To Rosamond Thomas Bennett Sturgis
Via Santo Stefano Rotondo, 6
Rome. January 24, 1947
You know that I am reading hard about politics, and yesterday I received a book commemorating the 60th anniversary of our Harvard Class, 1886, with a pamphlet by my school friend Dick Smith; now Robert Dixon Weston, in which he pitches hard into the blessed memory of President Franklin Delano Roosevelt, especially about the New Deal. I am curious to know how strong the reaction against state interference is in America. In Europe everything yields to it, and it makes little difference whether it is Fascism, Labour, or Communism that seizes the reins. I think reform was needed, but that the remedy is proving worse than the disease. What are your feelings about it?
From The Letters of George Santayana: Book Seven, 1941-1947. Cambridge, MA: The MIT Press, 2006.
Location of manuscript: The Houghton Library, Harvard University, Cambridge MA