WASHINGTON, Sept. 25—Rather a showery, windy day, with gray skies but it felt very nice to be out again and I enjoyed even such a prosaic errand as having my hair and nails done!

I was particularly interested to see a few days ago that John Masefield, the Poet Laureate of England, as he landed to read his poem at Harvard, made mention of the fact that our WPA was taking into account the needs of artists and writers, especially poets. He emphasized the need the world has today for poetry. Certainly the world would be a poorer place if it did not have "Mainsail Hall", and "Reynard the Fox." There is a vigor about Masefield's writing which carries you into whatever he is describing and makes you see it through his eyes. Let us hope that here in America we may have saved some future John Masefield for posterity to enjoy.

The papers are rather terrifying reading these days with Japan taking over Shanghai and the ever growing tenseness in Europe. I have a curious kind of resentment about the physical damage done to age old monuments in Spain. It seems as though a generation that had gone mad was wiping out things which were really not their own heritage only, but the heritage of the world at large. We have looked upon these things so long as sources of education and culture and pleasure, that to think of them all being destroyed in the course of a few weeks is a very curious sensation.

I wondered if I were the only one who felt this but my little nurse burst out with the same sentiments, and since then one or two others have expressed the same point of view. I wish it would become strong enough so that nations that have possessions which serve the whole world would feel a stewardship about them.

My daughter and her husband were here for the day yesterday and flew back to New York last night, proving the fact that lady luck is some one to be wooed! When they left they were told that they might not get through to Newark. The plane which landed fifteen minutes ahead of them had circled around a long time trying to find a hole to come through. Their plane came in to a smooth clear landing with no trouble at all!