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time like this when one is apt to concentrate on essential primitive
things like eating and safety and sex.
You were so right about Stalinism, * but the future does not lie with
Stalin or Hitler; as you said it lies with the people who do the world's
work. In this country there is a pretty grim determination that Hitlerism
must be destroyed.
From now on I guess I shall have to devote more time to planting
and digging than psychology. Also I am going to teach mathematics
a subject I like so much that I spent many hours in hospital working
out problems.
It doesn't seem likely that I shall be able to come to visit you for
a long time. My daydreams of a lecture tour in the States must remain
daydreams in the meantime.
You ask what you shall do about the loan I made you. I don't know
what the new financial laws in England are, only that one can't send
money abroad. But it is possible that a debt made months ago can be
paid into a New York bank in my name. In such a case it would be very
useful if later I came to study further with you. In any case, you need
not repay me until you are sure of a good income from your work ...
Write me from time to time, and for God's sake don't develop an
American accent.
Summerhill School
Leiston, Suffolk
My dear Reich,
- ••
October 23, 1939I got your long letter. About the money, you should not pay
it in monthly instalments because that is too complicated for me.
No, we are not overworried about the war so far. God knows what
the end will be, for history is doing in a week what it took many years
to do long ago. There never was such a tempo. I can't write about the
war because I don't know what the censor passes or blacks out, and in
any case I am tired of discussing it. One thing is clear, however, that
during such a time one lives fully and alertly. My regret is that I can't
* The Hitler-Stalin Pact had allowed Hitler to invade Poland. This, in tum,
triggered England's declaration of war against Germany.