LAST DITCH OF DEMOCRACY - Majority Rights

her strongest bases, and having handed over such commercial prestige as
she possessed in Australia and New Zealand. And showin’ no real hope
of competing successfully with the New Orient, it being now generally
believed that the Japanese troops are quite ready to die, after having
killed off per man three Americans, or done equivalent damage to the
instruments of Roosevelt’s police squads.
Of course if some Santa Claus is going to come along and pay the bill
for you, that is a different matter. But just what far planet, or comet do
you expect Santa Claus to descend from? The interstellar spaces have
not yet yielded to the Pan American Airways. You can not feed
American garrisons on inedible metal, even if it has been bought by the
American Treasury. You are already projecting curtailment of Europe’s
supplies of grain, in conformity with the plow under policy, which was
said to have ruined the morale of American mules. IS it intelligent? Does
the project inspire confidence on the Stock Exchange?
#109 (July 24, 1943) U.S.(C79)
CIVILIZATION
If we were in normal times, that is to say if it weren’t for this tiresome
war, I should be writing letters to a small number of people, say 10, 20, a
dozen, two dozen, on what some of you would call rather special
subjects.
For example, I should be writing to Mr. Otto Bird: I suppose he is now
Doctor Bird, Ph.D. He was up in Canada, I forget which university but
he was a studyin’ with Etienne Gilson, who has writ in French among
other things an admirable history of medieval philosophy. And I had sent
Dr. Gilson some very pretty photos of the manuscript, unique
manuscript, containin’ Dino del Garbo’s commentary on Cavalcanti’s
canzone “Donna Mi Prega.” Cavalcanti, a friend of Dante’s and that
poem of very great interest. I spent a good deal of time translatin’, and
editin’ Cavalcanti’s poems with paleography, I mean reproductions, of