The Catoctin Conversation

The author, drawing equally upon his experience and his fancy, brings together six men, including himself, at a hunting lodge in the Catoctin Mountains on an evening in 1943. They are Franklin Delano Roosevelt. Winston Churchill. "Putzi" Hanfstaengl, Bernard Baruch, Harry Hopkin, and John ("Jay") Franklin Carter.

The main topics of conversation are the fate of Germany, the future of Russia, the role of thg British Empire, the problem of Asia, the maintenance of peace after the foreseen victory over totalitarianism, the philosophy of government. But these are not the only subjects discussed. Plato. Jehovah's Witnesses. Thomas Jefferson's merits and defects as an architect, Prussian militarism, and Southern Democrats are all debated with verbal swordplay characteristic of the participants.

Had the book been written by one who lived in an ivory tower from 1939 to 1945 it would have academic interest only. But Jay Franklin was on the inside of things, knew the men whose views he here undertakes to reproduce, stood in a confidential relationship with President Roosevelt and his war policies, and according to Sumner Welles, is "a skilled and informed reporter in whom. I know, the President had great confidence.”