Record of a Friendship

deep meaning. It may sound strange to you who do not know America

that the U.S. Government is a highly differentiated organism, with many

contradictory tendencies within. There are radicals, progressives, Catho­

lics, reactionaries in it. It is quite possible that your case was chosen as

a test case in a struggle between Catholics and progressives in the State

Department. The Government is investigating your case very thoroughly

so we heard. This would only be to the good in the long run. I do not

believe that the Catholics in America have the power to impede the

broad stream of enlightenment which has developed during the past few

years in regard to an entirely diff erent type of early infant education.

If you look at the whole thing from this angle, the situation is much

less gloomy than it appears to be. We shall keep in touch and decide

further steps as things happen.

Summerhill School

Leiston, Suffolk

My dear Reich,

• I •

August 1 I, 1950

Yours of August 5th today. No word of a visa yet.
I can't get over the feeling that if I get one it will be too late. If too
late for the conference then I'd want to postpone the visit until perhaps
next summer. I've gone through so much misery and depression these
last weeks that I feel the trip would be only half a delight now.
Yes, yes, I of course see the U.S.A. viewpoint, but if I'd come out in
writing with attacks on Communism I doubt if it would have helped.
And it isn't my way to attack. I think our Public School system of
segregated education appalling with its Eton and Harrow, etc. but I've
never spent pages attacking that system, preferring to give the positive
criticism by showing the other way. And remember that it is only
comparatively recently that British Socialism broke away from com­
munism, so that if past sympathies are the criterion of visa suspect,
hardly a member of our government would be allowed to enter U.S.A.
I am so angry at being held up for the wrong reason. My line is
children not politics and if I were shut out from U.S.A. because of my
views on children and their love life and their freedom, I'd have at least
the satisfaction of knowing I was being martyred for something I
believed in. To be martyred for an alien creed that I know would shut
my school at once if it succeeded, is too much to bear. I think that