Brief von Ernest Jones, 16. November 1922, London1

Dear Friends:

Eitingon is expected in London tonight and I hope to see him tomorrow. I am a day late in writing because the Society meeting was last night (discussion by Rickman of various papers on sadism, e.g. Federn's).2 In the meantime the Vienna letter has arrived.

I was very interested to hear the news of the Verlag moving to Berlin and wish it every success there. I suppose the matter was so urgent that there was no time to consult the other Directors. It is doubtless a sound decision at the moment, though I cannot suppress the thought that the economic situation may very well be worse in Germany in two years' time than in Austria: after all, the Allies are much more unsympathetic with Germany than with Austria.

Abraham and I had to notify all the Group Secretaries of the future arrangements for regulating and coordinating the Society Reports and other work in connection with the Korrespondenzblatt, but before doing that we followed the usual Committee plan of first submitting our proposals to the rest of you for criticism. Judge of my astonishment when I learned that before our question could be answered and before we could take any action ourselves Rank and Hiller had taken it on themselves to make all the arrangements and issue orders to the Group Secretaries behind our back. It is now too late for us to do anything but accept fait accompli as usual; but I must express my opinion that the plan was deficient in some important technical respects, that the manner of carrying it out was decidedly disregardful of Abraham and myself, and that, since we hope to keep the Central Executive for some years in the hands of our Committee, it is detrimental to our own interest to impair its authority in the eyes of the Branch Societies. As it stands, the Societies expect orders from the Central Executive in a matter that is its direct function, while the latter is powerless to act.