Dad's Lesson, On Amateurs and Professionals, Leadership at Monte Cassino

My father was in the American army that was held up for months before Monte Cassino. He had found a feather bed in a ruined farmhouse and dragged it into his foxhole. One day the American Colonel, a fearless man who had been a bank Vice President when the war started and who was ready to volunteer his men for anything as long as he remained two miles behind the lines, showed up with the British General. That was probably Alexander as the British were in command in the Mediterranean. The Colonel exploded at my father, threatening to put him on report and demanding that everything be cleaned up according to regulations. After the Colonel went off to make someone else miserable the English General, whose family had probably been doing that job for hundreds of years, came over with his swagger stick in one hand and his monocle in the other. He peered at my father's foxhole and raised his stick and cried out, "That's the spirit man. Forage man. Forage."

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When you think you are a god. You surrender to the Beast and have,
"No restraint. No restraint at all."

When I was at university we amused ourselves during the summer after my first year by playing with hypnotism. I was very good at it. One day I hypnotized a young woman who was a friend of mine and my set. She later became my freshman roommates girlfriend for a time. I brought her down slowly step by step, describing walking down a spiral staircase. At the bottom I asked her to describe where she was. She was in a very deep trance and this was not faked. She said that she was in a small room and that she could hear noises outside. She began to describe hearing what sounded like an animal outside that was trying to get in. I knew that something was wrong and I brought her back by walking her up the staircase until I could safely wake her up. Sometime later Erika Fromm came to a sherry hour at my dormitory and I described the incident. She became quite agitated and made me swear never to do that again. She told me that my friend was probably a paranoid schizophrenic and that I was very close to unleashing her demons. My life was in real danger if that beast attempting to get in had broken through.