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246F
Vienna IX, Berggasse 19
3 September 1914
Dear Friend,
At last a proper letter from you, and with a charming postscript from your wife! It was on the way from 29 August until today, so Berlin is still a long way away.
Thank you very much indeed for your offer, which has fortunately been overtaken by events, and for the news of your family, which I shall do my best to reciprocate. We are all well; the only ill person (my sister-in-law) has almost completely recovered. Martin is in Innsbruck, I want to visit him on Sunday; he counts on leaving by the middle of the month.1 My son Ernst will probably be taken at the call-up on the ninth. To the young this means nothing but wish fulfilment. The barriers between army and civil population have, incidentally, practically disappeared, only the barriers of age remain.
The German victories provided a firm basis for our morale, and we have been shaken in the worst way by the expectation of ours. Things seem to be going well, though, but there is nothing decisive yet, and we have given up hope of a rapid end to the war by means of catastrophic strokes. Endurance will become the chief virtue. In these circumstances, interest inclines a bit towards scientific matters again. Rank, with whom I spend a great deal of time because he is now arranging my library, will be writing to you about this. We count on a similar “positive” inclination with you. We wish to show, while we are cut off from our foreign colleagues, that we alone can do something good, and we want to bring out respectable issues of “” and “”.
Hitschmann is a happy father, Federn finally back from New York after great adventures, and now seems to be moving upwards. True,