in deadly earnest. It is probably widely representative. It expresses very typically a vast movement towards non-co-operation which will involve the profoundest changes in our social life. But it would take up far beyond the limitations set to newspaper articles to discuss the possible treaty that may at last end this profound instinctive breach. LIII LIVING THROUGH: THE TRUTH ABOUT AN INTERVIEW 6.9.24 It is a foolish thing for a writer to see an interviewer. Other men may want an intermediary to tell the world of their thoughts and intentions, but a writer should be able to do his own telling. Yet I am always falling again into this folly. They come along with such nice introductions. They are so young and respectful and reassuring. They do not make it clear that they mean to turn your unguarded civilities into an article until quite at the end of the encounter. And then arrives the interview, with one’s casual suggestions made into oracular statements, clothed in uncongenial and sometimes horrible phrases, and mixed up with one’s visitor’s ideas and--amplifications. And everybody takes notice of it and judges one by it. One’s writings may be as copious as the Nile in flood, but nobody ever seems to get concerned about what one says in _them_. But let loose an interview, and people quote your alleged utterances as though they were your most polished thoughts, write articles rubbing in the young gentleman’s choicest phrases, preach sermons reproving your unwonted expressions. They seem to feel that at last they have really got you. I write with one occasion fresh in my mind. A little while ago an interviewer told the world that I said the next few years will be an age of fun--the world was tired of tragedy. For my own part I was to write funny books henceforth.... I shall probably never hear the last of that. Oddly enough I do not remember that particular interviewer at all distinctly, nor what friend’s introduction it was let him in on me. I shouldn’t know him again. But I do remember the conversation to which he gave this astonishing twist. I remember my train of thought because it is one that has been rather frequently with me nowadays.