"I am afraid it is true that your country [U.S.A.] is very much in the grip of reactionaries as regards public libraries and also as regards teachers. I think, however, that the failure of liberal propaganda is partly the fault of the Liberals. They do not write with sufficient simplicity or with sufficient vigour, and many of them are apt to give an impression of being rather frightened. Ideas and ways of thinking percolate down more than one might be inclined to suppose. Take the word 'idea', a learned and technical word in the philosophy of Plato, but now a common word on the lips of charladies. Or take again the growth of Christianity during the first three centuries with the whole weight of official propaganda against it, or the growth of the Labour Party in England during the first quarter of the present century. Such examples seem to me to prove that one need not despair."