You never mention your own kiddies. Does the mother keep them
away from you? The one certainly needs you.- I •
Forest Hills, New York
November 7, 1940
My dear Neill:
I have your letter of October 2nd. I was very glad to hear
from you.
It is good that you seem pretty safe in the place where you are, and
are still able to carry on the work. You can imagine how closely we
watch events over there. The re-election of Roosevelt seems to me of
tremendous importance. I learn more and more how this so-called
bourgeois society, in the course of 7 years under capitalistic rule, has
done more in the field of social security than any communist in Russia
would dream of getting. This is only to indicate that, being quite firm
in all my scientific convictions, I feel myself completely confused and
inclined to revise most of the things I ever learned in Europe about
what Socialism should be. I can only hope that the roots of my special
work will prevent me from becoming reactionary. If you hear socialists
and communists who have come over here claiming that Roosevelt is a
dictator or a fascist, then your stomach simply turns around. I have
started to hate them. They seem to me a complete nuisance in their lack
of any ability to think a thought to the end or to do any kind of work.
But it may be that a part of this feeling is mere disappointment.
You are quite right that the personal matters come more and more
into the background in order to make place for the social matters, but
that should not mean that you forget the personal matters, but that you
look upon them as expressions of a definite social situation.
Elsa is still in Norway and striving hard to come over here, that
means to accomplish a matter which she could have had easily a year
and a half ago. * But this comes from the misinterpreted Selbststiindig
keit [independence l.
As to the new kind of education, I can only say that the people here
* Reich means that she could have come with him, presumably either as his
assistant or as his wife. They broke up shortly before he left Norway for the
United States.