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oo wrote. to the. State: Department, inforining. them we had always ha “publishers; he named them, . Before the publication of the. boo States, all our foreign publishers had cabled us for galleys, ‘which w sent... Ati no time had any of them refused a. book; they were particularly n thusiastic about the: galleys" “of: THE DEVIL'S: ADVOCATE, _Then,. all at onc our English, Swedish, . Norwegian, Dutch and Danish publishers. rejected thi book, with lame excuses, Only France, Italy and Spain took it; our. Fre publisher. said, "No matter who brings pressure to bear on me not to publish _ it,-lam going: to publish itt” " He. made no other comment, ca . a _ I know coincidences happen, but: 1 am now wondering if Herbert S Harris, in his high position in the State Department, has not had a hand in . this, and if he has not been behind the sudden decision of the Government not " to buy any more of our books for overseas libraries and the armed services, © . and the pressure which was put on our foreign publishers not to publish THE E DEVIL'S ADVOCATE, Tam the only major best- selling novelist in the United States who _— ‘is not tainted by "liberalism''and Communism, and who has never belonged [iM _ ' toa Communist front, Asa result the press, which is mainly “liberal, " has been furiously attacking me for years in their alleged "reviews," It seems, according to a raft of reviews now coming in about our new book, 'THE SOUND | OF THUNDER," that, because I state over and over again in this book, and in nation-wide talks, fhat a man's first duty is to God and his ¢ountry, and that Communism is a vile heresy against the nature of God and man, that my ideas are "anachronistic" and "alectic, One major review was particularly abusive, stating that the book was "unaccountably weighted on the side of * religion, '' Apparently the American Communists, and their fellow-traveling liberals, havine scored such triumphs against Joe McCarthy, the House an- Ame rican Cominittee, and the FBI, feel strong enough now to attack religion in accordance with their directives from Moscow, - The New York Times, who used to give us marvelous reviews until 1946 when they discovered we were not liberals," always reviewed our books, though abusive since 1946, They have not reviewed THE SCUND OF THUNDER, which is unprecedented. - As one of their editors wrote me in February, 1951, "If you wrote WAR AND PEACE tomorrow, we'd give you no credit for it, (Our) critics are laying for you, "' In our bitterness, we are beginning to wonder what protection an antivommunist has in the United states now, had we been Uon. .unists we'd have had the enthusiastic support of the press and would now be very wealthy} for, as liberal writers told me in New York, with contempt, that had we been "liberals" we'd not have had to pay any taxes, or only token payments, Per- @ : haps if my husband had fuught with the Spanish Communists, as did Hemingway, ‘ "7 we'd now be the darlings of the American 1 press and the Government, ~ ewe) an ; ‘I nae always had my suspicions of a psychiatrist -in Buffalo, one j Free NUE aise Re, of whom I wrote you before. We broke off friendly ee: eS ‘with him several years ago, as his proCommunist remarks angered us, He bragged to us that he had three agents of the Internal Revenue Service” "in the palm cf my hand, '' and that he was treating these men, At one time he was so angered, in 1949, by my condemnations of Communism, that he warned me I would-"get into trouble, "1 have just héard, through a friend, that he has been openly boasting that he "set" the Internal Revenue Service on us, to "put; us out of business, ' "with their fascist ideas, '' I knew the man was a fool, but. this has gone beyond folly. He laughed to me, in 1952, that people write to the FBI, accusing him of Communism, and that the agents immediately run to him to tell him of thia, and laugh with hi . 2 - lose the FBI America will be lost, ps T cannot believe this, though. te. oe £. incere]l ~ een Coon a _ e ee oe nner open rng rege cs