Tuesday.
	[2. IX. 42]
Dear Nathan,
I was very pleased with your letter and am convinced that you did well to take that temporary position. For that gives you time, relaxes your inner tension, and what you have relinquished isn’t completely clear anyway. One can’t make decisions over the long term anyway nowadays, for who knows what lies ahead? I hope that this change will bring you to see us more often and that it will make your life more tranquil.
We had a peaceful time here and were all properly together, Margot too, more or less. Of course I do have a new celebration with the gall bladder just barely behind me, but otherwise everything is going quite well with work and with sailing. The visits weren’t exactly very pleasant (apart from Prof. Ehrmann), as you will have gathered from my little verse that Miss Dukas surely sent on to you.  
In the wide world things continue to look just as terrible as before, even if better than last year. But the fate of the European Jewry is horrifying. Whatever can possibly be left there? I do also have the impression that Russia could be more successfully supported, if there was an earnest will. Despite it all, I believe that notwithstanding its frightful sacrifices Russia will emerge strengthened from the war and with powerful prestige. It will gradually even dawn on fools that this path of eliminating private capital is the only possible one. I wonder whether we won’t have been struck down by then, too? For God’s sake, now! I was reading much Veblen again. His last work, Absentee Ownership, sketches a gruesome, yet persuasive picture of economic conditions cast in an interesting historical light. 
I am making progress, but still don’t have any conviction about whether I’ve got hold of the right fundamental idea. Service to Truth is fine but hard!
Cordial regards from your,
	A. E.
[ALS]