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156 Jes> Mr. DeMille only accept it with the deepest humility, and thank you for it. CECIL B. DEMILLE. DeMille's one-word judgment on this effort was written across the top: Nuts. Another letter was supposed to tell of the episode in Mr. DeMille's boyhood when he was promised a pony by Belasco. It pictured young DeMille on the point of tears because no pony was in sight; then we had him saying in momentary revolt, "If the pony is in the barn, I won't take it. I'll pass it by." This part DeMille slashed out, commenting on the margin, I may have been young but not an imbecile. We had no desire to return fire with fire; on the contrary, we thought only in terms of defense. Our sole hope was to parry a sudden DeMille thrust in a manner that would not result in too great a loss of dignity; a victory always was farthest from our thoughts. Our little caucuses featured a dominant note: "If he comes up with this objection, Til tell him this..." Whatever the difference of station among the staff members, the common menace bound them into a sympathetic brotherhood. A high-salaried writer in his hour of trial would seek the counsel of a mere hireling, at that moment quite in- clined to agree with DeMille's historic remark to a newspaper- man: "My assistants think I'm an insane poodle because they never know who I'm going to bite next/' His oft-repeated pronouncement that he would fracture any man who tried to alibi his way out of a situation worked a hard- ship on those who had valid excuses. It became a matter of shrewd presentation, perhaps prefaced with, "Mr. DeMille, I know how you feel about alibis and I wouldn't think of men- tioning this if it wasn't the plain fact of the case— " The staffers agreed DeMille had a faculty for sorting out dishonest alibis. A confession of atrocious guilt might please and soften him. Once an aide, having committed what he felt was a