Inside, Outside [antikvár]

1 Introducing Myself A LL hell has been breaking loose around here, and my peaceful re- \ treat in the Executive Office Building may be coming to a sudden rude end. I suppose it was too good to last. It has been a curious hiatus, unimaginable to me a few months ago — first of all, my becoming a Special Assistant to the President, especially to this President; second, and even more surprising, my finding it no big deal, but rather an oasis of quiet escape from corporate tax law. I've at last pieced together the mysterious background of my appointment. The hap-hazardncss of it will appear absurd, but the longer I'm in Washington the more I realize that most people in this town tend to act with the calm forethought of a beheaded chicken. It gives me the cold shudders. Fortunately for my peace of mind, the bookcase in this large gloomy rcxim contains, amid rows and rows of dusty government publications, the seven volumes of Douglas Southall Freeman's George Washinjfton: A Biojjrapljy, and Churchill's six volumes on the Second World War. I dip into these now and then to reassure myself that things were not verA' different in the days of those great men. Churchill calls the Versailles Treat)', the produa of the combined wisdom and long labor of all the top politicians of Europe, "a sad and complicated idiocy." From what I see here, this description can be extended to ahnost all politics. No wonder the world is in such a godawful mess, and has been, it appears, since Hammurabi ordered his cuneiform scribes to start scratching his great deeds on clay tablets. Let me describe the jolt I got the other day, to gi\e you my feel of things at this world hub. When I first flew down from New York