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a tape of this conversation--I didn't know what we would be talking about--and here we are gossiping about the football team and various professors at Columbia!" He had been a star scholar at Columbia. Clifton Fadiman thinks he had the makings of a truly great poet.

What a strange man Chambers was! I never did really like him, but I must say that I think he was telling the truth. I've never heard Hiss‘story. I didn't meet Hiss until years later. I was introduced to him in a restaurant, and needless to say, he was not very cordial when he met me...nor do I blame him. Interestingly enough, Knopf did a book on the Hiss side of the thing written by Alistair Cooke. Cooke, who is a friend of mine, defends Hiss. Sometime I would like to sit down with Alger Hiss and listen to his side of the case. I don't know whether he will ever do it. Probably not. I think that he never will forgive me for publishing Witness.

You did your duty as a publisher.

Not only did my duty...it was a great best-seller.

Exactly. But there were problems.

If it hadn't been for David McDowell, I would never have seen him. This was entirely wrong of me.

Another hero of the far right with whom I had an interesting relationship was George Sokolsky. I'll tell about this and then we've got to call it a day.