To Charles Augustus Strong
C/o Brown Shipley & Co 123 Pall Mall, S.W.1
Windsor, England. April 30, 1919
The affair of my Y.M.C.A. lectures has advanced to a stage when it seems likely that it may be realized. The Y.M.C.A. people seemed sensible and not at all mystically inclined: rather imperialistic and with a sort of missionary spirit, but all quite political, so that I don’t feel any incongruity in working with them. I have got my passport and filled out the “Demande de Visa” and the Y.M.C.A. officials promise to take all the steps necessary. I am asking, for the moment for permission to resume permanent residence in Paris; my proposed journeys later to Spain and Italy will then figure only as trips, from which I shall return to Paris as to my head-quarters. If they refuse to admit this arrangement, I shall be forced to ask for an exeat to Spain; and then manage to return to Paris or go straight to Italy from there. It is a great lapse from our old liberty. And how foolish! What conspiracies are you or I forging?
From The Letters of George Santayana: Book Two, 1910-1920. Cambridge, MA: The MIT Press, 2001.
Location of manuscript: Rockefeller Archive Center, Sleepy Hollow NY