BR TO OTTOLINE MORRELL, [AUG. 1917]
BRACERS 18695. ALS. Morrell papers, Texas
Proofread by K. Blackwell

Tuesday.

Thank you for your letter, and for S.S’s which I am returning.

I will come Saturday morning by the train reaching Wheatley 1.30. I am longing to come. I feel so much more alive than I did, much more able to live seriously and not merely find ways of slipping through the days. — I spent today at the Labour Conference. After the miners’ change, the result was better than people expected. They seemed ready to act, in spite of the narrow majority. But I left them still discussing subsidiary matters, and I don’t know what they decided about them. — I shall be glad to go over what you have marked in Graeme White’s things — I am sorry there is so little.

I long to get back to philosophy. The turmoil of temporary things wears one out, and the disappointments are so profound.

A volume of Tchekov came — was it from you? It contains the Black Monk, which you spoke about — I thought it wonderful — it appealed to me terribly. And some of the other stories I thought very good.

I see that the work I do now-a-days brings on despair. It will settle down on me again unless I get away from it. It isn’t only fatigue — it is much more the feeling of impotence. But I will work myself free when I decently can.

I used to live with a sense of some kind of cooperation with the community — even the most abstract work always appealed to me instinctively as part of the life of the world. Since the war, I have lost that feeling. That is the root of the despair that comes over me. At first one thought people would come round; now one knows they won’t, even when they grow tired of the war. The sense of the cruelty of human beings weighs one down. But one has to find a home for it in one’s thoughts, and learn to live with it without being driven from one’s purpose. I feel now that I can. — Goodbye till Saturday.

Your
B.