BR TO LUCY M. DONNELLY, 23 JUNE 1946
BRACERS 58559. ALS. McMaster
Edited by M. Forte. Proofread by K. Blackwell

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HOTEL BELLERIVE AU LAC
ZURICH
June 23, 1946

My dear Lucy1

Thank you for your letter. I had not heard of Simon Flexner’s death, which is sad. I don’t know Helen’s address; if I did, I would write to her. Will you please give her my very sincere sympathy, and tell her how greatly I admired and respected Simon.

What you say about my History of Philosophy is very pleasant reading. I am glad you like my Chap. on Plotinus, as I rather fancied it myself!

I am at the moment doing a short lecture tour in Switzerland; I return to Peter and Conrad in N. Wales in a week for the Long Vacation, after which I shall be back in Trinity, where I have been inhabiting Newton’s rooms. I go about with the feeling that within 20 years England will have ceased to exist. It makes everything hectic, like the approach of closing time at a party in a hotel — “We are for the night.” A few bombs will destroy all our cities, and the rest will slowly die of hunger.

In America, large sections of the rural middle west and the desert south-west will probably survive. But not much of your America. Three cheers for Patagonia, the future centre of world culture.

Meanwhile Rabbis and Muftis, Jinnah and Nehru, Tito and the Italians, etc., play their silly games. I am ashamed of belonging to the species Homo Sapiens.

The Swiss are passionately Anglophile, and very glad to be liberated from Nazi encirclement. I try not to depress them.

You and I may be thankful to have lived in happier times — you more than I, because you have no children.

Ever yours affectionately
Bertrand Russell.

• 1

  envelope: Miss Lucy Donnelly | Beech Rd. | Rosemont | Pa. | U.S.A.
  replaced in another hand Bryn Mawr College | Bryn Mawr | Pa.