To Mary Potter Bush
C/o Brown Shipley & Co. London
Oxford, England. March 11, 1916
Although the battle of Verdun is still going on, I think the worst consequences which we feared at first are less threatening, whatever the issue may be. The French have defended themselves so efficaciously that even if they retire, it will probably not be without having inflicted paralysing losses on the enemy. It is all very horrible and very perilous; but I feel on the whole less depressed and oppressed than hitherto.
When one thinks that the greater part of mankind have always had war at their gates, and no certainty of food for the morrow, and yet have survived and been merry on every possible pretext, one understands how it is possible to get used to anything even to this war.
As to The New Republic, I have long been despleased with it, and am not going to contribute to it any longer. They seem to be a set of disinherited Bohemians, clever and amiable enough, but without any solid affections or any solid instruction. I like some of them personally, and for that reason consented to write for them sometimes, but I don’t like their friends nor their principles. And I imagine they have not force enough to count for very much, even on the wrong side.
. . . You needn’t fear that I am stranded or in trouble of any material sort. I have a (Spanish) passport and might go to Spain or Italy if I chose but I prefer to wait until things are comparatively normal again—they will never be quite the same—and meantime I am quite comfortable here, leading a self-indulgent life, seeing some people (Strong daily) and finishing my book on Egotism in German philosophy.
. . . I sometimes am quite in doubt whether my writing is feeble and too smooth, or rash and too violent.
From The Letters of George Santayana: Book Two, 1910-1920. Cambridge, MA: The MIT Press, 2001.
Location of manuscript: Butler Library, Columbia University, New York NY.