My Years with Ludwig von Mises.pdf - The Ludwig von Mises Institute

ight where you are." In this case, even Lu renounced history for a
good, clean bed and a real bathroom.
The conference in Paris was arranged by Professor Rougier for
August 26-30, 1938, its main purpose the discussion of Walter
Lippmann's The Good Society, which had just been published in
France under the title La Cite Libre. In this book Walter
Lippmann tried to explain the shortcomings of the Manchester
School, and the main purpose of the meeting was to show that the
free market economy, if completely unhampered, could well satisfy
the needs of the present world. As a result of the conference, Ie
Centre international pour la renovation du liberalism (the International
Center for the Revival of· Liberalism) was founded. But,
because of the war, it was forced to close in 1940.
This meeting was attended by many economists and journalists.
There I first met Walter Lippmann, with whose views-then and
in the future-Lu did not agree. I also met for the first time Professor
F .A. von Hayek. He was already famous and was teaching at
the London School of Economics.
In January, 1927, when Lu founded the Austrian Institute for
Business Research in Vienna (Das Oesterreichische Konjunkturinstitut),
he did so not only because he thought it to be imperatively
necessary for Austria, but, according to Mrs. Wolf-Thieberger,
Lu's secretary, "because he had to help Hayek find the right
start in life." Lu's interest in Hayek never waned, and Professor
Hayek's affection and regard for Lu have always warmed my heart.
Hayek is the Vienna scholar who, more than any of the others
who studied there with Lu, kept his views and writings close to
Lu's teachings. As the years passed, Hayek and Lu became very
good friends, a natural result of their mutually congenial convictions.
Years later, in 1962, when Hayek left the University of Chicago
to go to Freiburg University in Germany, Lu was invited to
attend a banquet in Chicago in Hayek's honor. He could not attend,
but he sent a written contribution which-I feel-giving as it
does so much credit to Hayek, is a credit to Lu's own modesty and
humbleness. This speech, Professor Hayek told me, was never
read, nor was it ever given to Hayek. I wonder why? The reader
will find it, as Appendix One, at the end of this book.
We returned to Geneva in September, when Lu's seminar
started. He taught only two hours weekly, every Saturday from 9 to
11 A.M. The rest of the time he was busy writing. At that time he
still had the habit of working late at night. Often it was after 1 A.M.
when he went to bed, very, very careful not to disturb me. But I
heard him anyhow. In 1938 he was not only working on Nationaloekonomie,
the German predecessor of his monumental treatise
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