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My thoughts flew to you immediately the guns sounded. I opened the window and it really did seem—just in those first few moments that a wonderful change happened—not in human creatures hearts—no—but in the air, there seemed just for a breath of time—a silence, like the silence that comes after the last drop of rain has fallen—you know?

It was so wonderful—and I saw that in our garden a lilac bush had believed in the South wind and was covered in buds—

Oh, why is the world so ugly—so corrupt and stupid? When I heard the drunks passing the house on Monday night, singing the good old pre-war drunken rubbish, I felt cold with horror. They are not changed—and then the loathsome press about Germany's cry for food.

My baby longing for people to “kiss and be friends”—

How horrid they are not to—Why don't they fly at each other, kiss and cry and share everything. One feels that about nations—but alas! about individuals, too. Why do people hide and withdraw and suspect—as they do? I don't think it is just shyness…. I used to. I think it is lack of heart: a sort of blight on them which will not let them ever come to full flower.

And the worst of it is I can't just accept that, calmly, like M., for instance, and say—“Very well—Let them go then.” No still I feel full of love—still I desire lovely friends—and it will always be so, I think. But Life is so short I want them here now at once before Next Christmas—radiant beings—bursting open my door—

I suppose it's great nonsense.

I have been translating Maxim Gorki's Journal of the Revolution all last week. I find Gorki wonderfully sympathetic—–This journal is dreadful. It makes you feel, anything anything rather than revolution.