1943 [written later by LP]

Noon, Saturday Sept. 4

Dearest love:

I was surely surprised and happy when I opened the Fanny Farmer box last night and found your Sea Foam! I couldn't resist it, and ate most of the box - it is wonderful! I don't know its protein content, but I think that it may be rather high. And then was I surprised to find another box (which I have not yet opened) in with my pajamas! You are a little rascal, whom I love. Have you opened the box of candy which I left, and are there any good mints in it?

The country has been beautiful, as it always is; yesterday evening, between Barstow and Needles, there was a wonderful desert sunset over the purple hills. Now we are going through the mountains covered with little pines, just beyond Albuquerque. I have had fun thinking about you, and especially about the difficulties which we had in packing my bag and getting ready yesterday morning. I wish that you were along. One of the ten nights has gone by.

After having read Time yesterday I thought carefully about our major ward problem yesterday afternoon, and an idea burst into my head which is, I think, very promising; it still looks good to me after I have viewed it from this side and that for twenty hours, and, although only experiment will show its value, there is, I think, some chance that it will revolutionize one branch of ordnance, and perhaps another also (but there is, of course, a bigger chance that it won't come to anything). I believe that you are right in saying that I need to get away from the lab. (preferably with you as

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as traveling companion) in order to have new ideas: at home my time is not free, since I have always some duty awaiting me, whereas when I get away I feel free to make a broad mental survey of my work, and to ask myself whether some new direction may not be given to it. Now I am thinking about propellants; perhaps later I can think about immunochemistry; and always I have in my mind a pleasant background of happy thoughts about you.

After breakfast this morning (honey dew and hotcakes) I read Life (Sept. 6) in the lounge car, and was interrupted by Dr Clark, one of Giauque's men who is now a Lt.Col. in ordnance. We talked for a while, and then he went back to study a manual and I began this letter.

The weather has been fine - hot outside at Barstow and Needles. I haven't been off the train today.

I love you and our children, sweetheart.

Your own

Paddy

4 Sept.1943 [written later by LP]

Saturday evening.

Dearest love:

The day is going by. I have been going over the ACS program to decide what to do when I am not at explosives meetings, and I have read a copy of Newsweek also. It shocked me that the GOPs should give such an inferior thinker as Kelland an important job, and now his proposed post-war policy again shocks me. He says that there must be no surrender of American sovereignty - that "We will collaborate but we will not amalgamate...But when we have done it...we must remain a sovereign nation....We will become a part of no utopian superstate, no partner in Union Now, no tail wagging at the end of any dog, but a nation, proud, just, generous." He is determined that the next war will be a really big one.

Is that not an astounding story in Time about the 23 year

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old American aviator, shot down over Europe, who wandered for five months, knowing no language but English, before he escaped?

Our train is late. If I have time in Chicago I shall go to see Phoebe.

I am not getting hungry, and shall soon have dinner. I have eaten no candy today, because I want to save it.

I love you, darling, and shall be glad to see you again.

Your own

Paddy

P.S. I've wondered why my air mail letter have reached you so slowly on past trips - I saw a man from the train at Las Vegas empty all letters into a bag & take them on the train - perhaps the RR doesn't recognize air mail.