Record of a Friendship

(Ben Green) #1

Somehow this war will be over as the first was, and life and work
will continue. Question is, who will survive. We are informed here
very well about the main events.
I have read your book, and gave it to Wolfe. It is I think very good.
The only thing I may mention is that you don't show clearly enough the
difficulties which would arise immediately if rational thinking were to
get hold of affairs.
I wish you all the best and hope to hear from you soon.


Summerhill School,
Festiniog, North Wales


My dear Reich,



  • I •


August 2, 1940

What a time we have had evacuating the school from the
East Coast to the mountains. We are all delighted with the scenery.
I have read your Biography* with joy; it is to me the most fascinat­
ing thing you have written, and in better times I'd myself translate
it into English. I may do it in the dark nights of winter.
Herbert Read wrote again saying that his firm couldn't bring out
your books in war time with the shortage of paper. Later perhaps is all
the hope we have from that source.
I have no word of our friends in Norway. Someone saw Else's sister
in Stockholm, but I hear that Elsa Backer and family could not
get away from Oslo in time. I can get no news of the others, and fear they
couldn't get away, otherwise they would have written you from Sweden.
Of course there is no way of getting news out of Norway now that it is
under the brutal heel of the Nazis.
We carry on with the school and will carry on as long as we can. I
played with the idea of trying to take it to America, but something in­
side me was against the idea, some objection to running away from
danger I suppose.
I arranged things with my wife about having a free life and thanks
to you and your treatment have ways and means of having a full life
with full satisfaction, although, alas, not with full love as I could have


* The German version of The Function of the Orgasm, which Reich had sent
him.
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