Coliseum in Rome is in danger of faIJing owing to crumbling of the
upper stones. And Hoppe said Westminster Abbey stone was peeling
off.
Finally ... damn you, why are you so far away?
Summerhill School
Leiston, Suffolk
My dear Reich,
•••February 5, 1955Ritter came to see me yesterday. He is much disturbed by
your letter to him. I told him the difficulty in explaining an idea when
the originator was alive and at work and advised him to change the name
of the journal so that he did not appear to be interpreting you officially.
He doesn't want to do that. If it rested with me I'd say to him carry
on, hoping and thinking the good he does will much outweigh any wrong
interpreting.
To me the matter seems klein [small] today when it looks as if the
Formosa affair will end us all over here. Bertrand Russell said yester
day that if the Formosa issue is not settled humanity may be destroyed
by the end of this year. I see no way out for China or U.S.A.; I see
no way out at all for us if world war comes. The biggest U.S.A. atom
bomb airbase is seven miles from Summerhill; we'd be the first target,
but in any case radiation will destroy life on this island. I think that the
fundamental ground is that U.S.A. especially will rather see humanity
destroyed than have universal communism. I fear your plague is too
strong on both sides to save the situation. Long ago you said that War
III would come and I didn't want to believe you. I miserably think you
prophesied rightly.
Sorry to write so cheerless a letter. Your spacemen may be benign
but the blighters are too late to save a very unbenign world.
P.S. Do try to give Ritter a little hope for his enterprise.
•••