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Correspondence from John Quinn to Aleister Crowley
John Quinn Attorney and Counsellor at Law 31 Nassau Street New York
November 24, 1917.
Aleister Crowley, Esq., 64a West 9th Street, New York City.
Dear Mr. Crowley,
Referring to your call at my office this morning at 10:30 when you were informed that I was out, and to the note that you left, and to the statement in your note that you wanted my advice on "the enclosed document", which is on four typewritten pages and is entitled "Affidavit Memorandum of my Political Attitudes since August 1914", I have read the memorandum carefully. I return it to you with this.
I regret that I have not the time to advise you in the matter. The subject of your relations to the war and the motives that have actuated you has apparently, to judge from the form of the affidavit, been the subject of letters from you to Captain Gaunt [Guy Gaunt], and of conversations with Mr. Kahn, and of a talk with Mr. Willert of Washington, and of advice by Mr. Paul Bartlett. I have been so overwhelmed with outside personal matters that I have had, in sheer self-defense, to decline to take on any more outside personal matters for the duration of the war and for three months beyond the duration of the war. I already have pending enough irrelevant outside personal matters to occupy all of my spare time for the Winter.
I have taken on a considerable number of these irrelevant matters because each one seemed a small thing and it seemed foolish to refuse, and sometimes it takes almost as much energy to refuse or to explain a refusal as it does to do the thing. But nearly all of these little things that looked innocent and short and simple at first, drag on and drag on. Between those who want to get into the army and those who want to get out of the army and those who want to get commissions and those who want to get positions, I could open a separate war department in my law office. I am doing all I can as a citizen of this country. I cannot intervene in your case, being the subject of your relations to his Brittanic Majesty and his laws and representatives. The contract is too large, the ocean is too wide, the problem too intricate, and, as I have said, I have not the spare time. If I could only shut out irrelevancies and immaterialities, I would have more time to do things that I am vitally interested in. Many people who bring irrelevancies to me seem to go on the theory of an old judge down in Maryland who, when a piece of evidence was objected to as "immaterial" used to always let it in with a remark that if it "was immaterial it wouldn't hurt". But, seriously speaking, I have no time to advise on the matter.
You will understand, I am sure.
Yours very truly,
John Quinn.
(Enclosure)
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