Dear
Al: Life gets more difficult by the minute. I really could use a good bridge game.1
I am not going to bore you with reciting all of our Mid East troubles; in many ways you know just as much about them as I do. At least I am certain that you are acquainted with the British and French side of the story.
Strangely enough, I have seen some of my old British friends in the last few days and most of them are truly bitter about the action taken by their Government. One man said, "This is nothing except Eden trying to be bigger than he is." I do not dismiss it that lightly. I believe that Eden and his associates have become convinced that this is the last straw and Britain simply had to react in the manner of the Victorian period.
If one has to have a fight, then that is that. But I don't see the point in getting into a fight to which there can be no satisfactory end, and in which the whole world believes you are playing the part of the bully and you do not even have the firm backing of your entire people.2
But the only further remark I want to make on that is that sleep has been a little slower to come than usual. I seem to go to bed later and wake up earlier--which bores me. Of course in some ways the situation in the satellites calls for just as much concern, but in a far different way. I most prayerfully hope that the Russians are sincere in saying that they are going to withdraw their troops from those areas, although I notice that they didn't say anything about Czechoslovakia in making this offer.3
I have finished campaigning. Last night in Philadelphia I made a speech that dealt largely with foreign relations and which had almost no allusions in it whatsoever to the political campaign.4 My reasons for stopping active campaigning were principally two. My whole chance for doing something constructive for the United States is to have a good, comfortable popular plurality. If I have not that "comfortable plurality" now, nothing I can say in the next four days will change the thing significantly. If I do not have that, I would rather not be elected. If I could get only 50.1 percent of the vote, then I would feel that the American people have gone so far away from my philosophy of government that nothing I could do thereafter would be of any real help. This I think in spite of the fact that Stevenson and Kefauver, as a combination, are the sorriest and weakest pair that ever aspired to the highest offices in the land.5
George told me the other day that he was going to write to you and give you a state-by-state analysis of election results--one on which you could depend absolutely!! I merely advised him that if he did that, he was not, in the next few days, to send you a frantic telegram and ask you to disregard the whole thing.6
I notice that as election day approaches, everybody gets the jitters. You meet a man and he is practically hysterical with the confidence of overwhelming victory, and sometimes you see that same man that evening and his face is a foot long with fright.
Respecting the election, I have one comment only for my good friends. If the American people decide that on the record they don't want me--that they think I have made too many mistakes to be trusted again--then you can be sorry for anyone you want in this world except me!!
I have heard many people say a fellow would go crazy doing nothing. But I think a life of raising prize cattle, going shooting two or three times a year, fishing in the summer, and interspersing the whole thing with some golf and bridge--and whenever I felt like talking or writing, doing it with abandon and with no sense of responsibility whatsoever--maybe such a life wouldn't be so bad. A man could pretend to have an office, establish his hours as twelve to one--and take one hour off for lunch!
In any event, America will return somewhat to normal about next Wednesday evening. Until then, I shall hunt a cyclone cellar!
Love to Grace. As ever
