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Rome, 19 September 19071
Dear colleague,
On my arrival here I found your letter about the further developments at the Congress. It has not depressed me and I am glad to see that you are not depressed either. On you, I believe, this experience will have an excellent effect, at least of the kind that I like best. As for me, my respect for our cause has increased. I was beginning to think: “What, already gaining recognition after scarcely ten years? There must be something wrong with it.” Now I can believe in it again. But you see that your tactics have been unrealistic. Those people don't want to be enlightened. That is why they are incapable right now of understanding the simplest things. If some day they want to understand, you'll see, nothing will be too complicated for them. Until then, there is nothing for it but to go on working and to argue as little as possible. What can we say after all? To this one: you're an idiot!; to that one: you're a scoundrel! And fortunately these are convictions one does not express. Besides, we know that they are poor devils, who on the one hand are afraid of giving offence, because that might jeopardize their careers, and on the other hand are2 paralysed by fear of their own repressed material. We must wait until they die out or gradually shrink to a minority. All the young fresh blood, after all, is on our side.
Unfortunately I cannot quote from memory the fine verses, from C. F. Meyer's Hutten, that end like this:
“And now that bell which rings so merrilySays: One more Protestant has come to be.”3