Summerhill School
Leiston, Suffolk
My dear Reich,
June 8, 1955Thanks for ms. Do you mind if I rewrite it? It could be called
a 1950 Conference Speech re-edited five years later, nicht [no]? One
difficulty is what to say about adolescent sex. The truth simply can't be
published if my work is to go on. But how to write an honest article with
this proviso I dunno. Two years ago a lovely Danish girl of 17 came.
When she left her mother never paid the whole bill and never answered
requests for payment. I got a lawyer in Copenhagen to write her mother.
Now I have a nasty letter from the woman saying her daughter came
home pregnant because there was no supervision of the sexes etc. The
girl was all sex and spending-money, and had I been wise I'd have sent
her home at once or have had V ollmacht [full authority] in writing from
the mother. I tell you this to show that approving of adolescent sex
may lead to disaster. I told the mother in a letter that if the girl was
pregnant it was the first time a boy had made a girl pregnant in 35
years of S 'hill.
I read your response* with enthusiasm, wondering all the time why
you can publish it since the Cliffordt judgment prohibited any mention
of Orgones in print. I also wonder why you always find a red fascist
setting the house on fire... why a fascist of any colour? If the drug
factories see you as a danger to their wares where does the political
colour come in? Why should the prosecution be Moscow directed? Must
you find some external reason for every American act of hate and greed?
What red has any power in the U.S.A. today? I don't try to defend
Moscowism; it is evil, but I say that when you meet evil in U.S.A. why
not see it as a home product? McCarthy isn't inspired by red fascism.+
A review of one of my books from Rome says I ought to be shut up as
a danger to all children, but the writer isn't a fascist of any colour, only
a R.C. priest. I think you spoil your case by introducing the political
factor ... UNLESS you have secret evidence of the fire-raisers. Profit
* History of the Discovery of the Life Energy, Documentary Supplement NO. 1
"Response to Ignorance" (Orgone Institute Press, 1955 ), in which Reich explains
why he did not appear in court as a "defendant" to answer the complaint brought
by the FDA.
t Judge John D. Clifford, Jr., who issued the default injunction against Reich
to which Neill is here alluding.
t In the margin are two words, strongly underlined: HE IS.