1940 January 22

"I think it would be wrong,--and certainly a fatal injustice to your story...to allow Mr. Latham to be its sole and final arbiter. If he really thought that the book was an inexplicable deviation, and that in refusing it, he was doing you a service,--and not himself;--I should applaud your generosity toward him, and your courage of the less obvious kind, in treating his letter as a decree."