To Nancy Saunders Toy
Hotel Danieli
Venice, Italy. Jan. 24, 1940.
The four destroyers and the two full-rigged training-ships, that you speak of as if they would be hideous reminders of war, now seen through a veil of snow-flakes look decidedly like painted ships upon a painted ocean. No scene could be more silent and peaceful. The war itself, seen from here, only through the newspapers (which here are of moderate size, without sensational features) looks unreal: most interesting and novel; a war that nobody wanted, and in which for the most part, nobody fights. It may be an effect of old age and of being in Italy instead of in England, but the atmosphere of daily anxiety and daily bereavement that we breathed in 1914-18 no longer surrounds us. It is rather like the plot of some intricate novel, where the issues and even the characters are not yet made out, and keep surprises in store for us. The appearance of Russia was one coupde-théâtre,* the appearance of Findland as a David slaying Goliath is another. Meantime, All Quiet in the West.
*Sudden dramatic turn of events (French). The reference is presumably to the invasion of Poland by Red Army troops in September 1939.
From The Letters of George Santayana: Book Six, 1937-1940. Cambridge, MA: The MIT Press, 2004.
Location of manuscript: The Houghton Library, Harvard University, Cambridge MA