Record of a Friendship

17

Summerhill School

Leiston, Suffolk

Dear Reich,

[ 19 36 -1 939 ]

September 19 , 1938

You could send the glasses direct to me and I could find a safe
lab for them, either through Bernal or someone else. The difficulty
there would be the Customs people, who might suspect a new way of
smuggling in cocaine or drugs, and who might play hell by trying to
analyse the stuff themselves.
One difficulty here may be that Bernal is a prominent member of the
Communist Party and for all I know may be prejudiced against you. *
But I am sure that he would arrange the safety of your glasses.
Looks as if Chamberlain and Co are to throw C. Slovakia to the
wolves. The people here are only concerned in not going to war. But
C.S. will fight, and everyone will be in it.
Best wishes to self and Elsa.

Summerhill School
Leiston, Suffolk

Dear Reich,

• I •

October 3, 1938

Bernal writes that if you send your cultures to Dr. E. T. C.
Spooner, The Pathological Laboratory, The University, Cambridge,
they will be taken care of. I don't know Spooner myself.
But why think that your work will be safe here? Chamberlain's
criminality to C. Slovakia will make us more easy to attack in the future
and the chances of Cambridge or London being bombed to hell are
worse than those of Oslo. I am seeing the man [Barnes] who wrote about
translating your books this week. Constance thought him a good man.
He has an Austrian wife.
In the great Angst [anxiety] t of last week I was surprised to find that

• During his years in Berlin, Reich had become suspect to the Communist
  leaders, who felt that with his Association for Proletarian Sex Politics he was
  luring people away from the single-minded pursuit of the party's goals. He was
  finally expelled from the party in 19 34.
  t The threat of imminent war, postponed by the Munich Pact.