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We had a very nice time yesterday evening. The supper was good and I discovered that the girl worked at Our Wonderful World and that her cousin was the Washington representative of that organization; it was through meeting her cousin that I thought of working at OWW. Also, she roomed at one time with the present owner of our Penelope. What coincidences!

I will add a few words to this, for once. The fellow we had dinner with is very interesting. He can talk about the Soviet Union with some authority, because he lived in it for two years. He was living in Poland when the Russians took over the eastern half of that country in 1939. Shortly after that his family was, to use a term common in totalitarian countries, resettled; that is, everyone in the area was given a few hours to pack and the they were shipped, forty to a boxcar, out to the Ural Mountains.

He says that those Russians who are old enough to remember the days before the revolution believe, almost without exception, that life was much better then. However, he does not have much hope for revolution against the soviets. The younger people are not nearly as dissatisfied as the older ones, and the state controls everything so completely that noone dares act against it.

One day in 1942, his family was informed that an amnesty had been declared and they were to be exiled. Once again they were given a few hours to pack, and the entire household (including two overnight guests who just happened to be there at the wrong--or right--time) was again packed into a boxcar and shipped, this time, out of the country.

I had better stop now and mail this thing.

Jack