[p. 177]
Dear G:
On receipt of your note of 8 January, I went to 116 [116 University Place in New York City, the former national headquarters of the SWP]....
I did affectionately curse you for asking me to do this, because, just as I expected, I was very cordially received, and overwhelmed with invitations to meet everybody privately — most of which I fended off. But I shall now have some very awkward evenings, I can foresee. Only to Han. [Joseph Hansen] did I spit out anything: he was so friendly that my wit got the better of me, and I said on parting: "Thank you for your cordial reception. But look out. Remember Terence-Patrice's [pseudonyms used by Mangan] reputation as 'the great unifier'. Maybe in another year I'll be back with full powers and reasonable propositions; and then you'll be embarrassed." Forgive me for this frivolity, but il etait plus fort que moi.
May I add that the atmosphere in University Place is, despite all, very busy, active, efficient, and hopeful — which is more than I can say off hand for our people, whose paper, as I read it each month, is never against the general line, but so dilutes it that, as my girl remarked the other night, the Farmer-Labor "Progressive" [a liberal monthly] sounds much more radical. I can't too much blame them, because the atmosphere here is irrespirable. Still . . . You remember my old formula about legality: that one prepares the second-line trench with the most foresighted technical care, but one does not abandon the first-line trench until literally blasted out of it. . . .
Affectionately,
12 January 1954