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7 March 1939
20 Maresfield Gardens
London
Dear Jones,
It is still quite remarkable how unsuspectingly we human beings approach the future. When you told me shortly before the war about founding an analytic society in London, I could not foresee that a quarter of a century later I would be living so near to it and you; I would have thought it even less possible that despite this proximity I would not be able to take part in your celebratory meeting.1
But our impotence forces us to accept everything that fate brings.2 Consequently I have to content myself with sending your jubilant society a cordial greeting and hearty congratulations from afar but yet so near. The events of recent years have so ordained that London has become chief venue and center of the psychoanalytic movement. May the society discharge the functions thus devolving upon it in the most brilliant manner.
Your old
Sigm. Freud
The reference is to the banquet held in celebration of the twenty-fifth anniversary of the founding of the British Psycho-Analytical Society.
The German reads “Aber wir sind in unserer Ohnmacht [gezwungen] alles so hinzunehmen, wie das Schicksal es bringt.” The verb gezwungen was added in the British typescript, although not in Freud's original.