compulsory wait the hunger and sex components accumulate libido, so
that when the babe comes to the breast there is an orgasm of sex
pleasure outlet which makes him stop sucking before he is fed. The
fashionable London birth clinics all have this timetable feeding plus
weighing all the time, and the poor mother has to watch a clock to see
that baby gets so many ounces only, and hastily snatches him off the
breast when he gets his prescribed ounces. Zoe is making her own time
table I notice.
Someone in N.Y. sent me a book by a Russian ... I Chose Freedom. *
Dunno who sent it. It is horrible reading and sounds sincere. Must
humanity always have a police state? The book frightens me.
Have been away lecturing at various towns. I find it most exhausting,
and if I didn't need the money wouldn't do it. True, I get hundreds of
eager listeners, but the long railway journeys, the hotels ... and worse
still the hosts who ask me questions till past midnight, these make me
weary.
Elected President last Saturday of the Progressive League, London.
Elected at end of a two-hour meeting. I made my first speech which
began: "I want to resign. I've listened for 2 hours to hear one word
indicating progression, and all I heard were empty words about nothings.
You argued for an hour whether freedom should go in the school or
within the school. Folks who have minds like that shouldn't be in a
progressive league." Said also that personally I don't need a Progress
League, for I live and work in one.
Yes, we must try to come over in summer, and that leads me to
thank your good wife for her sweet little note. If she does come this
Spring she must make S'hill her home.
I was invited to stand as Socialist candidate for the Scots Universities
by-election. I refused of course, saying that I couldn't leave my valuable
work to sit and listen for hours to speeches in the Westminster gas
works.t But I have a little regret that I couldn't be an M.P. and say
living things about Education.
I wonder who your pupil is who has set up at 15 dollars a time. I
wrote in one of my books: "It should be the prayer of every man that
he has no disciples." '.
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* By Victor Kravchenko (New York: Scribner's, 1946).
t The Houses of Parliament meet in Westminster.