Letter from Murray C. Bernays to Katherine Fite

M. C. BERNAYS Windy Hill Farm Roxbury, Connecticut 1 November Dear Katherine, The trivia first: The correct mode of address is "Dear Murray." Some times women make it "Murray darling,' and "Honey" is not unheard of. When I was young, with the vigor, vanity, and susceptibilities appropri- ate to that time of life, the more affectionate modes of address were a great peril to me . It would not have mattered, had I been a strong character; in that case I would have left the wreckage strewn around and gone my own cheery way; unhappily I was so con- stituted that I suffered wreckage instead of creating it. I'm sure you will love this fascinating lapse into autobiography. I could go on at great length, but, suddenly overwhelmed by reticence and the imminence of the post, must return to more immediate things. Your first query is now checked off. Rushing off to communion on this day of obligation, the Not- so-Little woman looked back over her shoulder and said very firmly "Louise, of course.' It was a characteristic response : firm, direct, and to the point. A happy thing it is, that our modest domestic stage is not crowded with two like me . That cryptic message from Williamsburg meant only that I hoped the mission would be accomplished in time for the lot of you to see the New Year in back hore at home. I could put forward high reasons TRUMAN of State for so hoping; or interest in the desires and welfare of 53° "NATIONAL AND my erstwhile confreres, their wives, children, and sweethearts ti do APCHIVES not insist that the first and third must be mutually exclusive); or RECORDS ADHIN." I might interpret the message as a confession of feeling guilty be- Es cause I did not last the course. The trouble with me is that I talk first and think afterward, differing therein from some of our more notable commanders, who takk without thinking at all. I have been at some difficulty about writing since I read the in- dictment. It seems to me a poor piece of work. It lacks incisiveness and force. The people who constructed it lacked understanding of the real mission. They wrote for their own timorous legalisms instead of for his- tory, and in so doing they missed the contemporary reader as well. I cannot think when there has been such an opportunity for lawyers to trans- Late technical principles into the moving verities of justice, or for statesmen to create, out of our own suffering history, beacon lights to guide us through our besetting problems. No, my friend, I am not sug- gesting that we should have resorted to purple passages or the turgidities of so-called eloquence. In point of fact, that is exactly what the in- dictment now is : turgid. There were a hundred ways to do it right, once we had grasped the point -- which I think was missed -- that our job was to turn out a document whose legal sufficiency and moral impact sprang from simple, sinewy structure, and the marshalling of facts so that they spoke starkly for themselves. What Jackson achieved in his report to the President could just as well have been achieved by his staff in the in- dictment, had they understood what they were doing. I see now why all the advance ballyhoo spoke insistently of the 25,000 word length. I kept hoping that the bulk would be in attached exhibits, or, somehow, similarly