NEW YORK, Monday—Following the lecture by Senator Margaret Chase Smith at Town Hall on Saturday morning the women present were asked to get up and state their political affiliation and their chief occupation or interest in life. It certainly was a varied and interesting galaxy of women and I think Senator Smith enjoyed this part of the program very much, though it seemed to me that the Democratic ladies rather outnumbered the Republicans!

Someone suggested that maybe more Republicans were away on a holiday in Florida. This was indignantly but good-naturedly denied by Mrs. Helen Reid. Other Republican women said that without question there were more Democratic women at the luncheon because they had more free time than Republican women!

Saturday evening I went to a play and enjoyed a pleasant evening's entertainment. We saw "The High Ground" by Charlotte Hastings. The plot, which works out along rather conventional lines to the solution of a murder, is not outstanding. But Margaret Webster and many other members of the cast are exceptionally fine and the atmosphere of the convent is unmistakable to anyone who has ever been in one.

I was with a young woman who had spent some time in a convent school and when I was around five years old I also spent a few weeks in a convent. But I would not have trusted my own memory of this setting had not my young friend murmured: "How wonderfully they have caught the atmosphere completely."

On Sunday Assistant Secretary of State Edward H. Barrett, in charge of Public Relations in the State Department, and Senator Benton of Connecticut were my guests on my televsion program. The discussion of the questions asked by our guests brought out some very interesting points on why we need to strengthen our propaganda in all the democratic states, and how we intend to do it.

I heard today from Robert P. Patterson and was much relieved to know that he was completely convinced that doing away with cartels was a wise procedure. He said that he had only accepted the request to go abroad to represent certain German interests because he felt that in some of the arrangements that had been made quite the right safeguards had not been worked out and he hoped to be helpful in doing so.

This answers one of the questions that bothered me where the German scene is concerned. But I am still not completely understanding of the reason for some of our other policies and I hope I shall someday be able to have those explained to my satisfaction at least.

Late Sunday afternoon I went to a meeting of the Howard University Alumni to give their achievement award for the year to Dr. E. Franklin Frazier, who heads the sociologist department of Howard University. He was one of the members of the UNESCO Committee that wrote the statement on race. I always thought it was a wonderful achievement for that committee to come to a meeting of minds on this highly controversial subject.