NEW YORK, Thursday—On Tuesday evening we went to see John Golden's production of "The Male Animal," a revival of the play written by James Thurber and Elliott Nugent. I must have missed it when it was first produced, but it certainly is worth seeing if you want a pleasant evening. It is most entertaining and the audience is kept laughing most of the time.

I loved the Negro maid on the telephone. She behaved in the way I often want to behave, but I am restrained from doing so by the high standards set by my secretaries. So far as I could judge, the play seems well cast and well acted. It touched on a number of very serious subjects which perhaps deserve, in the light of present-day developments, more serious treatment than they receive on the stage. But it may be well for us to take these serious things more lightly now and then.

I hope the public soon will become aroused to the danger of the removal of all price controls. I am glad to see that even in Congress there is a move to reconsider what has thus far been done.

In our haste to remove some of the shackles imposed by World War II, we abruptly and unwisely threw out our rationing system and prices soared sky high. They have never come down very far since.

Just as the discussion of removing all price controls was at its height recently, I saw in the paper that we were almost up to the peak in the cost of living that we reached last January. Is this the moment for taking off price controls on most of the things that are essential to us?

Sometimes I think we do not protest to our lawmakers because we do not realize what power, as citizens and voters, we have. It simply cannot be that we do not realize that the inevitable rise in the cost of living, which is bound to follow the removal of all price controls, will affect our daily lives.

Every now and then I get rather hysterical letters from people who are upset by the stories they read in the papers of the treatment of prisoners on Koje Island.

To most of them I give scant consideration, for they probably are written by Communist sympathizers or dupes who are being unwittingly used by Communist friends. But now and then a really sensible person writes in and says that he or she feels we are more cruel than Hitler was and that we are ignoring the rights of prisoners. The writer says we cannot ignore the fact that men who are put in charge of other men and have complete power over them are apt to grow brutal and that there should be an investigation of methods being used and of the treatment of North Korean prisoners.

I am quite certain that this is being checked by the high military authorities constantly. However, some of the North Korean Communist prisoners may do things that endanger our men, and I am afraid that we cannot always be sure they will not suffer as a consequence. At the same time I am sure it will be the Reds who have brought on the situation themselves.

On the whole, I feel sure that the North Korean prisoners are being treated according to the rules established by the International Red Cross. If not, I am sure some of our own high officials will be insisting on an investigation.