table telling us how long it is to be dangerous for Zoe, meaning what is
the safe period at a time we can park her there?
We've had fourteen days of intense cold with no coke and no hot
baths, with half-pressure gas and hardly a hot meal because of that. We
have spent days sawing down our trees for firewood. Luckily we've had
food enough. Owing to English plumbing-putting all pipes outside on
the walls-we are frozen up, and have only one w.e. working for 90
people. Still, Berlin and Vienna must be a hundred times worse.
•• tForest Hills, New York
February 26, 1947
My dear Neill:
I have your letter of February 10th. I was so glad that you
finally added to your love of the little man the full evaluation of that
characteristic of his which makes him the pain in the neck of the world.
I believe that the old socialist custom of pitying the poor has obfuscated
the clear vision in regard to the little man's own faults for his destiny.
I myself am fighting quite a battle in this matter for years, to keep
myself clean of reactionary sentiments without losing my sight of
realities. When you will be here in the summer you will hear a story of
the Hamilton School which fits excellently in what you indicated about
your own school.
I never told Barakan that no one should try to help the present
generation. What I said was that his idea of saving the world with
500,000 vegeto-therapists is a completely illusionary one. I think that
for the coming 3 or 4 hundred years each new-born generation will be
a certain stretch less neurotic than the previous one, that neurotic
traditions and the healthy future will be overlapping to a lesser and
lesser degree. But it is true that the presently living generation cannot
be restructured. Only the misdeeds of the emotional pest can be limited
and dammed in. There is so much that we will have to talk about in the
summer. I am looking forward to it.
Did you receive the accumulator already? There are no timetables to
go with it. You sit in it just as long as you are comfortable; when you
feel that you are getting warm, or when you feel that "you had enough,"
then leave it. There are no dangers connected with using the accumulator
at all. All of us are using it daily since 1940 and it did us only a lot of