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XXIV Got a fun letter coming up next! Wednesday 18 October 10:30 am Dearly Beloved Your letter of last Thursday made me want so much to help and comfort you, and last night I wrote for two or three hours (without repeating) before I decided that I was beginning to lecture a little, and that that wouldn't help a bit. Normally I don't like to rewrite - I'm getting away from that and (I think) more natural in my letters, but this time it seemed important enough to begin again. Darling, it is hell, and must be especially so for you, and much more sometimes than others tho always so in a dogged little undertone of emptiness and desolation. You’re not a weakling, of course. You are just feeling so much more than most people do - though the difference is in degree rather than in kind - that it overpowers you. Henry, who has proven so sympathetic and wise about people (more, I think, than I’d given him credit for before) and whom I have consequently exchanged many [?] and personal experiences with, has a good deal of respect for you and the way you are taking things. I know that there are times when other people's advice, sympathy, or even company seems utterly futile and when there just isn't even a partial substitute for the loss in question. I can remember times when I felt that way, and how utterly sick at heart I felt, and think - How much more so you must feel, and how powerless I am to be what you need at this distance. It makes me very sad indeed - if only I could whisk myself to your side for long enough to give you a big, warm hug and whisper the little tendernesses that I feel - Did it help to talk to me on the telephone? I hope it wasn't a disappointment, so brief and fragmentary as it had to be…it was very good for me, and brought you closer than even your letters and pictures can - made you seem more round and in the flesh. We'll do it as often as possible. The fact that I don't get to feeling quite as desolate now [pg 2] as you do - though I miss you terribly at times - is perhaps due to my having a little more of a concrete philosophy of the war and less fear as to the future, especially our own personal future and that of our children. To lack that as you do, to have your understandable cynicism about the future of the world (don't be ashamed of cynicism) must make it so much more difficult to accept this bad period we are in (of separation) and to reconcile it with any sort of humanity and decency… May I tell you, as briefly as I can, why I'm not altogether despairing about such large and difficult subjects as the war, or war in general? I won't ask you this time to accept any of my convictions, and I'm through “scolding” you for what seems to me confused thinking on your part (I've thought about that a lot lately and now it just seems impertinent of me to have ever confronted your strong feelings on these subjects with what were often cheap platitudes). But I’d like you to be familiar with those convictions because without them I would have no courage (I need courage to live away from you under circumstances that would be so thoroughly stupid if there weren't, to me, a real and compelling reason for it) and because they might appeal just a little bit to you too, and in doing so make it easier by not piling confusion and despair that can avoided somewhat on top of unhappiness that can't. Yes, wars have been going on for centuries and will not stop with this one. But (as a matter of fact, not my opinion) the character of successive wars has changed, and almost without exception each successive struggle has had more import in [terms?] of the common man. It is my feeling and has been for some few years (during which time I've often stopped to consider whether it wasn't mere whistling in the dark, so that by now I'm pretty well convinced it isn't) that this trend will inevitably continue for generations to come and that before many centuries men will have learned to direct their energies otherwise. Such an end seems to me not only inevitable but also worth fighting for. [pg 3] Look (I think to myself) - the greatest menace in the history of the world (one that we saw coming in 1934 and dreaded increasingly as it became increasingly apparent that the whole world except for the aggressors was slow to grasp its import) is being defeated right now. Not to recognize that hugely important fact seems to me to be overlooking a very great, all-or-nothing evil because of a multitude of little ones. There will always be a great many little ones, but they can't prevent the countless little goodnesses from flourishing or us from sharing them in our everyday lives. You are so very right in a least this much, dearest-anything is bad which keeps us apart, and nothing I am not absolutely required to do will keep me away from you even a week longer than is necessary. What helps me to endure it at all is the feeling that, hard as it is for you and me, this is still a lesser evil to be endured because the greater one still menaces. It seems to me, darling, a little more apt to say - not that we are fighting human nature, but that human nature is engaged in a profound struggle within itself. But even that is misleading and it makes better sense to me to put it this way: human nature doesn't change, but human beings do and so do civilization. In the deepest sense, I think, history never repeats itself. The struggle going on right now is probably the profoundest in human history, and we are so unfortunate as to be part of it. Perhaps, next to the [?] victims of racism, we’re amongst the more unfortunate, because our ideals as a people are all confused (I've mentioned before that you can see that in the faces, manner and speech of nine-tenths of the thousands of officers I've come across). Unlike the Russians, in a different way and to a lesser extent, the Chinese, and perhaps the French and just maybe the British, we have not really been forced all the way yet to an issue. I don't think myself that our generation or the next will be (though I [pg 4] remind myself that without their present great defensive struggle, ten or twenty generations to come wouldn't have had a chance to live, think and feel as we do). I am not concerned about our own personal future - by and by I will be home again, this period will become just a bad dream, and we can salvage a few little incidental benefits from it (for instance, I should love to bring you here to Hawaii and take you around). I do not really worry about the future of the race, either (much as I used to) - it has an infinite capacity for survival. Remember the E.M. Forster essay - the part about evil being foiled (“just in the nick of time” as one of my young charges used to gasp breathlessly in the middle of a self-made story) by its own inherent stupidity? Because I believe there's a certain inevitability about that (not enough to count on) and because native goodness has a corresponding but opposite tendency to pull through, I am not worried about the future of the race. It seems to me there is justification for faith in the goodness and potential [?] of the ordinary man and his ordinary [?]; in neighbor so-and-so, in the children down the street, in the local baker [who I hope doesn't happen to be a bastard, in your case]. His day, I think is really just dawning at no time in the history of mankind has so large a proportion people had the means live for the very things we cherish - the personal things we shall have again before so very long. If the proportion is still pitifully small in places like India - well, it is so much the more a thing worth fighting for. There are various ways of fighting, not the least of which is to be (as you are) decent and humane yourself. [Darling, I loved your idea about things for children wherever I go - I'll let you know.] No one is going to demand of us any more sacrifices after this current one, than we are willing and able to make. If we are willing and able to do some such things as live for a year or two in Japan - in other words, if we want to, everything considered- all well and good. If not, we find something else to do whatever it is we'll find the joy, creativeness is it simply because [?] not in [?] do otherwise for long. - Do then, reflection [?] at all sweetie? I want so much [?] something [?] you that does help, and it's pretty hard. I am sure it is hell sometimes I love you very, very much Warren
