Spencer Heath Archive

Item 1666

Carbon of a letter from Heath to Robert Stevens, Hamilton, Virginia

January 6, 1959 [?]

 

 

Dear Mr. Stevens:

 

     I am recalling the very pleasant chat you and I and my grandson had the day after Christmas in Waterford. It is certainly good to be in touch with some of the people who are standing up against bureaucratic encroachment on their liberties.

 

     I was also happy at your recognition that we must progress rather more by the good that we do than by the evil we resist. Surely the doers of evil “know not what they do,” and I am afraid that the doers of good are in like case. Not understanding the good that they do, they take time out from it to resist evil.

     I like my grandson’s illustration that it is not enough merely to do away with the swords; we must make them into plowshares. The salvation comes from producing more food, and has nothing to do with swords.

     Lincoln said he agreed that we should love our friends and destroy our enemies — by making friends of them.

     In your prospective bout with the bureaucrats, we surely wish you a most spectacular success. Meantime, we hope to keep on plugging for the profit-making, proprietary mode of public administration to undercut the present property and profit destroying political mode.

     With many pleasant recollections,

                       Sincerely yours,

 

SH/m

Encls.