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As you can imagine, Mummy and I read any scraps we can get from you and friends and others – even from papers – about what is going on.1 The only thing we can be sure of discovering is that we don't know, can't know and never shall know. I once – I am talking about the first war – felt sure that at the end I should know, if I was still in existence, who had won. Well, I know that I don't know, but I think I know we did not. Even that I am not sure of; you can see it depends where you write FINIS; the end of the first day of the Cambrai battle? End of first week, month, year? Century perhaps? You see how complicated a simple question like, ‘Who won the Battle of Cambrai?‘ turns out to be. Anyhow, you and others must be damned cold – with the fear of being colder still if it is not possible to earn a living or get anyone else to do it for us.
It is now 11.0 a.m. on Sunday. Mummy and I are sitting by the pool. Temperature is 60° in the shade but we are in the sun which is very warm. I tell you this as a contrast to what you must be having – pity you can't prop this up against the wall and warm your hands at it. Even if it made you hot with envy it would be something, but I am afraid it is not even that much use. It certainly wasn't when – rarely – I was sitting about shivering in a trench consoling myself that if I got warm the lice would start biting.
All these problems are demanding solution all over the world, only in different stages of development. It is like the state in the Universe where, if you had the skill and the technical equipment – and lots of equipment you cannot even guess at – you could know a great deal about everything from man and his so-called mind, to quasars and other animals not even available to us for inspection in our present state of ‘blissful’ ignorance. Oh for the days (Past/Future) which (were/will be) the Ones! There's also a lot to be said for being able to live – where one has to anyway – in the present.