I am exceedingly glad you joined hands with the Oxford Professori. The Daily Mail foamed to-day on the subject. It almost went so far as to say the library at Liège and such acts of burning were by Professors only. It—but let it pass! In the Times I noted a book by a Doctor Schinz—not a good book, but the Times noticed it as though Schinz were kneeling on Podsnap's doormat. Faugh!

How long can it go on! You know whenever I go away I realize that it has happened. The change has come. Nothing is the same. I positively feel one has no right to run a paper without preaching a gospel. (I know you do, but I mean with all the force of one's soul.) I get an evangelist feeling, when I read Fashion News in the D.N. and then Strike News and Irish News and so many thousands out of work. But above and beyond that I realise the ‘spiritual temper’ of the world. I feel as though the step has been taken—we are over the edge. Is it fantastic? Who is going to pull us up? I certainly page 65 had no end of an admiration for L. G. but then he's capable of that speech on reprisals—which really was a vile speech from a ‘statesman.’ It was perfectly obvious he had no intention of saying what he did when he got up to speak—he was carried away. It is all over really. That's why I shall be so thankful when you pack your rucksack and come over here. The only sort of paper for the time is an out and out personal, dead true, dead sincere paper in which we spoke our Hearts and Minds.

You know there are moments when I want to make an appeal to all our generation who do believe that the war has changed everything to come forward and let's start a crusade. But I know, darling, I am not a crusader and it's my job to dwell apart and write my best for those that come after.

Does your soul trouble you? Mine does. I feel that only now (October 1920) do I desire to be saved. I realise what salvation means and I long for it. Of course, I am not speaking as a Christian or about a personal God. But the feeling is … I believe (and very much); help thou my unbelief. But it's to myself I cry—to the spirit, the essence of me—that which lives in Beauty. Oh, these words. And yet I should be able to explain. But I'm impatient with you. I always “know you understand and take it for granted.” But just very lately I seem to have seen my whole past—to have gone through it—to have emerged, very weak and very new. The soil (which wasn't at all fragrant) has at last produced something which isn't a weed but which I do believe (after Heaven knows how many false alarms) is from the seed which was sown. But it's taken 32 years in the dark…

And I long for goodness—to live by what is permanent in the soul.

It all sounds vague. You may wonder what induces me to write this. But as I walked up and down outside the house this evening the clouds heaped on the horizon—noble, shining clouds, the deep blue waves—they set me thinking again.

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I would have enjoyed Goodyear pa-man. I remember giving F. G. my photo and he telling me his father had said it was fine head. I remember how he laughed and so did I—and I said ‘I shall have to grow a pair of horns and have it stuffed to hang on Murry's door.’ When I recall Goodyear I can't believe he is—nowhere—just as when I recall Chummie he comes before me, warm, laughing, saying “Oh, absolutely.” What a darling boy he was!

I love this place more and more. One is conscious of it as I used to be conscious of New Zealand. I mean if I went for a walk there and lay down under a pine tree and looked up at the wispy clouds through the branches I came home plus the pine tree—don't you know? Here it's just the same. I go for a walk and I watch the butterflies in the heliotrope and the young bees and some old bumble ones and all these things are added unto me. Why I don't feel like this in England Heaven knows. But my light goes out in England, or it's a very small and miserable shiner.

This isn't a letter. It's just a note. Yes. I shall provide small pink carnets for our accounts at Xmas. Slates, too, with holes burnt in them for the sponge string. Did you ever burn a hole in the frame? Thrilling deed. It was Barry Waters' speciality, with his initials burnt, too—and a trimming. I can see it now.