Herr Doktor-Professor Wright

[B C Johnson]

In particular, Mumford had supported Wright during the ups and downs of his mercurial career, but this close affiliation could not withstand Wright's isolationist and anti-war views during the grim days of 1941. 
In a vitriolic correspondence that spawned a break of ten years in civil relations between the two men, Mumford scolded Wright for his dogmatic isolationism. In a particularly bitter letter to the man he had long admired and championed, Mumford wrote on May 30th, 1941. 


  You shrink into your selfish ego and urge America to follow you; you are willing to abandon to their terrible fate the conquered, the helpless, the humiliated, the suffering: you carefully refrain from offending, if only by a passing reference, those Nazi overlords to whom in your heart you, like [Charles] Lindbergh, have already freely given the fruits of victory. In short, you have become a living corpse: a spreader of active corruption. You dishonor all the generous impulses you once ennobled. Be silent! lest you bring upon yourself some greater shame. (p. 70)

  ROBERT WOJTOWICZ, Lewis Mumford and American Modernism: Eutopian Theories for Architecture and Urban Planning, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1996, 235 pp./16 halftones (Hardback) $60.00 ISBN 0-521-48215-1. 
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