lways been my closest, dearest friend,
as well as my own darling mother. I seem now to be living in a sort of
bath of love. Can anything more ever be added to it? I feel as if I
had reached the very innermost heart of happiness. Wonderful how one
carries about such a precious consciousness. It's like something magic
and hidden that takes care of one, keeping one untouched and unharmed;
while outside, day and night, there's this terrible noise of a people
gone mad.

You wrote to me last sitting under a cherry tree, you said, in the
orchard at the back of your hotel at Glion, and you talked of the
colour of the lake far down below through the leaves of walnut trees,
and of the utter peace. Here day and night, day and night, since
Wednesday, soldiers in new grey uniforms pass through the Brandenburger
Thor down the broad road to Charlottenburg. Their tramp never stops.
I can see them from my window tramping, tramping away down the great
straight road; and crowds that don't seem to change or dwindle watch
them and shout. Where do the soldiers all come from? I never dreamed
there could be so many in the world, let alone in Berlin; and Germany
isn't even at war! But it's no use asking questions, or trying to talk
about it. I've found the word "Why?" in this house is not only useless
but improper. Nobody will talk about anything; I suppose they don't
need to, for they all seem perfectly to _know_. They're in the inner
circle in this house. They're not the public. The public is that
shouting, perspiring mob out there watching the soldiers, and Frau Berg
and her boarders are the public, and so are the soldiers themselves.
The public here are all the people who obey, and pay, and don't know;
an immense multitude of slaves,--abject, greedy, pitiful. I don't
think I ever could have imagined a thing so pitiful to see as these
respectable middle-aged Berlin citizens, fathers of families, careful
livers on small incomes, clerks, pastors, teachers, professors, drunk
and mad out there publicly on the pavement, dancing with joy because
they think the great moment they've been taught to wait for has come,
and they're going to get suddenly rich, scoop in wealth from Russia and
France, get up to the top of the world and be able to kick it. That's
what I saw over and over again today as I somehow got through to Frau
Berg's to fetch your letters. An ordinary person from an ordinary
country wants to cover these heated elderly