Medicine: Cancer Army

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Within a few weeks trustees of the American Society for the Control of Cancer, remembering that just after he got out of college he spent four years with the Harvard Cancer Commission, that he was one of the world's authorities on the inherited susceptibility to cancer and a good executive wanting an extra job, hired him as managing director. The Society pays him $9,000 a year (out of which he must pay his traveling expenses), does not object to his work at Jackson Memorial. This renewed security enabled Dr. Little to marry a Phi Beta Kappa and Master of Arts who had been an enthusiastic laboratory assistant to him at Maine and a loyal supervisor of women students at Michigan. Mrs. Little No. 2 still takes an intense extramural interest in the mice at Bar Harbor, besides managing the modest house near the Bar Harbor water front in which they live with their children: Richard Warren, 5, and Laura Revere, 3.

Back in Bar Harbor last week, preparing for a big swing around the country when the Women's Field Army drive begins this week, Dr. Little resonantly declared of his new task: "Why do I feel so deeply about it? Because I have both experienced, understood and, I am afraid, caused too much suffering, and hate it. Because my own father died as a result of cancer. Because perhaps whatever ancestral desire I have to explore the unknown is appealed to by the research work and the wish to be a 'crusader,' which almost all of us have, is given a chance to express itself. Finally, because I believe that Americans will be happier and saner if they combine in fighting a scourge like cancer than they will be if they continue to fight each other for money and power."