Pièce 224 - Letter from Michael Barratt Brown to R. C. Trevelyan

Corpus Christi College, Oxford. - Has had Bob's poem ["To G. Lowes Dickinson", "New Statesman and Nation", 22 Oct 1938, see 2/177] with him 'all this weekend'; thanks him for it. Has been very troubled recently by the effect of the "international situation" on people's minds: "the fatalism, the talking in terms of military alignments and of ultimate, inevitable military defence' and this 'breath of humanism & of the spirit of man, which is love' is like a 'cool breeze'. People whose 'integrity and moral uprightness' he has always thought secure 'have been lowering themselves to swearing, sarcasm and false statement'. Has found it 'too easy to lock' himself into the 'confinement' of his own ideas, saying that 'we pacifists' can only now 'hope to represent the civilisation for which the outside world imagines it is fighting'; the war 'seems already to have begun'. Everything has been a 'little hysterical', especially with the by-election [at Oxford] 'bitterly raging'; Bob's poem has given him and many of his friends 'something of the calmness of mind, the faith and hope in man of Goldie Lowes Dickinson'. Wishes he would come and read some of his poetry to a 'literary, philosophical and general discussion society' they have at Corpus.