June 17, 1965
Dear Doctor McCarty:
I am delighted to have your kind invitation under date of June 10 to participate in the program connected with the dedication of the new Oswald T. Avery Memorial Gate at the Institute on Wednesday, September 29. Although I am restricting my outside activities as much as possible, I should very much like to participate in this particular program.   However, before making a firm acceptance, I wonder if you could give me some idea of the extent of participation that you envisage and whether or not it will be necessary to prepare a manuscript for publication.  I should hope that no manuscript is necessary and that a brief contribution of ten or fifteen minutes might be sufficient.
I do not know whether or not you have ever read a section which I wrote in connection with a chapter in the Doerr and Hallauer "Handbuch der Virusforschung" which was published in 1938.  If not, you might take a look at page 491 of Volume I where you will find among other comments the sentence, "This phenomenon is virus-like, and it is because of this and the fact that it may become important from the standpoint of the chemistry of viruses that a discussion is included here."  Tom Rivers gave me a pretty bad time, for I had asked him to look over my chapter and he felt that the section on "The transformation agent of the pneumococcus" should be deleted for, as he put it, it had absolutely nothing to do with viruses.  Much argument could not convince him, but I felt so strong about it that the section was left in.  Needless to say, because of this argument, I followed the work in which you and MacLeod participated with great interest.  It is nice to know that Fess realized the significance of the work from the beginning.
With all good wishes, I am
Sincerely yours
W. M. Stanley