I am sure you will not misunderstand me when I say that the opening of your wonderful parcel this morning was a melancholy rather than joyful ceremony; we had both looked forward so much to its happening under very different circumstances—your presentation, our (for the first time verbal) thanks, the popping of a cork in front of the log fire in our sitting room—well, well, ‘man never is, but always to be blessed’. Once more it is a case of ‘thank you very, very much’ on the typewriter, instead of in person. By the way, it was very naughty of you to send the whisky, unless, as I hope, you had some more with you: for there is no better tonic after ‘flu–experto crede.²²⁸

We both hope that the second part of your holiday will be less unfortunate than its beginning, and that by this time you are really over your troubles; if you find time to send a post card letting us know how you fare, it would be very welcome. In any case I feel that climatically Munich must be a change for the better, and no doubt also financially.

Our Vera, Vera Henry does’nt look like escaping as well as you have done; she was removed to a nursing home yesterday, and the doctor talks in the roundabout way that doctors do, about a possible risk of pneumonia. But we shan’t know anything definite for a day or two.

While you are leaving a trail of golden dollars across Europe is perhaps hardly a tactful moment to talk about another holiday; but we do both hope that meeting you is but a pleasure postponed, and that another year you will venture to England again, and this time penetrate as far as Oxford.

With all best wishes to you both from us both,

yours,

W. H. Lewis

C. S. Lewis^*

TO JOHN ROWLAND (TEX): TS

52/213.

Magdalen College,

Oxford.

23rd October 1952.

Dear Rowland,

(Let’s drop the honorifics on both sides). November 3rd. would be best. I’ll wait for you in the College lodge about 1.10.

Yours,

C. S. Lewis

TO THE EDITOR OF THE CHURCH TIMES (EC): ²²⁹

Magdalen College,

Oxford.

Sir,–

I am, like Mr Eric Pitt,²³⁰ a layman, and would like to be instructed on several points before the proposal to set up a ‘system’ of Anglican canonization is even discussed. According to the Catholic Encyclopaedia, ‘saints’ are dead people whose virtues have made them ‘worthy’ of God’s ‘special’ love.²³¹ Canonization makes dulia²³² ‘universal and obligatory’; and, whatever else it asserts, it certainly asserts that the person concerned ‘is in heaven’.

Unless, then, the word ‘canonization’ is being used in a sense distinct from the Roman (and, if so, some other word would be much more convenient), the proposal to set up a ‘system’ of canonization means that someone (say, the Archbishops) shall be appointed

(a.) To tell us that certain named people are (i) ‘in heaven’, and (ii) are ‘worthy’ of God’s ‘special’ love.

(b.) To lay upon us (under pain of excommunication?) the duty of dulia towards those they have named.

Now it is very clear that no one ought to tell us what he does not know to be true. Is it, then, held that God has promised (and, if so, when and where?) to the Church universal a knowledge of the state of certain departed souls? If so, is it clear that this knowledge will discern varying degrees of kinds of salvation such as are, I suppose, implicit in the word ‘special’? And if it does, will the promulgation of such knowledge help to save souls now in viâ?. For it might well lead to a consideration of ‘rival claims’, such as we read of in the Imitation of Christ (Bk. Ill, ch. lvii), where we are warned, ‘Ask not which is greater in the kingdom of heaven…the search into such things brings no profit, but rather offends the saints themselves.’

Finally, there is the practical issue: by which I do not mean the Catholic Encyclopaedia’s neat little account of ‘the ordinary actual expenses of canonization’ (though that too can be read with profit), but the danger of schism. Thousands of members of the Church of England doubt whether dulia is lawful. Does anyone maintain that it is necessary to salvation? If not, whence comes our obligation to run such frightful risks?

C. S. Lewis

TO J. O. REED (P): ²³³

[Magdalen College

27 October 1952]

Dear Reed

Wd. this interest you?²³⁴ Mastership at W. would, I think, be a pretty good springboard for any academic job that turned up, and, I know, a very good springboard for any other schoolmastering job. It is just possible you might increase your academic chances by sticking to research & not flirting with school jobs–I’m not sure. On the other hand, the W. job wd. be a safety device in case no academic job is attained. The President might have good advice to give on the question of policy.²³⁵

Yours

C. S. Lewis

TO VERA GEBBERT (W): TS 52/103.

Magdalen College,

Oxford.

28th October 1952.

Dear Gebberts,

Yes indeed, the whole parcel arrived intact, and I’m sorry that I did not make it clear that we had got your beautiful scarves (and the cigarettes) as well as the whiskey; and when the two latter gifts are, alas, nothing but a fragrant memory, we shall still be enjoying the scarves–which can be used with comfort for about nine months in the English year, as you can well imagine, after your disastrous experience. It is very welcome news that you are through your troubles, and are enjoying yourselves in Munich; it must be a great treat for Mr. Gebbert to have such a reunion after so many years. What you have to say about the re-building is very interesting: but I hope there is not going to be a political rebuild. Our papers are carrying an unpleasant story of a get together party of old concentration guards, anti-allied speeches, shouts of ‘Swinehound Eisenhower’ etc.

I’m sorry to say our Vera–may I say our other Vera?–so far from being better, has developed pneumonia, and is now in a nursing home; she is going along satisfactorily, but we are still not without anxiety about her. Largely her own fault, for she has since confessed that she had been feeling ill for at least a week before she took to her bed. Like all people who normally have perfect health, she is not a good patient, which I fear will retard her recovery.

We shall think of you next week on your way back to your own land, with, I hope, happy memories of the trip: and taking with you our hopes that you will repeat it in the not too distant future.

All good luck.

Yours sincerely,

W. H. Lewis

C. S. Lewis

TO PHOEBE HESKETH (W):

Magdalen College,

Oxford

Oct 29th 1952

Dear Mrs. Hesketh

Surely I didn’t say that ‘really good’ poetry was not painful (which wd. make Lear not really good), but that the very best and certainly rarest kind of all was not painful?²³⁶

I hope very much you will come and see me when you are in Oxford. I have just given The Quenchless Flame a first reading. I predict it will grow either shorter or longer before it reaches its final form, but it is full of good things. The leaf escaping from the bondage of the tree at the v. beginning wins one’s good will for the whole poem. The six lines beginning ‘Consider beauty’ are particularly good.

Yours sincerely

C. S. Lewis

TO MARG-RIETTE MONTGOMERY (W): TS

REF.52/248.

Magdalen College,

Oxford.

1st November 1952.

Dear Miss Montgomery,

It would be a bit hard to believe in Our Lord without believing in the Father, seeing that Our Lord spent most of his time talking about the Father. Also God.

Yours sincerely,

C. S. Lewis

TO JOHN ROWLAND (TEX): TS

52/213.

Magdalen College,

Oxford.

6th November 1952.

My dear Rowland,

There was no need at all to write, but it was nice of you to do so. I don’t forsee being in Brighton, but will certainly look you up if I am. No addresses to Literary Groups though!

Yours,

C. S. Lewis

TO MRS JOHNSON (W):²³⁷

Magdalen etc,

Oxford.

Nov. 8 1952

Dear Mrs. Johnson

I am returning your letter with the questions in it numbered so that you’ll know wh. I am answering.

(1.)²³⁸ Some call me Mr. and some Dr. and I not only don’t care but usually don’t know which.

(2.)²³⁹ Distinguish (A) A second chance in the strict sense, i.e. a new earthly life in which you cd. attempt afresh all the problems you failed at in the present one (as in religions of Re-Incarnation). (B) Purgatory: a process by which the work of redemption continues, and first perhaps begins to be noticeable after death. I think Charles Williams depicts B, not A.

(3.)²⁴⁰ We are never given any knowledge of ‘What would have happened if…’

(4.)²⁴¹ I think that every prayer which is sincerely made even to a false god or to a v. imperfectly conceived true God, is accepted by the true God and that Christ saves many who do not think they know Him. For He is (dimly) present in the good side of the inferior teachers they follow.

In the parable of the Sheep & Goats (Matt. XXV. 31 and following) those who are saved do not seem to know that they have served Christ. But of course our anxiety about unbelievers is most usefully employed when it leads us not to speculation but to earnest prayer for them and the attempt to be in our own lives such good advertisements for Christianity as will make it attractive.

(5.)²⁴² It is Christ Himself, not the Bible, who is the true word of God. The Bible, read in the right spirit and with the guidance of good teachers will bring us to Him. When it becomes really necessary (i.e. for our spiritual life, not for controversy or curiosity) to know whether a particular passage is rightly translated or is Myth (but of course Myth specially chosen by God from among countless Myths to carry a spiritual truth) or history, we shall no doubt be guided to the right answer. But we must not use the Bible (our fathers too often did) as a sort of Encyclopedia out of which texts (isolated from their context and not read without attention²⁴³ to the whole nature & purport of the books in which they occur) can be taken for use as weapons.

(6.) Kill means murder. I don’t know Hebrew: but when Our Lord quotes this commandment he uses Gk phoneuseis (murder)²⁴⁴ not apokteinein (kill)²⁴⁵

[(7.)]²⁴⁶ The question of what you wd. ‘want’ is off the point. Capital punishment might be wrong tho’ the relations of the murdered man wanted him killed: it might be right tho’ they did not want this. The question is whether a Xtian nation ought or ought not to put murderers to death: not what passions interested individuals may feel.

(8.)²⁴⁷ There is no doubt at all that the natural impulse to ‘hit back’ must be fought against by the Xtian whenever it arises. If one I love is tortured or murdered my desire to avenge him must be given no quarter. So far as nothing but this question of retaliation comes in ‘turn the other cheek’ is the Christian law. It is, however, quite another matter when the neutral, public authority (not the aggrieved person) may order killing of either private murderers or public enemies in mass. It is quite clear that our earliest Christian writer, St Paul, approved of capital punishment—he says the ‘magistrate’ bears & should bear ‘the sword’.²⁴⁸ It is recorded that the soldiers who came to St John Baptist asking, ‘What shall we do?’²⁴⁹ were not told to leave the army. When Our Lord Himself praised the Centurion²⁵⁰ He never hinted that the military profession was in itself sinful. This has been the general view of Christendom. Pacifism is a v. recent & local variation. We must of course respect & tolerate Pacifists, but I think their view erroneous.

(9.)²⁵¹ The symbols under which Heaven is presented to us are (a) a dinner party,²⁵² (b) a wedding,²⁵³ (c) a city,²⁵⁴ and (d) a concert.²⁵⁵ It wd. be grotesque to suppose that the guests or citizens or members of the choir didn’t know one another. And how can love of one another be commanded in this life if it is to be cut short at death?

(10.)²⁵⁶ Whatever the answer is, I’m sure it is not that (‘erased from the brain’). When I have learnt to love God better than my earthly dearest, I shall love my earthly dearest better than I do now. In so far as I learn to love my earthly dearest at the expense of God and instead of God, I shall be moving towards the state in which I shall not love my earthly dearest at all. When first things are put first, second things are not suppressed but increased. If you and I ever come to love God perfectly, the answer to this tormenting question will then become clear, and will be far more beautiful than we cd. ever imagine. We can’t have it now.

(11.)²⁵⁷ Thanks v. much: but I haven’t a sweet tooth.

(12.)²⁵⁸ Not that I know of: but I’m the last person who wd. know.

(13.)²⁵⁹ There is a poor barber whom my brother and I sometimes help. I got up one day intending to go to him for a hair-cut preparatory to going to London. Got a message putting off London engagement and decided to postpone hair-cut. Something, however, kept on nagging me to stick to it–‘Get your hair cut.’ In the end, said ‘Oh damn it, I’ll go.’

All good wishes.

Yours

C. S. Lewis

TO GEOFFREY BLES (BOD): TS 52/42.

Magdalen College,

Oxford.

10th November 1952.

My dear Bles

I return Mr. Dell’s letter.²⁶⁰ I don’t think there’d be any point in republishing Spirits in Bondage. I don’t remember the ‘sermon in the midlands’,²⁶¹ but it was probably made from notes, and is now irrecoverable. There are, of course, several short pieces in prose and verse (from Spectator, Punch, Time and Tide etc.) which might be used some day.

I’m glad to hear the Dawn Treader goes on well.

Yours

C. S. Lewis

TO MARY WILLIS SHELBURNE (W):

Magdalen College,

Oxford

Nov. 10th 1952

Dear Mrs. Shelburne

It is a little difficult to explain how I feel that tho’ you have taken a way which is not for me²⁶² I nevertheless can congratulate you—I suppose because your faith and joy are so obviously increased. Naturally, I do not draw from that the same conclusions as you—but there is no need for us to start a controversial correspondence!

I believe we are very near to one another, but not because I am at all on the Rome-ward frontier of my own communion. I believe that, in the present divided state of Christendom, those who are at the heart of each division are all closer to one another than those who are at the fringes. I wd. even carry this beyond the borders of Christianity: how much more one has in common with a real Jew or Muslim than with a wretched liberalising, occidentalised specimen of the same categories.

Let us by all means pray for one another: it is perhaps the only form of ‘work for re-union’ which never does anything but good. God bless you.

Yours sincerely

C. S. Lewis

TO J. R. R. TOLKIEN (P): ²⁶³

[Magdalen College]

Nov 13/52

My dear Tollers

Just a note to tell you with what agreeable warmth and weight your yesterday’s good news lies on my mind—with an inward chuckle of deep content.²⁶⁴ Foremost of course is the sheer pleasure of looking forward to having the book to read and re-read. But a lot of other things come in. So much of your whole life, so much of our joint life, so much of the war, so much that seemed to be slipping away quite spurlos²⁶⁵ into the past, is now, in a sort made permanent.

And I am of course very glad on your account too. I think the very prolonged pregnancy has drained a little vitality from you: there’ll be a new ripeness and freedom when the book’s out. And how pleased Priscilla²⁶⁶ and Mrs. Farrer will be.²⁶⁷ God bless you.

TO MRS D. JESSUP (W):

Magdalen College,

Oxford

Nov. 13th 1952

Dear Mrs. Jessup

Yes, of course I will—for all six of you. I am very sorry to hear that your (temporal) news is so grim. Your spiritual news is perhaps better than you think. You seem to have been dealing with the dryness (or ‘the wall’ as you well name it) in the right way. Everyone has experienced it or will.

It is clearly what G.M. meant when he said ‘Have pity on us for the look of things, When desolation stares us in the face. Although the serpent-mask have lied before, It fascinates the bird.’²⁶⁸

It is v. important to remember that Our Lord experienced it to the full, twice—in Gethsemane when He sweated blood, and next day when he said ‘Why hast thou forsaken me?’²⁶⁹ We are not asked to go anywhere where he has not gone before us. The shining quality may come back when we least expect it, and in circumstances which wd. seem to an outside observer (or to ourselves) to make it most impossible. (We must not reject it, as there is an impulse to do, on the ground that we ought, in the conditions, to be miserable).

What is most re-assuring to me, and most moving, is your sane and charitable recognition that others have as great, or worse, trials: one of those things wh. no one else can decently say to the sufferer but wh. are invaluable when he says them to himself. And of course there was no ‘conceit’ or ‘selfishness’ in your writing to me: are we not all ‘members of one another’.²⁷⁰ (I can’t reply about Eisenhower. I am no politician. I shd. suppose that the diverse views of his election taken in England depend entirely on the different ways in which our own political parties think they can make capital out of it. As you know public affairs seem to me much less important than private—in fact important only in so far as they affect private affairs.)

You are quite right (tho’ not in the way you meant) when you say I needn’t ‘work up’ sympathy with you! No, I needn’t. I have had enough experiences of the crises of family life, the terrors, despondencies, hopes deferred, and wearinesses. The trouble is that things go on 50 long, isn’t it? and one gets so tired of trying! No doubt it will all seem short when looked at from eternity. But I needn’t preach to you. You’re doing well: scoring pretty good marks! Keep on. Take it hour by hour, don’t add the past & the future to the present load more than you can help. God bless you all.

Yours ever

C. S. Lewis

TO MRS D. JESSUP (W):

Magdalen College,

Oxford.

Nov. 17th 1952

Dear Mrs. Jessup

Thanks be to God for your good news. There is a comic, but also charming, contrast between the temperance with which you bore a great fear and the wild excess of your apologies for a wholly imaginary offence in writing that letter. You did perfectly right and there is nothing whatever for me to forgive. And I shd. be v. sorry if you carried out your threat (made, I know, from the best motives) of never writing to me again. You are not the kind of correspondent who is a ‘nuisance’: if you were you wd. not be now thinking you are one—That kind never does.

But don’t send me any newspaper cuttings. I never believe a word said in the papers. The real history of a period (as we always discover a few years later) has v. little to do with all that, and private people like you and me are never allowed to know it while it is going on. Of course you will all remain in my prayers. I think it v. wrong to pray for people while they are in distress and then not to continue praying, now with thanksgiving, when they are relieved.

Many people think their prayers are never answered because it is the answered ones that they forget. Like the others who find proof for a superstition by recording all the cases in wh. bad luck has followed a dinner with 13 at table and forget all the others where it hasn’t. God bless you. Write freely whenever you please.

Yours

C. S. Lewis

TO ARTHUR GREEVES (BOD):

Magdalen College,

Oxford.

Nov 18/52

My dear Arthur

Thanks v. much for the 2nd vol. of HJ. which arrived in good order a few days ago. It is really most generous of you. The Letters, even if they had no other interest, wd. be useful as an anthology of all the possible ways of apologising for not having written before—it sometimes goes on for 2 whole pages!

I really feel much as you do about big formal functions, and though I attend many more of them than you, I skip all I can. As I get older I become more impatient of being kept sitting on or hanging about after the meal is over.

I shan’t begin the Letters for a few days for I am at present re-reading Montaigne. Sharp frost here this morning: I wish we could have a walk to enjoy it together.

Love to both of you.

Yours

Jack

TO MARY VAN DEUSEN (W):

Magdalen College,

Oxford.

25. xi. 1952

Dear Mrs. Van Deusen

No, by wordless prayer I didn’t mean the practice of the Presence of God. I meant the same mental act as in verbal prayer only without the words. The Practice of the Presence is a much higher activity. I don’t think it matters much whether an absolutely uninterrupted recollection of God’s presence for a whole lifetime is possible or not. A much more frequent & prolonged recollection than we have yet reached certainly is possible. Isn’t that enough to work on? A child learning to walk doesn’t need to know whether it will ever be able to walk 40 miles in a day: the important thing is that it can walk tomorrow a little further and more steadily than it did today.

I don’t think we are likely to give too much love and care to those we love. We might put in active care in the form of assistance when it wd. be better for them to act on their own: i.e. we might be busybodies. Or we might have too much ‘care’ for them in the sense of anxiety. But we never love anyone too much: the trouble is always that we love God, or perhaps some other created being, too little.

As to the ‘state of the world’ if we have time to hope and fear about it, we certainly have time to pray. I agree it is v. hard to keep one’s eyes on God amid all the daily claims & problems. I think it wise, if possible, to move one’s main prayers from the last-thing-at-night position to some earlier time: give them a better chance to infiltrate one’s other thoughts.

Thanks v. much for the stationery. I’m afraid I can’t find a W. Chambers book.²⁷¹ It’s better not to send the book. They all get lost in the pile on my table.

Yours sincerely, with love to all,

C. S. Lewis

TO HARRY BLAMIRES (BOD):

Magdalen College,

Oxford.

26 xi 52

Dear Blamires

Yes, I did of course write to Edinburgh and did my best.²⁷² I was much hampered by the fact that my questioner laid great stress on practical ability as a teacher, and of course I could not pretend to have any first hand evidence to give on that. I am sorry the Philistines have won: but am sure you will not allow yourself to be too set down about it. All good wishes,

Yours

C. S. Lewis

TO GEOFFREY BLES (BOD):

Magdalen College,

Oxford.

26. xi. 1952

My dear Bles

Thanks for American M.C.²⁷³ and for reviews of D.T.²⁷⁴ No, I shan’t need any more copies of the former, so pray dispose of them as you think fit. No one, not even the artist, liked the Church Times picture.²⁷⁵ The Torso is not at all imminent:²⁷⁶ I’m very busy with ordinary work these days. All greetings.

Yours

C. S. Lewis

TO WILLIAM BORST (P):

Magdalen College,

Oxford

28.xi.52

Dear Borst–

The copy has not yet come to hand but I have your letter of the 19th and I’m afraid the position is this. You can have a little more headnote (but not a statement what each passage ‘illustrates’–it is 50 bad for the students) and as many more glosses as you like: but you can’t have from me any drastic revision of the Selections. For one thing I have not now the leisure: but for another, I can’t have what is really Mr. Harrison’s Selections going under my name.

If you press for such a revision then I will make what seems to me a handsome offer. I will be content with 500 dollars for my introduction and for giving you my selections & glosses as a basis for someone else’s work. You will save money, for you needn’t get an expensive man to do you the kind of Selections you now want. It is work for any intelligent student. For my Selections were quite a different thing. With labour of which you have no conception I quarried a little F.Q. out of the great F.Q.: reproducing its real characteristics. Of course this involved omitting (within individual selections) stanzas that could be spared: and leaving the first appearances of characters as unprepared as S. leaves them: and being ‘tantalising’ as S. is tantalising: and omitting some (v. few) of the dear old Show-pieces. You have almost sensed what I was at: I don’t think Mr. Harrison has. And the result on you is v. significant. You now want more Spenser than you allowed me at first. Why? if not that the thing is acting on you as I hoped it wd. act on the students? If I’d simply chucked all the dear old favourites together in the old way you’d have taken them without a murmur and never asked for more.

As I say, you are quite free to get someone else (and, between ourselves, you need get only a hack). Yet I can’t help hoping you’ll keep my Selections: not for my sake (I shd. not be piqued and I can manage without the other 500 dollars) but for Spenser’s. Arrogant tho’ it may sound I can’t help saying ‘Borst, you know not what you do: let well alone. You’ve got here a new thing, a thing which will whet the students’ appetite as it whets yours. Think twice before throwing it away in favour of one more “specimens of Spenser” such as everyone has done, and no one enjoyed.’

Mr. Harrison is mistaken in thinking that Serena was a foundling of noble birth.²⁷⁷ S. does (emphatically) identify RCK²⁷⁸ and St George (I x. lxi.).²⁷⁹

Yours

C. S. Lewis

TO I. O. EVANS (W):

Magdalen College

Oxford

28. xi. 52

Dear Evans

Thank you for The Space Serpent which I have read and return.²⁸⁰ Most interesting idea—and I fear I wd. never have noticed your ‘howler’ if you hadn’t warned me. But then, as you know, my interest in ‘science-fiction’ puts the emphasis entirely on the fiction end. I must re-read that excellent book Kipps,²⁸¹ and thanks you for reminding me of it. How tragically Wells decayed in his later work! With all good wishes.

Yours

C. S. Lewis

TO ALAN AND NELL BERNERS-PRICE (W):

Magdalen College,

Oxford.

Dec 2nd 1952

Dear Alan and Nell

I was going to write to you shortly (I mean ‘in a short time’, how difficult the English language is!) when your card came. I am sending off under separate cover my last story to your little girl. At least I hope that’s what the neat packet contains: I daren’t open it to see because I’m so bad at parcels that I’d never get it put up again nicely if I did. I’m afraid it is a poor gift compared with the chinchilla (is that how you spell it?) coat.

I’m afraid I haven’t a chance to get down to dear Court Stairs this vacation, though it is just the weather for the South Coast and I shd. love to join your merry circle round the fire. Is the old gentleman with the strong views still there? Your garden must look lovely in the snow.

I hope Nell has quite got over the impact of ‘my wife’ by now and that it is all sinking away from both of you, as it is for me, into the status of a dream—even a funny dream. All the same, however she may deserve it, I don’t enjoy remembering every now & then that she is still in jail. Well, dear friends, a merry Christmas and a happy New Year to you both.

Yours

Jack

TO NELL BERNERS-PRICE (W): TS

REF.52/206.

Magdalen College,

Oxford.

3rd December 1952.

Dear Nell,

Despite your kindness I can’t promise myself any definite date for coming down: there are so few ‘odd times’ in my life. I sometimes have to go into Sussex, and when that happens I’ll try to run over to Courtstairs.

I say—I suppose the Baron and the Countess are O.K. are they? I’m afraid if I’d had your experience I’d suspect every guest!

Greetings to all.

Yours,

Jack

TO I. O. EVANS (W): TS

REF.52/38.

Magdalen College,

Oxford.

6th December 1952.

Dear Evans,

Your discourse on Nauthorship is a most interesting document, and tells us at least as much about writing as many theoretical high-brow articles. How right you are about getting the ‘wave-length’.

What I object to most in Wells is his everlasting Gallicism ‘figure to yourself’. ²⁸²

All the best.

Yours,

C. S. Lewis

TO VERA GEBBERT (W): TS

REF.52/103.

Magdalen College,

Oxford.

9th December 1952.

Dear Mrs. Gebbert,

Many thanks for your letter of the 4th. The more I think of it the more I regret that our intercourse should have been that of heavenly bodies rather than human beings: that your orbit should have swung within thirty miles of ours without our making contact. And now you are back in your normal track, five thousand or more miles from Oxford. And, what is worse, the tone of your letter suggests that it will be a very long time before you risk the European adventure again. But take courage. One can visit London without getting influenza, and one can travel by Pan-American Airways without the agonies of sea-sickness. (Incidentally, why does everyone regard this frightful illness as a joke? With us, and I suppose with you too, it is like drunkenness or mothers-in-law, sure of getting what the actors call ‘a hand’ in any radio or stage performance.

I was surprised and impressed by what you had to say about Paris; I did’nt know that at this time of the day one could still hear the tumbrils rolling along to the place of the guillotine. Nor did I realize the shabbiness of present day Paris. The business and travel advertisements still hold up Paris to us as a little oasis of gaiety in a drab world. I’m very much afraid that the answer is that France is an extinct volcano; and can one wonder? For the last four hundred years France has been losing the best stuff in the nation in war after war, and no people can stand up to that indefinitely. Portugal, Spain, Holland, England, we’ve all had our innings: and now it is up to your country to go in and bat. If one looks far enough ahead, I’m inclined to think that—after our time thank goodness—China is going to come out on top: for she has unlimited manpower, unlimited grit, and a capacity for hard work on nothing a year paid quarterly which none of the white peoples possess.

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