Mrs. Whitman has told me of your call, and reminded me that, when the matter was brought up by Curtis Benjamin, you wrote me a memorandum regarding the possibility of publication of campaign speeches.1 The purport of his letter, as I now see it, was that McGraw Hill would like to compile and publish some of the speeches I have made in recent years. At that time, if my memory serves me correctly, we rather evaded the proposition, deciding to let the matter ride for a while and to determine, later, the desirability of such a move.
Some time before Emmet Hughes left, he came to me pushing this general idea and expressed his belief that it should be done.2 I--at that time--was guilty of failure to examine the record and made the possibly unwarranted assumption that he was talking about the same proposition that had been advanced last May. I merely told him that I would be guided by what the staff thought about the matter after a full examination of appropriate speeches, and thought no more about it. A bit later he began to talk to me about Ken McCormick of Doubleday and, since Doubleday and Company were the publishers of the book I wrote some years ago, this seemed perfectly natural to me.3
As a consequence of all this, it now appears that I may have put myself and some of my staff in an embarrassing position, because of my tacit acceptance of the proposal that Doubleday might do the job--if done at all.
Under the circumstances, I wonder whether it might be better again to duck the whole thing. As you know, I have always been doubtful of the value of such a volume, published at this time. In some future year--strictly for historical purposes--there might be some virtue in such a venture, but the objective is not particularly plain to me at this moment.
Incidentally, I am not certain as to the identity of the staff members with whom Emmet consulted, but it was my impression that he was bringing to me a staff opinion, not merely his own. In this, of course, I could be mistaken.
After you have thought over the whole matter, I should like to have your comments.4
