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31 October 1910, Vienna, IX. Berggasse 19
Dear friend,
I hope the niggling tone of my last letter hasn't had a lasting effect and that such features are not present in the final image.
Your letter received today, just in time for the present phase of my “negotiations” with Bleuler. Tired1 of his interminable evasions and zigzaggings, I have presented him with a kind of ultimatum.2 I have asked him to state explicitly what parts of our statutes3 were repellent to him; assuring him that as far as possible we would take his wishes into account (at the next Congress) —and reveal his ideas on the subject of controversy with outsiders, in which case I would be willing (and hoped to influence you in this direction) to give him a decisive say on our foreign policy. But, I concluded, this was contingent on his joining the Society, which I could not renounce and would not sacrifice to him. This letter was posted three days ago.
This correspondence (my part of which I cannot submit to you) has been exhausting, because on the one hand I agree with you completely, while on the other considerations of a selfish and sentimental nature, with which you are acquainted, have inclined me to moderation and, for instance, deterred me from asking him the question which you suggest and which I would very much have liked to ask, the famous question: Why didn't you say so aloud? (i.e., in Berlin.) At the end of my letters nature always asserted itself and I started to fume. I am no great diplomat and I cannot bring myself to believe that I have got anywhere with him. If he doesn't accept, of course I can't go to Zürich. In this case I should like to take you at your word and expect you in Vienna. If I go to Zürich, of course I shall stay with you. I was counting on your invitation.
And now to politics and the right of self-defence! You speak after my own heart. If I had been alone, my tactics would have been to wait for our adversaries to destroy each other. But now we have become a little b