The War Years: 1942-1945 Summary and Analysis

After the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor, White is one of several writers hired by the Office of Facts and Figures to work on a pamphlet explaining the four freedoms mentioned by President Roosevelt in his 1941 state of the union speech. Originally, White was hired to write the section on freedom of speech but was subsequently given the task of rewriting the entire document fashioned by critic Malcolm Cowley, theologian Reinhold Niebuhr, writer Max Lerner and poet Archibald MacLeish, librarian of Congress. In a January 1942 letter to Katharine, White describes his meeting in Washington with the team, the oppressive almost frighteningly bureaucratic nature of the proceedings. White notes that he encounters other writers apparently hired from other publications to help, including The New Yorker. White tells Katharine he expects this to be a long and...