part-7

Context of Writing

Schooldays (1921-31)

The first piece of “writing” I recall—and can date roughly—was a report of French occupation of three cities in the Ruhr.^{^[1]} That I “wrote” one morning in the early spring of 1921 on my desk at Fountain Street School,^{^[2]} apposing letters printed on pieces of white cardboard, issued to us all. (Our penmanship was laborious and could be expected to go its own way if used apart from regular exercises in the “Palmer method.”)

I was then in the first half of the second grade,^{^[3]} in a room on the main floor at the southeast corner, sitting all the way back, to the right (as I saw it), by the door to the hall. In front of me was Bobby Baxter. Directly across the room, to my left, by one of a row of windows looking out on College Avenue, sat Kathryn MacNaughton, also Camilla Peck, whom I regarded with yearning. It must have been in the following summer that her mother left her father. Before long, Mrs. Irene Peck would go to Paris for a year or so, pending a French divorce, Camilla with her. I might still look fondly at the Pecks’ house,^{^[4]} at the northwest corner of Prospect Avenue and Washington Street, as we drove by on our way to the farm. I was told that Camilla came back in the very short Parisian skirts of the day, but I wasn’t to see her again until the seventh grade (in the Central High School building), when she was the properly dressed Camilla Bowman, her mother (one of the “wild Shanahan sisters”^{^[5]} of another day) having taken as her second husband Charles (“Chuck”) Bowman, the Hudson-Essex dealer.

Besides Camilla’s presence, what may have helped to fix in memory that effort of 1921 was the response of the teacher (young Miss Lalley, who was to leave to be married the following summer. Or was it the summer of ‘22?). She seemed to be impressed—as of course I must have hoped—with the choice of topic and with exposition covering the small desk top. The effort couldn’t have run to more than 100 words; even so it would have been longer than anything I’d ever set down before at one time.

Other than the memory of a “composition” on my desk, I have almost no recollection of what I wrote for class at Fountain Street School (through the sixth grade).^{^[6]} My memories of the time are almost all anecdotal, hardly anything about class work or “homework.” We did write now and then: I seem to recall typing most of what I turned in (on a machine to be described below). But the only writing that survives from those years (apart from the occasional note of thanks or greeting) comes from a little “magazine”—The Zenith—that I put out two or three times for a couple of friends (and family) in 1923/24. Mother saved a few items in a scrapbook she kept in my childhood and youth.

The earliest, it appears, probably dating from the fall of 1923, is cited in Appendix A. It includes an account of the first part of a camping trip the family had taken the summer before. J.H. Howard’s woodland shack, at which we had stayed on summer outings at Little Herring Lake (during August from 1919 to 1922), had been replaced by a cottage,^{^[7]} to be occupied most of the summer of 1923 by his widowed daughter, Ethel Travis, a school teacher. The Snells, having acquired a Ford “touring car” to facilitate trips to and from the farm, had tried driving to Herring Lake in 1922, camping overnight at a park on the “Big Lake” near Muskegon, and everything had gone well. So in 1923 the prospect of a camping tour about the Lower Peninsula: of Michigan became attractive. Staying in a cottage would in any case have been a comedown.

What I recorded about the first part of the trip—to the Straits of Mackinac—is just an itinerary,^{^[8]} but has a point of interest: that issue of The Zenith had been written clean by a typewriter. In that little machine, as the keys were struck, the whole bank of “type-bars” swung back and forth so as to center in turn the ones selected to print.^{^[9]} Typing, as Mother surely foresaw (though I don’t recall her saying so), would be much easier for me, a “lefty,” than writing. For exercises in the “Palmer method,” moving the hand easily back and forth on the flesh of the forearm to make the standard sloped strokes, one had to use the right hand. Otherwise I shifted to the left, with which I could write in ink at best awkwardly and slowly if I was not to blot what I had written. Typing freed me to produce clear copy easily and rapidly.

The next several items cited in Appendix A date from the years at Central High School, beginning (as noted) in the seventh grade, the junior high school building (and one-time Central High School) having been taken over for Grand Rapids Junior College.^{^[10]} In the seventh grade (1925/26) and again in the tenth (1928/29)^{^[11]} my English teacher was Helen Anderson, young and enthusiastic, who regularly assigned themes. Of these I remember only a “sketch” (not extant) about a working class couple, starting from what I had seen and heard while helping Mother and Father to paint a house they owned in the south end of town (a short way south of Burton Street and west of Nelson Avenue). Miss Anderson in her comment asked how I could know about such people.

One surviving piece^{^[12]} stimulated by her—not for class—was an essay on the theme: “What Ideals of Life Do You Find in Les Misérables?”, a question posed in a national contest for high school students announced by Universal Pictures to draw attention to a film soon to be issued. Essays were due by the end of 1928. For all Miss Anderson’s encouragement and a good deal of time spent revising, I posted an entry almost as an afterthought, as I recall, a few days before Christmas.

Of course I had read Les Misérables attentively (in translation). And Father was reading it aloud in the evening. He had begun reading to me in 1924, going from The Iliad (Bryant’s verse translation, I believe) to Greek ancient history. Since the move to the farm in the spring of 1926, some months after Grandma Shafer’s death, he had been reading often to the whole family, from late fall till early spring—that is, for much of the school year. Les Misérables may have been the last book he read to us of evenings.^{^[13]}

A letter from Carl Laemmle, head of Universal, dated 29 March 1929, announced that I had won the first prize of $1,000—real money then. The money itself was to have no traceable effect on my life, but the announcement, featured (on April 11) by the local press—and of course by papers here and there across the country—made me briefly a sort of public figure. My parents received many letters of congratulation, and Central High School held an assembly in celebration.

Longer lasting was the effect on my social life. A recent state regulation forbade secret societies of high school students. The local chapter of Gamma Delta Psi, established some fifty years earlier, had concluded by the next fall, with the support of a couple of interested younger graduates, that one defensive move would be to offer membership to the well publicized son of a very well considered high school teacher.^{^[14]} To be sure, I knew some of the members, a few fairly well, but have never doubted the rationale, and have always assumed that Mother persuaded Father to let me join, in the face of the regulation, so as to get me more into society. A very good thing it was, too, if not quite in the way she may have imagined. My social experience in the next couple of years—often dancing, seldom romancing^{^[15]}—was quite enough to leave me ready for a more studious life: at Harvard, that is, rather than (say) at the University of Michigan, where I probably should have gone on socializing.

All that from a 500-word essay, and luck! It was not my first contest, nor the last. The year before, I had won the prize for the ninth grade offered by Central for essays on Abraham Lincoln. In the eleventh grade my essay on the League of Nations would win a second prize in a state-wide contest for high school students. These efforts (not extant) I know about because Mother saved the press releases for the scrapbook.

Apart from the essay on Les Misérables, the surviving pieces that date from the years at Central, cited in Appendix A, may or may not have been written for English classes. They remain of a certain interest (to me) in that they suggest my world of the time, small and self-centered and the people I had watched. For instance, I can remember wondering, when there was some mention of President Hoover at a school assembly, “What does he do to keep busy?” One “new” writer I heard of because, while “scutting”^{^[16]} (undergoing “hazing”) for the Gamma Delts in the fall of ‘29, I had to learn the response to: “When nobody asks a question, what’s the answer?” The response: “Gertrude Stein.” Some member must have picked that up at home. I don’t recall any mention of Hemingway, Fitzgerald, or Joyce, to name just three writers fast becoming famous. Anyway it would be hopeless to try to inventory my ignorance—not of everything, I mean; just of what would have entered one’s awareness as a young adult.

Still I kept in practice expressing myself, even though few themes were assigned by most English teachers. For three summers (1927-29) I “edited”—that is, wrote and (with some help) typed, mimeographed, and distributed—the weekly newsletter (The Tid-Bits) for the boys (and staff) at Camp Roger, during both the four weeks of “choir camp” and the following four of “pay camp.”^{^[17]} In my last year at Central (1930/31) I edited the monthly school magazine, The Helios (and the associated yearbook). Besides writing editorials, reading copy, and “supervising the staff,” I made occasional entries of “news” and “humor,” overlapping categories. Our humor section, in charge of my neighbor Holmes Ellis,^{^[18]} specialized in jokes and anecdotes with double meanings (for those in the know). A year or two thereafter I was to hear that some young teacher had tumbled, with the result that copy was to be read thenceforth by a teacher young, in any case alert, enough to spot many or most (if not all) such efforts.

A last note on high school. In the second (or third?) year I took a one-term course for students that wished to learn touch typing for their own use. I went on to the second term of a course for future office workers; all the other students were girls. These courses, once again taken at Mother’s suggestion, left me a reasonably proficient touch typist. Well along in the latter course I tested at some 60 words a minute after deduction for errors. As I recall, only one of the girls, Fern (last name?), was much faster. Typing instruction was good college preparatory work: influential, that is, in that it would encourage me to write.^{^[19]}

Harvard (1931-41)

In Cambridge, as I’d expected—and wished—my world began to broaden, from observing and meeting people, perhaps not so much from lectures and assigned reading, though hardly less over time from reading I did on my own. As told in an account of the four years in Harvard College,^{^[20]} I made increasingly deliberate efforts to become a “generalist,” even while keeping to English courses (after fulfilling the required “distribution”) in the hope of earning high honors.

Writing was a feature of the program: a “generalist,” I thought, must write easily and well. Much of what I handed in for composition courses was a natural extension of what I had done in high school: “sketches” based on earlier experience and observation, even (for poet Robert Hillyer’s course) occasional verse. But in the first year I ventured also to talk about books and writing; later on about issues of current interest. And for term papers in courses in English literature I looked for historical topics outside literature proper (as indicated in Appendix A). Whatever the occasion and the mode, I was always writing.

As already observed, one had an awful lot to learn. But teachers seemed to accept one’s limitations and succeeded in being critical while remaining sympathetic and encouraging. Especially useful were three teachers of composition. Lyman Butterfield, who taught my section in Freshman composition, was pretty well up on new writing, admiring much of it, and pleased to see any sign of such interest as one showed. Bernard DeVoto and Robert Hillyer, my later teachers, of course knew something—surely more than I—of current trends in literature, but were little in sympathy wit them as with almost any other recent development. I took note of their views, leaving writers pretty much alone.^{^[21]}

It strikes me that now and then in writing I oversimplified, even misstated a point in order to get ahead with the exposition, all (to the best of my recollection) without being aware that I was doing so. Occasional remarks suggest that two, at least, of my teachers may have seen what I was doing, perhaps expecting it. For it does seem that I was just “a-doin’ a-what comes nachrally.” People I knew well were careful enough, as I believe I was, to try to tell the truth when that mattered. And of course in scholarship one tried to stay close to the record, “just the facts, ma’am.” But ours was—and doubtless is—a “culture” in which much may be said, and written, for effect. It may even have been just as well that I was not self-conscious about doing so.

Preparations for an honors thesis on Henry James began early, in the summer of 1933, following the sophomore year. Some landmarks are cited in Appendix A.^{^[22]} As a Freshman I had begun looking into the work of recent or current (though not as yet “the latest”) writers:^{^[23]} Thomas Hardy, Bernard Shaw, Joseph Conrad, Arnold Bennett, John Galsworthy, Eugene O’Neill, Aldous Huxley. Such curiosity could have led me to Henry James.

It may seem odd that a professed “generalist” would choose to work on a writer so specialized, even esoteric, so much a “lit’ry figgeh.” There was no question of anyone’s persuading me to do so, least of all my tutor Kenneth P. Kempton.^{^[24]} I may have been looking for a topic at once conventional and original. That’s quite abstract, but fits the young fellow I recall, ambitious to earn high honors. And the thesis was to help in that respect, besides bringing a prize of $250^{^[25]} and publication by the University Press.

Before writing I had gone through most of the work of Henry James and a good deal of what had been said about him. And I took plenty of time to write, rewrite, and edit. I didn’t—of course—know enough about the literary and social background and remained inexperienced in “the world.” In retrospect, “my” Henry James may have been a little too much like me—discreet, ingrown, ironic, determined. To be sure, such qualities, as reflected in his work, presumably had something to do with my getting interested in it and continuing with it for a year and a half. And older critics and biographers have been found to “identify with” their subjects.

In passing, one might observe—it didn’t occur to me then—that nobody at Harvard ever said a word about my successful thesis, that is, no one but my tutor. He was just responding to my offhand remark that of course I should be able to do much better later on, but that right then it probably was better than almost anyone else in the class would do. He demurred on both counts.^{^[26]}

The only praise I was to receive would come later from Leon Edel, future biographer of Henry James and editor of James collections and Jamesiana. In introducing himself, he was to observe that at least I’d avoided the usual mistakes.^{^[27]} And in a letter (of 30 June 1938) written after I’d sent him a copy of the thesis and he’d looked at it again—he’d already presented me with copies of both his dissertations on Henry James done in Paris^{^[28]}—he remarked:

…I admire its concision, and I think it felicitously written. It’s more mature, for instance, than my little juvenile thing on the prefaces. My point is that I don’t think you will ever regret the Modern Fables as I regret the Prefaces…

Fair enough. In print, as one might expect, the thesis has received almost no attention. Aside from listing in bibliographies, the one exception I’m aware of is a couple of citations in an undistinguished academic work of thirty years ago.^{^[29]}

Graduate school brought change, on the whole welcome. One gave up the amenities and companionship of Eliot House—with most of the leisure for reading—in exchange for increased responsibility and independence, as well as two to three miles a day of walking, not to mention better food and wine with dinner.^{^[30]} My new goal was modest: to keep usefully occupied and go on learning until swept up by the coming world war. After the war, if all went well, one could look for work as a “generalist.”

Writing for courses changed, too. I was taking only two at a time, and no English composition. Yet besides the occasional term paper, I had in each of the last four years to do at least one seminar paper,^{^[31]} upon which one’s standing for the year entirely depended. Moreover, I felt free to branch out, taking courses in American social history and seminars in German romantic philosophy and American political theory—fields in which my background was deficient and extra reading was needed.

Teaching two-thirds time and acquiring some domestic responsibilities, I found my schedule more crowded—and more distracting—than before. Teaching was so new and challenging an experience that I gave it perhaps too much attention. In 1935/36 and 1936/37, teaching two sections in composition, I was often preoccupied, what with preparing for class and reading and grading about thirty themes a week, as well as meeting classes and seeing students in conference (in Warren House, across the alley from the Harvard Union). Later on, as a tutor, I had rather less to do, even to think about, other than the two or three attractive young women among my Radcliffe tutees.^{^[32]}

In the first three years after graduation I shared an apartment at 60 Kirkland Street with Ed Acomb, a classmate from Eliot House enrolled in Law School. We began going out for dinner now and then, or to a foreign movie, often into Boston. I went to a few symphony concerts. Sometimes I saw Dwight McVitty, though less often in the first years that I should after his enrollment (in 1938) in the School of Architecture. He took me on several weekend junkets. Beginning in the fall of 1938, sharing a more commodious place at 70 Hammond Street^{^[33]} with Art, who was starting Law School (and in the first year with Bob Benjamin),^{^[34]} I started playing tennis again (usually on the nearby varsity courts, seldom in use), also began walking three to four miles a day. The arrival of Terczi Frisch in October 1938—and of her brother Robert in 1939—led to other welcome distractions.

The results of over ambitious efforts and too many other interests are evident in comments on my papers (cited in Appendix A), though professors were often enough sympathetic anyway. Clearly I was less purposive that as an undergraduate, while still hoping to do creditably.^{^[35]} And I learned German, for the reading exam one had to pass even to take a Master’s degree in English lit (along with the credits in French I had picked up as an undergraduate). Unimportant as the degree seemed to be (and was), to read German was a skill that promised—and was to prove—to be desirable for a “generalist.” Mother helped, at my request quizzing me on the translation of words in a long vocabulary (can it have been 5,000 words, as I recall?) through the summer of 1937. She checked the words I didn’t get, and we went back over them as often as needed.

My view of the future was still open enough to permit—or stimulate—me to write two short stories, on the off chance that one or both might be published. In 1939 (I believe) I sent them to The New Yorker. Later, in New York on a visit, I went up to the offices at 25 West 43rd Street (not far from Grand Central Station), and found the stories waiting, rejected. Someone had at least looked at them. Goodness knows what I might have ended up doing if one had been accepted, or perhaps if I had just kept at it. Luckily I didn’t. Those stories, by the way, seem to have vanished. I’ve no recollection of how they went.

Six years of experience since graduation had left me no wiser about what I was to do. I still thought of myself as a “generalist,” but meant no more than that with my inclinations and limited energy I seemed to be cut out to be a lifelong student. As yet I had no idea how one might make a living as such,

Transition (1941-46)

With the end of my teaching term in the spring of 1941 began five years in which I wrote nothing but letters home. I expected to be called up in the draft by fall. When I went into Grand Rapids for a physical in August, I was rejected for flat feet. That was all very well. I suppose one might have found a job in Washington, as others were doing. Instead, I decided to stay on the farm for the next months, at least, with the expectation of being called up in due course. Mother and Father may have been concerned about my long visit. But I thought I might not have another such chance to spend time with Father, who had turned 80 in May 1941, and I’m glad I stayed. I had an occasional date, played cards once in a while with old friends, worked some around the farm, learned to read Spanish, went thorough a lot of Mother’s mystery stories.

Being called up in June 1942 began a series of novel experiences, notably falling in love, getting married, and becoming a father.^{^[36]} Upon release from the army early in 1946, I spent about three months with Tee and Suzy in Grand Rapids (a short way north of Fountain Street School). I had advised Tee to go home or to Grand Rapids to bear our child (due in early 1945), on the ground that no one could say what might happen to my lot once the war in Europe was winding down. It had seemed likely she would prefer Grand Rapids, and I had been influenced by Father’s having died (in August 1943), leaving Mother very much alone, especially while Art’s division was in Europe at the front. Tee had objected to going anywhere. On balance I think she was right.

Military History (1946-50)

Once reacquainted, Tee and I went to Washington in April to see whether I could find a suitable job. Otherwise it might be back to graduate school under the “GI Bill of Rights” to take an English Ph.D., long viewed as pis aller. Luckily Jim Mathias, in talking with a classmate of mine on the train from New York to Washington, came up with a good lead: Ray Cline’s OPD History Unit, established the year before by the Operations Division of the War Department General Staff.^{^[37]}

Ray thought he could use a Harvard summa in English, and I started working for him in early May 1946, beginning three decades mostly spent—for the first time—doing research and writing for a living, to my continued satisfaction. Mother once said to Tee, “I wonder when Edwin will get a real job.” Did she grasp that I wasn’t looking for a “real job”? Or did she think just that one was bound to end up with one.

For about a year and a half I worked on Ray’s book: Washington Command Post—The Operations Division. The work proved to be a useful introduction: I learned about the functioning, organization, and personalities of the operations staff as well as something about the individuals with whom and offices with which the staff had worked in the war. At the same time I picked up a knowledge of the records: what was kept where, under whose charge. And I eased back into research and writing, in pleasant circumstances: congenial colleagues, quiet, and a desk with a view—the last only for a couple of years: while we worked under the auspices of the General Staff, we were located on an outer ring of the Pentagon.^{^[38]}

Ray’s book was done in 1948. Within a year he had resigned to join the recently formed Central Intelligence Agency; as a veteran of OSS, he had found a good job.^{^[39]} In the mean time, he had submitted a large part of the book to Harvard as a dissertation.^{^[40]} When the work was finally nearing publication, in 1950, Ray was listed, not unexpectedly, as sole author. My colleague Maurice Matloff was offended and disappointed; he had worked on the book, as I had, and thought his name should appear. Ray—anticipating such a response?—had written a preface that rather emphasized the group effort back of the work. Besides giving each of us credit for an expendable chapter—perhaps assigned with that in view—he added favorable comments. Of me he said: “…and Mr Snell rendered invaluable aid as an uncompromising critic and craftsman with regard to both matter and form of the entire text.”^{^[41]}

Meanwhile, towards the end of 1947,^{^[42]} I had begun working on the job he was to leave me, the history of Army strategic planning in the early war—as it turned out, through the first year of US belligerency, that is, into late 1942. That assignment, when it came, was a vote of confidence, given that I was not a “trained historian.” The choice may not have sat well with the Chief Historian, Kent R. Greenfield, but he let it stand. Upon Ray’s departure I became for the time being head of the Strategic Plans Branch—five or six professionals, myself included, and a secretary. Ray had, by the way, promoted me in about three years from P3 (GS-9), the rating at which he had hired me, to P-5 (GS-12). As late as 1949, however, he continued to refer to me officially as his “editor”—I had been hired as such—rather than as an historian.

The object of the history, as I saw it, was to tell, play by play, what the operations staff had done. I should show just how its officers tried, in the midst of change and uncertainty, to minimize the dissipation of scarce resources, including trained units, guided by the strong views of the Chief of Staff (and Secretary Stimson) on the “concentration of forces” and the need for “combat training,” and at every step I should try to make clear how they took account of the views of opposite numbers in the Navy and in the British defense establishment and the needs and demands of the President and Prime Minister.

Such an approach promised three benefits. First, it would provide unique documentation to help future historians in relatively quick forays into the records. Second, it would not require dealing with questions of statesmanship and generalship, which could be handled more confidently after further reflection, with more information: from the publication of foreign records and official histories, additional memoirs—and private papers—of leaders and their associates, and release of data from still sensitive intelligence sources. Third, above all, it seemed most worthwhile in itself to show how an operations staff had worked, a theme not much considered in earlier military history, especially relevant in dealing with world-wide “coalition warfare.” In developing this theme I was only following the example—and doctrine—of Ray Cline.

The Chief Historian (and proper military historians generally) might well have preferred to focus on the big decisions themselves, their rationale and consequences—more of a “magisterial” approach.^{^[43]} I was glad to have some authority on my side, going back to the senior officers that had set up the OPD History Unit.

In drafting, I had a few monographs to draw upon, most of them by other members of the branch, only a couple mine. Their monographs did not, in my view, follow closely enough the planning itself—the context of disagreements, changes in situations, and shifts in position—tending rather to the “magisterial” line. Besides, the monographs did not deal at all with some important developments. For most chapters, therefore, I did a lot of additional research, in order to produce extremely detailed summaries, fully documented, in chronological order, of transactions—that’s a key word—bearing on specified issues and developments. These summaries would serve as guides in laying out and drafting chapters. To be sure, I often went back while drafting for another look at documents, at times for further research. But the summaries remained the guides.

I worked perhaps more steadily and systematically than ever before or since, if only through the eight-and-a-half hour day. As observed by Evelyn (Mrs. Edward N.) Cooper, an associate on the project for a couple of years, I was at the desk absorbed in work all day long, except for short trips “down the hall.” Tee put up lunch for me until deciding, after so often seeing me come home beat, that I had better take a break at noon. From that time on I usually went to the Pentagon cafeteria, now and then having something brought back instead.

In the spring of 1950, after about two and a half years of research and writing, I turned in a complete text for review. I also applied for a job at CIA, for which Ray Cline had recommended me, and was in due course accepted.^{^[44]} Dealing with reviewers, including senior officers involved, was left to Maurice Matloff, who was working on the volume to follow mine. I went back to deal with editorial matters, but he did most of the work—in effect changing footnotes to register comments by some officers, to take fuller account of other projects being finished in the Historical Division, and to reduce the bulk of documentation.

The upshot, as I discovered early in 1952, was that his name was to appear as co-author, and ahead of mine. The order in particular I protested. He replied simply that alphabetical order was the practice; no exceptions had been made.^{^[45]} He added that the funding of future research had become uncertain: he might not be able to finish, and publish, the volume he was working on.

I was tempted to take the matter up with Greenfield, but decided my position was too weak—as a “non historian” that had left the staff. So, with Matloff’s acquiescence, I wrote the preface to the work, including a statement of responsibilities. The relevant passage reads:^{^[46]}

The text of this volume was drafted in two main sections, one tracing the conflicts in plans for the employment of U.S. Army forces, from their appearance to the first resolution in 1942 (Snell), and the other dealing with the primary effects of carrying the war to the enemy (Matloff). In the process the authors drew on each other’s ideas, basic research, and writing. Each of the authors worked at length on the volume as a whole, one in the course of original planning and composition (Snell), and the other in the course of final preparation and revision (Matloff). The text as it stands represents a joint responsibility.

Probably no such formula will deal altogether justly with the division of labor in “group research;” my preface (including other passages) is no exception. Now and then, to be sure, someone may reach a conclusion. Recently I was surprised, looking over the selective bibliography of a work by a highly regarded British historian of World War II, to see E. Snell named as the author of Strategic Planning for Coalition Warfare, 1941-42, M. Matloff as the author of the continuation for 1943-1945.^{^[47]}

Apart from the treatment of authorship, what struck me at the time was the fact that the text itself of my manuscript had come through review untouched, as it did through later processing, aside from minor editorial changes, all negotiated with me. That may seem odd, given what is said above about Dr. Greenfield’s (presumed) reservations about “non historians” and preference for a more “magisterial” approach. Even odder may seem the report, passed on perhaps by Matloff, that Greenfield thought the book a possible prize winner. (I don’t recall exchanging two words with Greenfield about the work.) It does seem true, however, that the Chief Historian believed in letting authors go their own way, so long as they maintained acceptable standards of scholarship, analysis, and writing.^{^[48]}

I know next to nothing about the “reception” of Strategic Planning upon publication in 1953. I’ve never looked into the professional journals. Over the longer run the book seems to have served it purposes. Specific passages were cited in publications in which citation might be expected.^{^[49]} Sometimes the history has been used by scholars, as I had intended, to get easily at sources they needed to consult, a service usually unacknowledged.^{^[50]} And commentary by historians now and then reflects appreciation of the role of the planning staffs.^{^[51]}

One unexpected effect was the appearance in the mid-1950’s of a Russian translation of the book, issued by the Soviet military publishing agency.^{^[52]} A second was the inclusion in 1967 of one chapter (also translated) in a West German collection of writings on the war.^{^[53]} Not long before, excerpts had been given in a U.S. collection.^{^[54]}

A most gratifying testimony came in a history of the war by the eminent English authority Liddell Hart. In considering the final plan for invading North Africa in 1942, a hard-won compromise between the views of General Marshall, seconded by Secretary Stimson and strongly supported by the operations staff, and those of the British Chiefs and Churchill, Liddell Hart wrote, in part:^{^[55]}

The plan, however, carried the two-edged effects of a compromise. By diminishing the chances of a quickly decisive success in North Africa it made more certain the prolonged diversion of Allied effort in the Mediterranean—as American official historians have recognized and emphasized.

And he added, in a footnote:

See, in particular, the very able and penetrating analysis in Strategic Planning for Coalition Warfare 1941-42, by Maurice Matloff and Edwin M. Snell.

Such recognition was especially pleasing to me because the account of the staff work and negotiation behind the final plan for North Africa was entirely mine, the climax—and in my view a principal accomplishment—of my research.

Transition (1950-55)

At the time, of course, a most important result of my work on the OPD history project was to have gained the good opinion of Ray Cline, who had recommended me for a job at CIA. By the time the history came out, I had been working almost three years at the Agency. The first few months, spent in an office that “processed” for publication political and economic reports, were followed by about a year in the newly established estimates staff (in South Building, which still stands). In neither place was I of much use, though of course I learned from reading and listening. The only other result was a promotion to GS-13 (in September 1951), perhaps in consequence of my having given a copy of the manuscript of Strategic Planning to William L. Langer, eminent Harvard historian, who had been on leave in the war to direct research and analysis in OSS and was still in Washington, most recently as head of CIA’s new office of estimates.^{^[56]} He expressed strong approval of the work. Favorable words from Ray Cline (his protégé) may have helped.

It remained true that I was doing little and going nowhere. When in late 1951 Mr. Langer’s administrative assistant Paul Borel^{^[57]} proposed that I be sent on loan to a newly formed office of “research and reports” to work as editor—an assignment of little prestige—I replied that I might be better transferred, period, as I was in early January 1952.

Work in the new office turned out to be absorbing. Oftener than not the economic reports that came to the editorial staff had been produced hastily and reviewed cursorily. The more interesting and of the notably problematical papers I undertook to rewrite (even recalculating statistics) as necessary, if I felt I could; otherwise returning the manuscript to the writer for more work, with a full explanation of what needed to be done.

To take such responsibility—as no other editor seemed to be up to doing (or willing to attempt)—was a good introduction to economic research, as practiced locally. And it brought me to the attention of the higher-ups in the organization. By 1954, when I was made GS-14, I could expect that by the early 1960’s, with the retirement of my boss, C.B. (Bowie) Millican,^{^[58]} I should become chief editor and, not long thereafter, GS-15.

Economic Research (1955-77)

One of those that had noted my work was Rush Greenslade, graduate of St. Albans—where he won the Latin prize—and of Princeton (‘42 in math), with a doctorate in economics from Chicago. He had chosen to direct a recently formed unit (a “division”) for “analysis,” that is, “macroeconomic” research, on Communist economics rather than on some sector (e.g. agriculture, mining, manufacturing). Rush offered me in 1955 a job as analyst in one of his sections (called “branches”), working for Bob (Robert Loring) Allen, a sympathetic Harvard Ph.D. (‘33). I was to take over responsibility for study of the East German economy, in place of Ruth Logue (Radcliffe ‘43), who was leaving to return to the Fed.^{^[59]}

Moving to such a job might well work, in one way, to my disadvantage. I had got through the economics section of the Foreign Service exam, but had taken no economics courses. Even if I turned out to be a pretty good analyst, as I expected, there didn’t seem to be much chance of becoming a branch chief and GS-15. But I accepted: the challenging prospect of getting back into research and writing—my own—was too attractive.^{^[60]} The transfer became effective in August 1955.

My approach to the new subject was to learn it from the ground up, by going back over field reports (mostly on microfilm) as well as commentary, especially by State and the West Germans, and so on. The object was to become in a year or two the equal of an “old hand.”

That program might have run into trouble. Along in 1957, as I recall, the deputy chief of economic research called me, with Rush Greenslade, into his office to ask why I hadn’t turned out any “product.” The deputy was a lightweight, and Rush supported me, but I decided it was time to get about what I had in mind to do first, a comparative study of East and West German postwar economic recovery and development. So I suppose the deputy had an effect.

Preparing such a report took a couple of years, but the result^{^[61]} was highly satisfactory not only to Rush but also to Edward L. Allen, head of economic research. Its appearance in June 1960 gave me almost at once a standing within the US “intelligence community” and soon enough more widely. West German officials with a direct interest knew about it by the time I took my first official trip in December 1960 (followed by two other visits in the 1960’s).^{^[62]}From then on, of course, I wrote several other classified pieces on the East German economy. Just what, and when, I can’t say, except for two of which I retain a record: both on trade between East and West Germany, which we still called “international trade.” Of these, issued in 1965 and late 1967 I know from copies passed to me (and filed) of congratulatory notes written from officials at State to senior officials in the Agency.^{^[63]}

By the time these reports were written, various changes had taken place. For one thing, the Agency had declassified and released several copies of my report comparing East and West German postwar economic performance, sending them to “major” libraries, including of course the Library of Congress, gaining me wider recognition. One result was a request to deliver a paper to a meeting of the Association for the Advancement of Slavic Studies——AAASS, commonly called “triple A, double S”. I don’t seem to have a copy and can’t recall the title, or the date when the paper was delivered, probably in the mid 1960’s.

My two last efforts on East Germany,^{^[64]} both supporting a wider reputation, came at the end of the decade. In 1969-70 I wrote (with the help of Marilyn Harper, then the East German analyst), an essay on postwar economic growth in East Germany, updating earlier estimates, for publication in a compendium put out under the auspices of the Joint Economic Committee of the Congress. Shortly thereafter I was invited by a study group of the Council on Foreign Relations (in New York) to prepare a paper on East Germany for discussion. John Whitman, a longtime colleague, the original recipient of the invitation, had referred them to me. In February 1971, he and I went to New York for the meeting, preceded by dinner.^{^[65]} I remember little of the evening and assume that there were no fireworks. We took the last plane back to Washington.

By then I had been for more than five years head of the branch doing general economic analysis of the East European countries (not including the USSR).^{^[66]} Rush had moved me to this job in the fall of 1965, upon the shift of Maurice Ernst to a more senior job in another area. About a year later I had been promoted to GS-15, not such a senior rank, but exceptional for a “non-economist” in the economic research area. Alone among senior analysts I had neither formal economics training nor special technical background.^{^[67]} It was broadminded of Rush Greenslade (and Ed Allen) even to think of promoting me. (Some of you are familiar with my later telephone exchange with Rush on the value of economics training in our work.^{^[68]})

On becoming a supervisor, I had of course acquired—besides a “private” office with a window—administrative duties and increased work advising analysts, and reviewing and revising their work, on a variety of subjects. Yet, as already indicated, I hadn’t given up writing on East Germany. For all these reasons I hadn’t been unduly troubled in 1966 when Maurice Ernst insisted on writing the study on East European economics requested for the collection to be put out in 1967 under the auspices of the Joint Economic Committee.^{^[69]}

But for the following edition, to come out in 1970, I was the logical person to write such a study, and ready to do so, even though at the same time I was preparing one on East Germany (as noted above). The new project would deal with “economic efficiency” in Eastern Europe, in comparison, of course, with Western Europe.

Here I take the liberty of quoting the two concluding paragraphs—alas, quite long—of the introduction to this study, to suggest how clear the basic economic problems of Eastern Europe had become by the late 1960’s, though it doesn’t at all follow that one could forecast timing or character of the political developments to which these problems might contribute:^{^[70]}

The economic success of Western Europe, obtained without sacrificing traditional freedoms, has put serious political strains on some of the East European regimes. Western Europe has acquired a dangerous attraction for the elite—“the new class”—as well as for the rank and file of the population. In both cases, the attraction is strongest for the young. The leaders need to compete with Western Europe, in economics as in politics, if they are to hold out some kind of future. But the risks are great. Cultural and political influences accompany the acceptance of Western standards, the introduction of Western practices, and familiarity with Western people and life. Such influences are bound to weaken the hold of the Communist Party on people’s loyalties, to pose difficult policy questions about which leaders will disagree, and to offer limitless possibilities of frustration for the elite and the rank and file over half-way measures and shifts in policy.

In the situation created by mounting Soviet reaction against reform and risk-taking, these strains will be suppressed as long as possible. Modifications in the system will still be permitted—in planning and management, incentives, pricing, priorities, and the conduct of foreign trade. But safe reforms will not go far toward “catching up” with the West—toward reducing the technological lag and narrowing the gap in efficiency. The economic and political cost of that undertaking would be high. It would require outside resources on a large scale—Western resources, for the U.S.S.R. has its own resource problems. It would require the establishment of political freedoms in Eastern Europe at least as broad as those existing in Yugoslavia or those sought by the Czech reformers in 1968. No East European regime can now afford to move far in this direction, and the economic differences between Eastern and Western Europe will remain, a cause of political instability in Europe.

By the time that was written, I had already begun looking into the role of Western financing in East European efforts to keep up. The concluding paragraphs of the piece quoted above elaborated on the position that Western loans and credits would not help enough, that major capital transfers would be needed.^{^[71]}Nevertheless it seemed clear that the East Europeans would go further into debt in an effort to keep up appearances and that the effort should become the focus in any evaluation of East European economic performance and prospects.

In my early research on the “hard economy” balance of payments of the East European countries, more precisely, their accounts with the “industrial West,”^{^[72]} I found serious gaps in our information about their drawings on Western loans and credits. So, looking to the next compilation for the Joint Economic Committee (due in 1974), I decided to try to develop accounts for the years 1950 through 1971 from published data on trade, with estimates of related transport services, together with emigrant remittances, tourism, balances on official representation, and the like. Finally, the country’s deficit in the annual balance would be added between the estimated annual interest on accrued net drawings from previous years (since 1959), to produce the annual net drawings (adjusted for current interest theorem). That amount would then be added to the accrued cumulative debt from the previous years to give the debt carried over to the following year.

That was a big order. To begin with, one must analyze differences between East European and Western trade statistics—aggregates, country by country; where available, breakdowns by commodity group; and, in any case, matching figures for individual commodities—to help account for transshipments and “middleman trade.” Differences between East European and Western figures were indeed essential for estimating.

In the early stages of research I had the help of Dave Wigg, who was quick and resourceful.^{^[73]} But he had his own responsibilities as an analyst, and as it became evident what a job it would be, I cast about for a full-time helper. I was lucky enough to find Kathryn Nelson.

Kathryn I had noticed, without knowing who she was, as she walked in the halls with a male friend. Not only was she attractive; she also seemed unusually responsive. By chance her name came up in conversation with an acquaintance in the front office, whose secretary she was. He reported that she was indeed intelligent and willing and had an A.B. from Denison.^{^[74]} She was then in her mid-twenties. Finding her interested in work as a research assistant, I persuaded Personnel to give her the usual exam for professional applicants. She did very well and before long—fairly early, I suppose, in 1972—came to work for me.

We had a deadline of late spring or early summer 1974, when contributions would be due. During the last year or so, at my request, I was freed of responsibility for the branch, of which Jerry Crawford then became acting chief. Even so, Kathryn and I, sharing an office (with no view), had our hands full and finally submitted the piece without showing in detail the manipulation of data involved. Perhaps that was just as well.

In early 1974, some months before the project was done, I had been retired, automatically, having reached the prescribed age of sixty. When this eventuality had been brought to my attention in 1973, I might perhaps have got a postponement, though none of the usual reasons applied. Suzy and Jamie had finished college, and I had no pressing financial problems. I was not senior enough to rate a special dispensation, nor was I one of those old analysts recruited only ten years or so before with a promise of service till at least age sixty-two. Had I asked for, and received, a year’s postponement, I could have gone on quite a while: not so long after, retirement policy was relaxed. It would have been to my advantage, then and ever since.

But as in making earlier decisions, I didn’t really weigh such considerations. My old branch chief Maurice Ernst, by then head of economic research, had offered me what sounded like a series of annual contracts, under which I could continue research. I cheerfully accepted. Not only should I be free to concentrate on research, I should be able to work my own hours, could take the time—not incidentally—to swim as often as I liked during the warm months at the outdoor pool still to be found then at the Key Bridge Marriott.^{^[75]}

In spite of interruptions and distractions,^{^[76]} Kathryn and I were done in good time with the piece for the Joint Economic Committee. It appeared under the title of “Eastern Europe’s Trade and Payments with the Industrial West.”^{^[77]} In a general introductory note on my obligations I wrote,

My associate Kathryn Tolin Nelson contributed to this paper the research on supplier credits and transfer payments, as well as a great amount of statistical work. I could not have done the paper without her help.

Experience with earlier pieces led me not to expect much “feedback”—that is, criticism of methods and estimates—but this time there was a curious exception. Early in the fall it was announced that Lawrence J. Brainard, then head of the “Economic Group” at Chase Manhattan Bank, was coming with an assistant to confer. The Economic Group had been making its own estimates of the hard currency indebtedness of the East European countries, among others. (Of course the most important accounts, for a U.S. bank, were those of “third world” countries, chiefly in Latin America.) I recall nothing specific of our conversation. Evidently they had been working with data from Western sources on outstanding loans and credits, and the approach I had used was in Brainard’s eyes less reliable. As they presumably indicated, at least some of their estimates would have been considerably lower than mine. But they didn’t, I believe, trot out any of their own estimates, or data.

By the fall of 1974, I had finally concluded that we, too, could dig up enough information on Western credits and loans to the East Europeans to set up accounts.^{^[78]} So I dropped the idea, announced in the piece just published, of putting together and issuing a full account of just how the published estimates had been derived. Instead I proposed by the spring of 1977 to show in detail how data on loans and credits from Western sources could be used to estimate East European “hard currency” indebtedness.

As it turned out, we were again pressed for time. After another year or so, Kathryn was nominated—in view of her potential—to attend a full-time “intensive” course given by the State Department to teach economics from the ground up, chiefly, of course, to Foreign Service officers. She attended for nine months, as I recall, in 1975/76 and as expected, did very well, coming out near (or at) the top of the class. In 1976 I had a last official trip to Europe. And early in the year, when the time came for renewing my contract, I had accepted a proposal from John Whitman, by then a senior official on the seventh floor, to do a study on East European economic conditions, plans, and prospects—a subcontract for an Agency project requested by the NSC. That study, too, would have to be done by spring 1977.

In the end we made it. Both papers^{^[79]} were finished by that spring, and just as well they were. Early in the year I had been assured that a new contract had been approved for 1977/78. But it turned out that an assistant to the new Deputy Director for Intelligence (D/DI), persuaded him to cancel the appointment. The same fellow was to preside at the ceremony, held not so long after, at which I was presented with an award for “honorable service.” In both roles he behaved in a blandly unfriendly way—quite in character.

So I was left with no further employment at CIA. At the recommendation of Maurice Ernst, the related State Department group (then called the Bureau of Intelligence and Research) considered me for a contract. But management decided against it after several of the Bureau’s senior analysts expressed vigorous opposition. Such an appointment apparently seemed to them at the very least an encroachment, with no justification. Perhaps they also felt—surely without admitting it even to themselves—that it would subject them to unfair competition. It had been some time since anyone in the outfit had delved at all deeply in East European economic affairs. Soon after, I talked with the staff chief of the Bureau of East-West Trade at Commerce. But though we were always friendly and respectful, he didn’t want my services either.

One side-effect was that I put Kathryn Nelson’s name as co-author—listed first—of “Estimating East European indebtedness,” considering that I had no longer anything to lose and she might have something to gain. As it turned out, unsurprisingly, she had no ambitions as a analyst on her own, seeing herself principally as wife and future mother. In the early 1980’s, after divorcing Ken Nelson, who had become too wrapped up in his career as an assistant prosecutor in one of the Virginia suburbs to pay her the attention she expected, she was to remarry, give up her job, and bear at least one child. My then I had lost touch with her.

Incidentally, those unsuccessful efforts to find a new job remind me of a lesson about large organizations: that really good work is apt to depend heavily on the personal commitment of some individual in authority. Unless your boss has such a commitment, it is at best not much of an advantage to work well above the level normally maintained, unless of course you happen to catch the eye of some other boss that fills the bill. Most colleagues and bosses alike seem to be more or less indifferent to such work, bosses being chiefly concerned with maintaining minimum standards, asserting control, and—often—keeping opinions, questions, and conclusions within currently “acceptable” limits. My “career” in the U.S. government depended heavily on a few “supportive” individuals, notably Ray Cline and Rush Greenslade.^{^[80]}

At the other extreme, a few may be found such as the fellow mentioned above, who got my contract for 1977-78 canceled; he actively disliked exceptional professional work, for reasons one might guess at. But as I say, in my experience most officials seem to be more or less neutral in this respect, of course they would have hesitated to say so.

In conclusion, the output of two decades’ work in economic research was to have a much shorter “half-life” (or “shelf life”) than that of four years’ work in military history.^{^[81]} While engaged, one took satisfaction in the job and enjoyed the respect, at times the attention, of colleagues and others in the field. When it was all over, such effects didn’t vanish at once, but faded fast—as expected. I had long been telling recruits that doing the job well and gaining acceptance would have to be enough; one couldn’t look for more. Much the same holds, of course, for professional work generally.

Conceivably one or another piece of my published research on the East European economies might still be cited in some work on postwar history. But I haven’t come across a recent example and should be greatly surprised to fine one.

Looking back over my government “service,” I see that in striking out after the new into the unknown, in the search for what I wanted, I was following family examples—and, of course, something of a national tradition—though I didn’t then think of it in those terms, nor—I Believe—did Mother. One especially congenial aspect of Tee’s outlook, as is clear in retrospect, was her own readiness for the unfamiliar. It should have been clear at once, when Suzy and Jamie in turn began to look for what would suit them, that they were obeying the same need. It’s not easy for a parent, who has learned how much depends on luck, to be comfortable with adventurous behavior, but one needn’t be surprised by it.

Retirement (1977-?)

In the spring of 1977 I was very much at loose ends. I no longer had work to do. Just a year before, I at last had been divorced and obliged to move from the house I had lived in for more than twenty years, longer than anywhere else.

To keep occupied, I thought of two tasks. One was to make a new estimate of the East German national product—in East marks—to supersede a quick and dirty West German estimate that had come out not long before. The other was to work on family memoirs, specifically the lives of Father and Mother, a labor of love long proposed.

With support from Maurice Ernst, I was given a “stack pass” at the Library of Congress to begin work on the East German project, and for some months took the bus over there almost daily to look up materials. But issues of periodicals that I knew I should need were missing, and library tracers did not locate them. Perhaps they had been removed by someone from the Congressional Research Service; I decided not to try to find out my own. I then got permission to revisit my old office; the files I had left included copies of most of the missing issues. But the new branch chief, who had succeeded Jerry Crawford, had had all such files thrown out, understandably: in my absence no one would have much for them. So I gave up the project.

I then began to work fairly steadily at gathering materials on the lives of my parents and, before long, drafting. My early fall 1979 there were drafts covering the first forty-two years of Father’s life and the first twenty-one years of Mother’s—that is, while they were single and uncommitted. Not long after, I produced an account of the more than ten years (1903-13) of courtship and early married life. By late summer 1980 I had finished a draft carrying the account from my birth in early 1914 down to 1925.^{^[82]} Research and writing of these memoirs, especially those of Father’s and Mother’s early life, gave me perhaps more pleasure than anything I had done before.

Then I stopped for a while in order to work on the many additions and corrections that had been occurring to me. I had begun writing with accumulated family records, supplemented with materials dug up in a week or so each summer at the Grand Rapids Public Library. To fill in certain gaps I wrote to Grand Rapids to ask for information from Kent County court records, and to Ann Arbor for whatever was recorded about Mother’s years at the University.

Research was suspended, as you know, after the summer of 1982, as a result of Dan Litscher’s friendly harangue in support of Ronald Reagan. I had long accepted the fact that almost anyone I knew in Grand Rapids was a “rock-ribbed” Republican, but no one had ever dwelt on politics before. Depressed by Reagan’s wide popularity, with all it suggested about the irresponsibility of the electorate, an ill omen for the future—if hardly a surprise to a reader of history—I couldn’t bring myself to visit Grand Rapids the next summer, and so on for several years. A while ago I had decided to resume visits, only to be held back, partly no doubt by inertia but also by hospital stays and periods of convalescence. To be sure, I began work on a continuation of my parents’ lives through 1932, when Father reluctantly retired from teaching. But I had to leave the draft unfinished for lack of data, especially on property holdings in and about Grand Rapids. So far, I’ve not even begun gathering material for the two final sections projected, on Father’s and Mother’s life from 1932 to his death in 1943 and on her widowhood and long siege as a helpless invalid.^{^[83]}

Instead, while continuing to revise the sections already finished, I began in late 1982 to write about the summer of 1936 I spent in Europe. After finishing an account, in the spring of 1983, I went on to write about the years as a Harvard undergraduate, the account complete by the next spring (1984). Revisions of these manuscripts went on sporadically into the summer of 1987. During that interval I also began setting down what I remember from early childhood. No research would be needed, but I gave up before the draft was finished, mostly for want of materials to refresh memory.

There seems to be a gap of a year or so after doing these pieces before I began putting together the present study, stimulated by getting Suzy and Brad Mother’s old trunk from Ann Arbor days, filled with manuscripts and correspondence. This last effort I have called “Writing of a ‘Generalist’”—as Father might have said, “…of a jack of all trades, master of none.” However described, the effort has been to draw extracts of autobiography for family members and perhaps a few old friends. Neither the list of writings (Appendix A) nor the youthful efforts reprinted (Appendix B) nor the present essay would be of wider interest. Indeed, all one may say with assurance, about this effort as about the memoirs mentioned above, is that to compile such materials—experiencing the memories they brought—has been absorbing, if at times troubling, for me.

^{^[1]}Düsseldorf, Duisborg, and Ruhrort, occupied on 8 March 1921, in response to German “delays” in paying reparations. The “occupation of the Ruhr,” properly speaking, came in early 1923 on a similar occasion.

^{^[2]}So called, because the elementary school had once been on Fountain Street, on the spot taken over in 1910 by the enlarged Central High School. Relocated in a new building, it stood on grounds of about one-half acre at the corner of Lyon Street and College Avenue.

^{^[3]}Having been held back an extra half-year in kindergarten, as too young for promotion. Those named below, and others in the room—many of whom I could name, but no longer place in their seats—were in the second half of the second grade. In 1922 I was jumped a half year, perhaps for the sake of appearances. It was obvious I could do anything the others could; indeed I was helping some of them with their work.

^{^[4]}Percy Peck was principal heir of the founder of Peck’s Drug Store.

^{^[5]}A sister of Mrs. Bowman, Miss Camilla Shanahan, gave the first evening dance I was to attend, in the fall of 1928 (or spring of 1929?). I can’t say whether it was a “formal” occasion, only that girls kept “programs” (as at the first “tea dance” I attended in the same school year, on the mezzanine of the Old Rowe Hotel). The Bowmans lived across the way from Miss Shanahan on the south side of Fulton Street west of Madison Avenue. (Bobby Baxter’s family—the Baxter Laundry—lived around the corner; Kathryn MacNaughton’s—her father was a high school principal—in a smaller place about a block to the east).

^{^[6]}An exception: a short appreciation of Velasquez, done for an art class.

^{^[7]}Suzy and Jamie, you may remember that cottage, not much changed—still no indoor toilet—where we all stayed overnight with Mother in August 1959 courtesy of Mason Howard, youngest son of J.H. Howard.

^{^[8]}For a short account, see “The Young Family”.

^{^[9]}See description and illustrations of the “Smith Premier,” a possible ancestor of my machine, in The Encyclopædia Brittanica (11th edition), Volume XXVIII, p. 502. The Smith Premier had been introduced in 1890, according to Bruce Bliven, Jr., The Wonderful Writing Machine, New York, 1954, p. 94.

^{^[10]}In effect the junior high school and the expanding junior college (which had started in the “new” high school building had traded places.

^{^[11]}And possible in the eighth or ninth grade.

^{^[12]}See Appendix B.

^{^[13]}Other books included were by the fictitious “Trader Horn,” by the silly comic traveler called Richard Halliburton, by Charles Lindbergh (We), and by T.E. Lawrence (Revolt in the Desert). Beginning in the fall of 1929 Art and I were no longer at the farm during the school week. We were free to stay nights at 311 Lyon Street from Monday through Thursday or Friday, so that we could take part in afternoon and occasional evening activities. Whenever possible, Mother and Father often left for the farm not long after school let out. Saturdays were dealt with ad hoc. (By then I held a driver’s license.)

^{^[14]}In the days when the Gamma Delts had functioned openly under school auspices as the Good fellows, Father had become faculty adviser (“frater in facultate”). Some time earlier, I believe, my uncle Percy Shafer had belonged. Neither circumstance would have been known to my generation: I wasn’t then aware of either one myself.

^{^[15]}My friend Camilla (mentioned above, page **) was no longer about during the season, having been sent “east to school,” to the Choate School for girls, in Boston.

^{^[16]}Until initiated, a candidate was called a “scut,” usage apparently derived from twentieth century “hospital talk,” in which the word meant “junior intern.” See H.L. Mencken, citing a work of 1927, in The American Language, New York, Knopf, 1948, pp. 755-6. That meaning in turn might well have come from the original (and still standard) one: “tail of a hare (or deer),” conspicuous when the animal is on the run.

^{^[17]}Camp Roger was a sizeable wooded property (some 80 acres, as I recall) surrounding Little Bostwick Lake, to the north and east of town, given to St. Mark’s in memory of Roger Anderson, once a choirboy.

^{^[18]}Howard Holmes Ellis, later to be known as “M.”

^{^[19]}For an early evaluation of my attitudes and experience in school, written for Freshman English at Harvard, see in Appendix B the concluding section of “Looking Backward at Seventeen.”

^{^[20]}“Years as an Undergraduate, 1931-35,” pp. **-**.

^{^[21]}For a little background on Lyman Butterfield (1909-82), Bernard DeVoto (1897-1955), and Robert Hillyer (1895-1961), see “Years as Undergraduate…,” pp. **-**. In Freshman composition the general practice was to assign a composition weekly; in the other courses, we may well have written more irregularly.

^{^[22]}Under “Writings at Harvard,” tutorial papers and a term paper for English 92.

^{^[23]}See “Years as an undergraduate…,” pp.***

^{^[24]}A teacher of composition and writer of short stories for magazines, also at least one novel, set in “down East” Maine, his area. See “Years as an undergraduate…,” pp.***

^{^[25]}Presumably the LeBaron Russell Briggs prize for “honors essays.” Mr. Briggs was a one-time teacher of composition and former dean of the College.

^{^[26]}As described in “Years as an undergraduate…,” p.***. As also noted, Professor Kittredge did have a comment on the title. Ibid., p.***.

^{^[27]}“Years as an undergraduate…,” p.***.

^{^[28]}The Prefaces of Henry James, Paris, Jouve et Cie, 1931; Henry James: Les Années Dramatiques, Paris, Jouve et Cie, 1931.

^{^[29]}Oscar Cargill, The Novels of Henry James, New York, Macmillan, 1961, pp. 119, 195.

^{^[30]}California Zinfandel, bought from a neighborhood grocer by the half gallon, a wine then (though no longer) in low repute.

^{^[31]}Among the graduate papers that are missing, thus not listed in Appendix A, is at least one seminar paper, on “The Horation ideal in American literature, 1700-65,” done in the spring term of 1939 for Professor H.M. Jones. As I recall, he liked it.

^{^[32]}The students tutored at Harvard I met in Holyoke House; those at Radcliffe, in Longfellow Hall or across Appian Way in _______________ House.

^{^[33]}At 70 Hammond Street we took over the apartment vacated by Mary and Leonard Stevens and new daughter Martha. Mary Emerson Stevens (Radcliffe, ’31) had been brought up in Cambridge just off Brattle Street. The Stevenses went to New Haven; Leonard (Harvard ’29) was to teach at Yale for some years before moving to Exeter, where he was to stay until retirement.

^{^[34]}Bob, who was from East Grand Rapids, had been a roommate of Art’s in Eliot House. He was to drop out of Law School after a year.

^{^[35]}Of the equivalent of twelve courses, the graduate record shows A or A- except in one course and two half-courses (B, B-, B+).

^{^[36]}For the record: In early June 1942 I was sent to Fort Custer (near Kalamazoo, Michigan) to be mustered in, then to Camp Crowder (near Neosho, Missouri). There, after basic training, I was set to interviewing recruits for training assignment in the Signal Corps. After less than a year, bored, I applied to the “Army Specialized Training Program” and was sent in July 1943 to Colorado State College at Fort Collins for assignment. Through Jim Mathias (met at Camp Crowder) I came to know George Lobbenberg. When Jim and I were sent in late summer to Washington University, St. Louis, mainly (as it turned out) to learn Italian, George suggested I look up Tee, whom he had known at the University of Missouri. Friendship, courtship, and finally marriage in early March 1944 were soon followed by transfer for assignment to Fort Warren (near Cheyenne, Wyoming, where we stayed). First I was sent to camp near Ogden, Utah, to serve with an “Italian Service Company,” of prisoners of war ready to “collaborate.” In early summer we followed that company to Seattle, Washington, where the Italians went to work in the port of embarkation. I stayed there till well into the fall of 1945, then being sent to a camp near Riverside, California to await discharge. My turn came in early January 1946, via a “processing center” in Chicago.

^{^[37]}Cf. conclusion to “Years as an Undergraduate…,” pp. ***.

^{^[38]}Tee meanwhile was to our getting settled in Washington. In the years just after the war rental housing remained in very short supply. For more than six months I was mostly alone, briefly in an apartment in Anacostia (suggested by Ed Cooper); beginning in early summer in an apartment in Buckingham, North Arlington County, Virginia, a large wartime development, staying with Gus Hoenack while Peg was out West visiting family, an opening picked up by Tee. Finally I spent a while in a rented room in South Arlington. Along in the fall Tee found a place at “Edlee,” Edward T. Dunlap’s estate off Persimmon Tree Road in Maryland, a some-time tenant house, where she and Suzy joined me. In May 1947 she got us a apartment in Fairlington, a wartime development out Shirley Highway in South Arlington, briefly to be Jamie’s first home: more commodious, close to the Pentagon, shopping, and of course neighbors. In 1949, after more looking, Tee located a place to buy: Green Hill, off Ager Road, West Hyattsville, Maryland, where we moved in September, while I still had about a year to go at the Pentagon. Green Hill, with its nice farm house—architect-designed, with handsome quarter-sawed pine flooring—was almost idyllic, if also inconvenient. And it took Tee some time to redecorate the place and furnish it.

^{^[39]}For a time it seemed I too might have to find another job. In 1947 the future of the OPD History Unit came into question, and Ray introduced me to an Operations man in the new Agency, who fortunately found my Italian wanting. During the same period I took and passed the written examinations for the Foreign Service. But with the future of the unit reestablished in 1948 within the Office of Military History as the Strategic Plans Branch, I readily gave up the prospect of entering the Foreign Service.

^{^[40]}The Ph.D. was granted in 1949. Ray had spent three years in graduate school before appointment as a Junior Fellow in 1941. In 1942 he had taken leave to work in OSS.

^{^[41]}Ray S. Cline, Washington Command Post: Operations Division, GPO, 1951, p. xi.

^{^[42]}Of the first six months’ work the only record I have is of a monograph that was to provide chiefly a basis for Chapter XV in the history “The USSR in the US-British Plans and Operations in 1942,” dated 2 April 1948—cited by T.H. Vail Hotter in The Persian Corridor and Aid to Russia, GPO, 1952, fn. 8, p. 179.

^{^[43]}As in the series Grand Strategy in the British official history.

^{^[44]}And finally cleared in late September 1950. I was held up by having written a letter of testimony for Wechs, then on Secretary George Marshall’s staff at State and under attack by McCarthyites. As I was to learn, I was held back also by curiosity about my year 1941/42 on the farm.

^{^[45]}True enough, though a couple of years later an exception was made for Richard M. Leighton and Robert W. Coakley, Global Logistics and Strategy, 1940-43, GPO, 1955.

^{^[46]}Strategic Planning for Coalition Warfare, 1941-42, p. x.

^{^[47]}John Keegan, The Second World War, New York, Viking, 1989, p. 597. The author refers to “splendid documentary surveys of joint Anglo-American strategic decision-making…” in these volumes of the “great American official history.”

^{^[48]}As explained, with background, by Stetson Conn, a co-author of volumes in the World War II series, later (1958-71) Chief Historian, in an interesting passage of a conference paper of 1971, “Preparing the Army’s History of the Second World War,” in World War II, and Account of its Documents, ed. James E. O’Neill and Robert W. Krauskopf, Vol. 8 of “National Archives Conferences,” Washington, D.C., Howard University, 1976, pp. 218ff.

^{^[49]}Besides those histories of World War II cited above and below in the text, see, for example, Arthur Bryant, The Turn of the Tide, London, 1957; the series Grand Strategy in the British official history of the was, specifically Vols. II (1957), III (1964), and IV (1972); The Conferences at Washington 1941-42 and Casablanca, 1943, in “Foreign Relations of the United States,” 90th Congress, 2d Session, House Document No. 354, GPO, 1968; Russell F. Weigley, The American Way of War, New York, Macmillan, 1973, Chapter 14; and Roosevelt and Churchill/Their Secret Wartime Correspondence, ed. Francis L. Loewenheim, Harold D. Langley, and Manfred Jonas, New York, Saturday Review Press/E.P. Dutton & Co., Inc., 1975. (I haven’t looked into the 1987 3-volume edition of the “complete” correspondence, which goes back to 1933).

^{^[50]}But noted by the official biographer of General Marshall. See Forrest C. Pogue, George C. Marshall/Ordeal and Hope, 1939-42, New York, 1966, p. 443.

^{^[51]}See, for example, the remarks of John Keegan, cited above, fn. 47, and those of Liddell Hart, quoted below in the text p.***.

^{^[52]}I haven’t located a copy (or a record) to cite.

^{^[53]}Probleme des zweiten Weltkrieges, ed. Andreas Hillgruber, Köln, Berlin, Kiepenheuer & Witsch, 1967, pp. 42-74. The passage in question, entitled “Strategische Planungen des USA, 1939,” is from pp. 11-31 in Strategic Planning…1939-42.

^{^[54]}American Defense Policy in Perspective, from Colonial Times to the Present, ed. Raymond G. O’Connor, New York, John Wiley, 1965, pp. 242-256. The excerpts are from Chapters V (pp. 97-102, 113-115) and XII (pp. 266-278).

^{^[55]}B.H. Liddell Hart, History of the Second World War, New York, Putnam’s, 1970, p. 316. Of the whole series, “The United States Army in World War II,” only two other volumes are cited, one by H.M. Cole on the Lorraine campaign, and one by George F. Howe on the North African campaign.

^{^[56]}And the co-author, along with our long-time next door neighbor S. Everett Gleason (Boston, Harvard AB and Ph.D., ex-OSS), of two acclaimed volumes on the political and diplomatic background of American entrance in the war: The Challenge to Isolation/1937-40 and The Undeclared War/1940-41, New York, Harpers, 1952 and 1953.

^{^[57]}