Hyde Park, N.Y.,
August 5, 1936.
 
 
My dear Dodd:-
 
Many thanks for your note.  I am sorry, indeed, that I have not had the
chance of seeing you again before you sail.
 
 
The election this year has, in a sense, a German parallel.  If the
Republicans should win or make enormous gains, it would prove that an
85% control of the Press and a very definite campaign of misinformation
can be effective here just as it was in the early days of the Hitler
rise to power.
Democracy is verily on trial.  I am inclined to say freedom of the
press in this country, i.e., freedom to confine itself to actual facts
in its news columns and freedom to express editorially any old opinion
it wants to.
 
 
Drop me a line soon after your return.  I should like to have your
slant, in the utmost confidence, as to what would happen if Hitler were
personally and secretly asked by me to outline the limit of German
foreign objectives during, let us say a ten year period, and to state
whether or not he would have any sympathy with a general limitation of
armaments' proposal.  You cannot, of course, ask any questions
regarding this in such a way as to let any inference be drawn that we
were even thinking of such a thing.  I should merely like to get your
own opinion