He wrote in reply that I was mistaken; it was especially with my attitude towards sex that he disagreed. We exchanged some letters about the matter, and mentally prepared ourselves for that duel which will never be fought. In concluding the subject of alcohol, let me point out that Jack himself settled the controversy by voting for “California Dry” at the election held a few days before his death. His explanation was that while he enjoyed drinking, he was willing to forego that enjoyment for the sake of the younger generation; and it would indeed be a graceless ascetic who asked more than that! So far as concerns the matter of sex, the test of a man’s philosophy is that at the age of forty he has kept his belief in womankind, in the joy and satisfaction that true love may give. Where the philosophy of “self-expression” had led Jack London was known to many who heard him tell of a book he planned to write, giving the whole story of his experiences with women. He meant to write it with the same ruthless honesty he had used in “John Barleycorn”; revealing his tragic disillusionment, and his contempt for woman as a parasite, a creature of vanity and self-indulgence. Jack’s conquests among the sex had been many, and too easy, it would seem; like most fighters, he despised an unworthy antagonist. The women who threw themselves at his head came from all classes of society, drawn to him as moths to a flame; but it is evident that his philosophy was to blame for the fact that there were so few among them he could respect. There were surely many able to hold the interest of a great man, who did not share his philosophy, and therefore remained unnoticed by him. It is not generally the custom to write of these things in plain words; but in the case of Jack London it would be futile to do otherwise, because he spoke of them freely, and would have written of them in the same way. His whole attitude was a challenge to truth-telling, a call for frankness, even to the point of brutality. The book he planned was to be published under some such name as “Jack Liverpool”--which you must admit would hardly have been a very adequate disguise. I have heard one of his best friends say that he is glad Jack never lived to write it.