25 May 1919
Dear Irene,
Your friends in Berlin miss you! Berlin is bleak without you, even now with the lilacs in flower and the poor dear city coming back to life, and many things happening – new journals, art galleries, theatre productions. There is still not much to eat unless you are attracted to turnips and animal lungs. And life is still not peaceful. There’s trouble for a few days, and some wretched politician is assassinated, and then the violence stops, and all the while the shops open and the trams run and children go to school. And then maybe it starts again.
As for me – I have gone back to journalism. I’m still only working here and there, I long for a permanent position. As you can imagine, your friend Alexander has much to say on many subjects. Actually, I am being published widely, I am considered a champion of the new republic.
I often dream about the war and that office where I filled out useless forms all day. Do I feel my time in the army was wasted? In a way, of course, but then the experience has completely altered me, I feel fifty years older. Now I understand that studying in Berlin and talking for hours in cafés did not qualify me to pontificate on every subject. I am bewildered by how little I understood, or understand now. But what I do know is that when I feel surrounded by hatred – as a journalist, a Social Democrat, a Jew – when I see this hatred screaming aloud in the press, I must have the courage to respond with strength and reason, and belief in my own values. It’s tempting to stay silent and continue with one’s own life as best one may, but that’s no solution.
What the war made me fear was people’s capacity to be swallowed up in mass emotion. It is so seductive, marching behind a flag, believing one is serving a cause far greater than oneself. One’s own fears melt away. Alas, those of us who believe in parliamentary democracy can’t march in step and sing rousing songs, the best we can offer is prosperity and calm, which at the moment poor Ebert and Scheidemann cannot do.
I’ve abandoned my book on the empire but I think of re-casting it as a history, somewhat satirical, like that new book Eminent Victorians. I wish you’d contribute some ludicrous drawings of the old regime to catch the attention of our cynical public.
I see Thomas often. He has such a kind heart that the goodness left over from his family and his friends he extends to the people of Berlin and indeed the world. I have to tease him, he is almost too virtuous. He is always saying, ‘When Irene comes back. . .’ His sisters look after him, especially Elise. Her view is you will never come back. She says you are a typical Englishwoman, friendly in good times, hostile in bad ones. She has introduced him to a friend of hers, an officer’s widow. This lady invites him to tea in Potsdam, he does not go. But Elise is persistent.
Come back soon. Whatever Berlin is, it’s not dull. If you think she would accept them, please give my best wishes to your mother, and of course to that charming Sophia.
I wrote to you before but probably my letter did not reach you.
With very best wishes,
Alexander