"If a Gen. Ed man tells you to write about a rainbow, he's lost sight of the basic reason for writing--communication," Barbara Tuchman '33 told a group of girls in Barnard Hall last night.

Author of the best-selling Guns of August and a New York Times correspondent during the Spanish Civil War, Mrs. Tuchman asserted that "newspaper writing helps more than any composition course." The trouble with some of the "fancy" writing assigned in Gen Ed, she said, is that "nobody should write unless he has something he desperately wants to say."

Mrs. Tuchman, a Radcliffe Trustee and East House Associate, said she has "desperately" wanted to write Guns of August. She felt no need, however, to justify her work by saying that she was at the same time answering society's needs.

Speaking of her experience with the historical narrative, Mrs. Tuchman advised the use of primary sources and good biography for research purposes. She warned that secondary sources offer pre-selected material that show "only what interested somebody else."

No historian ever feels that his book is finished and ready to be printed, Mrs. Tuchman said. She admitted, however, a "compulsion" to see herself in print, which helped her overcome her indecision.