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LETTERS FROM ABROAD

103

hoping to see you, when I reach home. What I have suffered God only knows.—I am longing for rest.

LONDON, April 10, 1921.

I am glad to be in England again. One of the first men whom I happened to meet here was H. W. Nevinson; and I felt that soul was alive in this country which had produced such a man as that!

A land should be judged by its best products, and I have no hesitation in saying that the best Englishmen are the best specimens of humanity.

With all our grievances against the English nation, I cannot help loving your country, which has given me some of my dearest friends. I am intensely glad of this fact, for it is hateful to hate. Just as a General tries, for his tactics, to attract a whole army of men into a cul-de-sac, in order to demolish them, our feeling of anger generalises the whole people of a country, in order mentally to give them a crushing blow on a tremendously big scale.

Things that are happening in Ireland are ugly. The political lies, that are accompanying them, are stupendous, and in retaliation our anger seeks a victim adequately big; and we readily incriminate the whole people of England, though we know that a great number of Englishmen feel shame and sorrow for these brutalities quite as keenly as any disinterested outsiders.