heart beats
faster, as if I had just stolen silver spoons, or as if I were a boy who
had just punctured the tires on the car of the older brother of a bad
friend.
The other day I stood before the bar of a judge in Federal Court of
the Naturalization Office of the U.S.A. I felt afraid and spiteful. The
judge, a young ardent officer of the law, eager to gain his spurs early,
recriminated me for certain books which have been seen or found in my
library; books by Lenin and Trotsky. "And what has politics to do with
biology?" he asked. I could not tell him that if you are a writer on
human affairs and conflicts, you must have read the writings of these
two bad citizens of the world! I felt guilty because the offense was my
silent thought that a judge of the Federal Court of the U.S.A. should
not ask such silly questions.