JEAN-PIERRE HAMILIUS JR. Differdange, October 11, 1953. 23, RUE DU STADE IDIFFERDANGE-NIEDERCORN GRAND-DUCHÉ DE LUXEMBOURG Dear Professor von Mises: How to show you my gratitude for having made me invite at Seelisberg. I learnt a lot of new things. Miss Génin joked a little on the fact that I took the most notes " avec quelle admirable assiduité ". I came more as a student than as a young professor and tried to get the most of benefit from the diffe- rent exposés ". Before leaving you asked me to let you know my impressions : I think there were genuine liberals like you, Dr. Hayek, etc but there were some soft interventionists too. Maybe I was wrong, but I judged from what I heard. Speaking English, French and German, I had access to the different groups and clans present. So, very confidentially ( please do not tell anybody ! ) - I could hear remarks like " What will become our Society if once the old guard ( Mises, Hayek, ) will have gone Or: " These somewhat old conser- vatives " . I did not always understand as I am not entirely conversant with the constitution etc of the Society. Most of the gentlemen prsent did not know that you recommended me. So, at first glance there seem to be at least two tendencies. In some regard it is for the good, for " du choc des idées jaillit la lumière ! ". I remember that Mistress Rose Wilder Lane once blamed me for the fact that I read this and that book of non-genuine liberals; I answered her that such books often gave me valuable facts and ideas to work on, or supplied me with new ideas as regards refuting of socialist and interventionist ideas! I think that on the whole I agreed mostly with you, Dr. Hayek, Hazlitt, Morley, Fertig, Miller. -- I would make some reserves on Dr. Howard Ellis exposé or on Dr. Van Sickle's and others. See below please. As to the very sympathetic Dr. Van Sickle's scheme for rich people's fortune being taxed so that on their death it must be divided in small parts, etc You remember his ideas? At dinner he came at our table and asked my opinion on that. I told him that there was not so very much to be fermed of the big power of the sons of such millionaires, as this young men very often are not able to make this great fortune work, owing to the fact they do not know hard work, etc and thus in the long run their great fortune will not serve the consumer. The famous third generation in most cases ignores what it is about the great economic Power their grandfather once was told to have had. Dr. Van Bickle then answe- red a friend of his knew a lot of such heirs of great fortunes and that none of them was eager to behave like the father, etc and so he wanted 11 to do them good " when proposing his scheme. (I think I found a somewhat the same scheme in one of Dr. Rüstow's books. Maybe it was his Zwischen Kapitalismus and Kommunismus ". ) I answered it would be difficult and rather impossible to educate other men's