January 1-2, 1952
What a New Year's Day!
I have talked to Bess. She has a sore throat in Independence. I have talked to Vivian and to Mary Jane. My baby was out until 3 A.M. in Kansas City, so-I couldn't talk to her when I called her mother.
What a New year's Day! 1952 is here and so am I-gloomy as can be. But we must look to the program of world peace, and keep on looking. I talked to Bill Hillman on the subject last night and tonight. If that peace program can go through we face the greatest age in history. I wish I was seventeen instead of sixty-seven, with the same urge I had at seventeen to learn and to know world history. I spent a lot of time reading about the World's Great. Moses, Joshua, David, Solomon, Darius I and Cyrus the Great his uncle, Alexander, Hannibal, Caesar, Antoninus Pius, Hadrian, Titus, Marcus Aurelius Antonius, Rameses III, Cleopatra, Mark Antony, Augustus Caesar, Thothmes III, Plato, Socrates, Pericles, Demosthenes, Cicero, Catos, both of them, and then Charlemagne, his father Charles Martel, Roland, John Hunyadi at Belgrade, Saladin, Suleiman the Magnificent, Genghis Khan, Kubla Khan, Tamerlane, John Sobieski, Richelieu, Gustavus Adolphus of Sweden and Charles XII of Sweden, Alfred the Great, William of Normandy. The greatest of French Kings, Henry IV of France and King of Navarre, Francis I of France and Charles V of Spain. Elizabeth of England and Mary of Scotland. Sir Francis Drake and Captain Kidd, Martin Luther, Frederick the Great and Maria Theresa of Austria. Wellington and Lord Russell, Disraeli, Gladstone, Washington, Jefferson, Jackson, Lincoln, Grover Cleveland, Wilson, Franklin Roosevelt and the end!