About Joyce—Don't read it unless you are going to really worry about it. It's no joke. It's fearfully difficult and obscure and one needs to have a really vivid memory of the Odyssey and of English Literature to make it out at all. It is wheels within wheels within wheels. Joyce certainly had not one grain of a desire that one should read it for the sake of the coarseness, though I confess I find many “a ripple of laughter” in it. But that's because (although I don't approve of what he's done) I do think Marian Bloom and Bloom are superbly seen at times. Marian is the complete complete female. There's no denying it. But one has to remember she's also Penelope, she is also the night and the day, she is also an image of the teeming earth, full of seed, rolling round and round. And so on and so on. I am very surprised to hear a Russian has written a book like this. It's most queer that it's never been heard of. But has Kot read Ulysses? It's not the faintest use considering the coarseness except purely critically.

I am very interested that Koteliansky thinks the German-Russian treaty really good. Manoukhin and all the Russians here say it means war in the near future. For certain, for certain! It is the beginning of Bolshevism all over Europe. The Bolsheviks at Genoa are complete cynics. They say anything. They are absolutely laughing in their beards at the whole affair, and treating us as fools even greater than the French. The French at least have a sniff of what may happen but we go on saying “Let us all be good,” and the Russians and Germans burst with malicious glee. I was staggered when I heard this. Manoukhin's partner here, a very exceptional Frenchman, started the page 209 subject yesterday, said, Why did not we English immediately join the French and take all vestige of power from Germany? This so disgusted me I turned to Manhoukhin and felt sure he would agree that it simply could not be done. But he agreed absolutely. And they declare, the Russians here, we are in for another war and for Bolshevism partout. It's a nice prospect, isn't it?

I must say I never in my life felt so entangled in politics as I do at this moment. I hang on the newspapers. I feel I dare not miss a speech. One begins to feel, like Gorky feels, that it's one's duty to what remains of civilisation to care for those things and that writers who do not are traitors. But it's horrible. It's like jumping into a treacle pot. However, perhaps to-morrow one will stop reading the papers or caring a fig.

Abc
Tumble down D
The cat's in the cupboard
And can't see me.

I must end this letter. Don't take it for a real letter. It's written from bed where I lie with influenza for tumpany. I am sure I'm over the worst of it to-day. But I still feel very boiled and put through the wringer. You see the weather here is simply beyond words. It rains and rains and it's cold and it hails and the wind whistles down the corridors. Only frogs and mushrooms, being noseless, could refrain from catching things. Influenza puts the fear of God into me. The very word has a black plume on its head and a tail of coffin sawdust. But I hope to get up and go out next week. Don't think I'm discouraged. Not a bit of it. On the contrary, if a pudding head could sing, I would.

M. comes in every afternoon with a fresh victim to tell me of. Everybody has got it, woman at milkshop, woman at library, bread woman. Where does all the rain come from? And the Channel is rough every day. When you come in May if I were you I'd fly. So simple, no horrid page 210 old changing from boats to trains and diving into cabins and along gritty station platforms. Flying seems so clean, like cutting out one's way with a pair of sharp scissors.