page_0001

2 , Southwood Lawn Road ,
Highgate, N. 6.
3rd January, 1931 .

Dear John Buchan ,

Last session was so crowded that I had much less time
for talking with you than I should have liked, especially about
your penetrating letter on my attempt at a statement of my views
of life, which you were kind enough to read and to advise me on.

In the quietness of the Christmas recess I have reread
your letter and also the typescript, and I find myself obliged to
accept the soundness of practically every criticism you made.
The
sections on Democracy and Politics are too propagandist and too
little constructive, and I am scrapping both. I think you are
right, too, in saying that there are two books here and that each
would be better away from the other. So I have rewritten the
Foreword, left the autobiographical chapter alone, except for the
Civil Service side, which I have substantially cut down, and gone
straight on to the religious section, dropping everything else out
of the book.

As regards the over-emphasis on the Eastern mystics, I
don't know if you are right in saying that al l they have to tell
is found in better form in Plato and Plotinus, for, terribile dictu.
I haven't read eitherl But, anyway, it was the Eastern mystics
who opened up his field of thought to me and I can't be sufficiently
grateful for that. So I have reduced this but little.

And now I want to ask a great favour of you, and that is
to ask that you will write a foreword to the book for me. There
are two reasons why I should like this very much. The first is
that I need "launching" in this field, and the book would "go"
enormously better with a foreword by you than without it, - (this
is , I'm afraid, a selfish reason) - and the second is that there is
no-one in the House whose company in the book I should so much like
to have .

I've no title, of course, to ask anything of the kind, but
if you could I should be exceedingly grateful.

The revised typescript will be completed on the 16th January
and then I could send you a copy.

All good wishes for the New Year.

Yours ever,
W.J. Brown, M.P.

John Buchan, Esq., M. P.,
St. Stephen's House,
S .W.1.