A European Looks at American Intellectuals

The Swiss airplane that was to get me to New York descended around midnight in Shannon for the last stop in Europe. I had fallen soundly asleep when a soothing voice penetrated my dreams. It was the pilot, an honest citizen of Zurich, who asked me whether I was Professor Roepke from Geneva. I admitted as much, and then he said that they had just discovered a motor defect and were compelled to interrupt the flight. I would have to transfer to a Belgian plane expected to arrive in about an hour. It was most embarrassing to him, the pilot assured me, that he had to do that to me, of all people, because, or so he said, he had read my books with passionate approval.

The very friendly Irish gentleman who took care of me at the airport had obviously been informed by his colleague from Zurich that the passenger in question was a university professor in the habit of writing books. For when I gratefully refused the cigarette he offered me, he exclaimed, “Why, if you don’t smoke, how can you do all that brain work?” I assured him that all my books had the inferior qualities of a non-smoking author.

WR

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Wilhelm Roepke

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The Swiss airplane that was to get me to New York descended around midnight in Shannon for the last stop in Europe. I had fallen soundly asleep when a soothing voice penetrated my dreams. It was the pilot, an honest citizen of Zurich, who asked me whether I was Professor Roepke from Geneva. I admitted as much, and then he said that they had just discovered a motor defect and were compelled to interrupt the flight. I would have to transfer to a Belgian plane expected to arrive in about an hour. It was most embarrassing to him, the pilot assured me, that he had to do that to me, of all people, because, or so he said, he had read my books with passionate approval.

The very friendly Irish gentleman who took care of me at the airport had obviously been informed by his colleague from Zurich that the passenger in question was a university professor in the habit of writing books. For when I gratefully refused the cigarette he offered me, he exclaimed, “Why, if you don’t smoke, how can you do all that brain work?” I assured him that all my books had the inferior qualities of a non-smoking author.