in simple language that Tom, Dick and Harry can read. Men who have
most to say too often are difficult to read ... Freud, Reich... but
smaller men write simply, a man like Stekel whose language is easy to
follow, or a man like Neill who writes journalese. I say I get pessimistic
about it because time is so short, and the after-war mood and psychology
is so lost, so opportunist, so atomically dangerous. Bad also is the
increase of church power during and after any war. I want to be quick,
to fight all that, or rather to see your message fight it so that the village
shoemaker can read it and understand it. I want my friends Bill the
painter and Ted the plumber to get your message.
Ena expects the child in about 14 days. Her pregnancy has been
rather difficult and we are both longing for it to cease.
P.S. Statistic? U.S.A. is said to have 2000 atom bombs. How many
Sex Pol members to balance that figure?•••Forest Hills, New York
October 14, 1946
My dear Neill:
I just received your letter of October 4th. I find that you are
in the same terrible mood as I found myself in already for months. You
are quite right, there is no use in writing good books, true books, if the
Stalins have the ways and means to keep the man in the street in their
power and pocket. I would only correct the following: I don't think
that the Sexual Revolution, or the Function of the Orgasm, or even the
Mass Psychology are too difficult for the man in the street. I think we
should begin to look at the man in the street more closely and to see
him as he really is. We must ask why he listens to trash rather than
truth, to fanfares rather than to sensible things. That things are not so
simple and become rather complicated is, among other things, due to
the little man's unwillingness and inability to sit down and think things
over. After 4 years of belly-ache, I finally succeeded in writing down my
Speech to the Little Man. But I won't dare to publish it. I just cannot
step out and tell the little man in his own language what he is, how he
looks, how badly he thinks, how cowardly he is, and how he promotes
all the rot in the world. You simply cannot do it, though you ought to.
The problem of organization and keeping things in check is one of
the toughest I ever met in my whole 30 years of experience. I confess