The following letter was written immediately before the outbreak of war between Spain and the United States.
There are all sorts of _intimes_ and confidential things I want to say to you in acknowledgment of your so deeply interesting letter--of April 10th--received yesterday; but I must break the back of my response at least with this mechanical energy; not having much of any other--by which I mean simply too many odd moments--at my disposal just now. I do answer you, alas, almost to the foul music of the cannon. It is this morning precisely that one feels the fat to be at last fairly in the fire. I confess that the blaze about to come leaves me woefully cold, thrilling with no glorious thrill or holy blood-thirst whatever. I see nothing but the madness, the passion, the hideous clumsiness of rage, of mechanical reverberation; and I echo with all my heart your denouncement of the foul criminality of the screeching newspapers. They have long since become, for me, the danger that overtops all others. That became clear to one, even here, two years ago, in the Venezuela time; when one felt that with a week of simple, enforced silence everything could be saved. If things _were_ then saved without it, it is simply that they hadn't at that time got so bad as they are now in the U.S. My sympathy with you all is intense--the whole horror must so mix itself with all your consciousness. I am near enough to hate it, without being, as you are, near enough in some degree, perhaps, to understand. I am leading at present so quiet a life that I don't measure much the sentiment, the general attitude around me. Much of it can't possibly help being Spanish--and from the "European" standpoint in general Spain _must_ appear savagely assaulted. She is so quiet--publicly and politically--so decent and picturesque and harmless a member of the European family that I am bound to say it argues an extraordinary illumination and a very predetermined radicalism not to admire her pluck and pride. But publicly, of course, England will do nothing whatever that is not more or less--negatively--for our benefit. I scarcely know what the newspapers say--beyond the Times, which I look at all for Smalley's cables: so systematic is my moral and intellectual need of ignoring them. One must save one's life if one can. The next weeks will, however, in this particular, probably not a little break me down. I must at least read the Bombardment of Boston. May you but scantly suffer from it!...