4pQonT

230 THIS DIFFICULT INDIVIDUAL
". . . And Russia's contempt for the present pawnbrokers' regimes
in London and Washington is even more vigorous than that
of the Axis."
May 23, 1943:
"The moment calls for realism of a kind more real than you
are accustomed to. Let us take down the stage set. It is very
easy to fall into rhetoric; it is very easy for people to be swayed
by cliches. No one is immune from that danger, least of all men
who write in a hurry."
June 5, 1943:
"Your Russian allies are slaves of an infernal state, got life
sentence. You have pretty nigh got a life sentence. . . . It is not,
and has not been my purpose in these talks to speak of this war as
an isolated phenomenon, as a bit of meteorite fallen from some
other planet. My function is to arouse a little bit of curiosity about
such profits. War is part of a profit. Some men should want to
know what part of a profit it is, and what profit it is part of."
June 12, 1943:
". . . The German revolution a revolution of the home brothel
against the American, mammas have not thought of it that way.
And the intelligentsia has had 150 years of propaganda for the
bordello. Disguised as Romantic literature, and disguised as a
falsification. At first the Romantic literature was something sane.
Then it got rotten. It began with a return to nature. Purity of
nature as against the rottenness of artful society. How come it
went rotten? Oh, one thing leads to another. False standards of
Puritanism lead to revolt, quite properly.
"It is now very hard to touch upon such subjects at all without
sounding like a Methodist elder or killjoy. All I can say is that
nobody with a knowledge of the facts can claim that I have passed
my life in gloom and without a fair share of the pleasures. This is
not a Salvation Army meeting. I hereby maintain that I have seen
more pleasure loosed on the evening air at a marshmallow roast
than in any Cafe de Nuit in Montmartre. 4
"Dreary cafes, with a few wornout bags and the usual staff