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BR writes about World War I. "I feel now that in my own spirit I have conquered the war—it cannot abase me again." He felt a lust for destruction after the sinking of the Lusitania but he no longer feels that way. Life has becoming "infinitely precious" and he wants to welcome the new world that will emerge after the war.

He is writing "The Philosophy of Social Reconstruction". It is "a sort of guide-book to the new radicalism which we shall need after the war." He will not "go in for socialism", being "more nearly an anarchist".

The war has taught him "more of man and his needs and follies and joys and despair" than he knew previously. But still "the universal madness is in my blood". "I try to have in my own person as much life as 20 men, to make what amends I can for the death all round me." "If I have not been shot as a traitor".

"You have done me a great and essential service—you have nourished faith in dark days—and I bless you for it."