SC0103_2018-046_Lesnett_1947-09-09

September 9, 1947

Dear Mother and Daddy,

I have just had a very interesting morning. Ruth and I went on a tour of the National Archives and the Department of Agriculture this morning with a group of delegates from the International Statistical Conference. Ruth was supposed to act as French interpreter for those who didn't speak English. It proved to be rather embarassing because Ruth had understood that she was to be an interpreter only for the wives of some of the delegates when they wanted to go shopping or something. As it turned out she was supposed to talk to these delegates - all of whom were extremely interested and of course asked rather technical questions - all about the national archives and the Agricultural Department, which would be hard enough to do in English, much less French. There were three in

the lunch who couldn't speak a word of English. One was a Yogoslav who was very interesting. He was quite young and very good-looking, much more Nordic looking than you would expect a Yugoslav to look. Ruth and I had seen him in the loby of the hotel and hoped he would be going because he looked much nicer than most of the delegates. Most of them are short and ugly and old. As soon as we started through the archives, he asked me in French for a translation, but all I could say was to tell him to ask Ruth. I got that out in very correct French. In the meantime I talked to a young Belgian from Antwerpe who spoke very good English, as well as French, Spanish, and German. He was the smallest person I think I have ever seen - I talked to him mostly about universities and American tourists. However, I was crushed that

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I couldn't talk to the young Yougoslav, and when he came up and asked me I couldn't speak French I was thrilled to death and I tried to explain to him in French how I had studied French but that I did have trouble with my pronunciation. Afterwards he suggested that we might have a small conversation in French and I tried to tell him that I would like to, I think the way I phrased it in French meant I didn't care to. I did much better with a Greek who turned out to be the Secretary of Agriculture in Greece. At the National Archives there was some Revolutionary War material and so I explained a little about the material in French to him and he told me a little story about some horses. However, I found all my French conversation rather poor and particularly since I got it mixed up with Spanish and every once in a

while a Spanish word or so would slip out. Coming home on the bus I had a conversation with an Egyptian who was a geological chemist or something. Fortunately for me he spoke very good English and we just talked about the difference in various universities and in the gedeogical make-up of the Anilta States and Egypt. It really was very educational.

The trip in itself was very interesting. In the National Archives Building we went through all the stacks and the processing and rehairtating rooms or old documents. A guide explained to us all the process. The public is never allowed in these parts of the building so I was quite lucky to get in on the tour. We also went through the exibition rooms where they had all the Japanese and German surrender papers and also a Japanese declaration of war which I didn't even know existed. At the Department of Labor we

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just sat in a room and listened to some speeches by various department heads.

The talks mostly delt with the necessity of having statistics on the agricultural situation in various countries. Poor Ruth all this time had to take notes and explain later what was said to those that could not understand. I sat there next to her with the little French dictionary I had concealed in my purse and looked up all the words she needed. However, it was still very sad because a business interpreter with a technical vocabulary was really needed, and they should never have asked her to act as interpreter when they knew she just had college French.

After this delightful experience, we went over to one of Ruth's friend's house for lunch. She had a very nice time talking mostly about college. Ruth's friend, Joyce Posson, also had another girl over who went to the same college - a women's