LETTER XII
LEVEL HEADS
May 15,
1917.
Do
not get excited, you Americans. If you keep your heads, you will come
through this all right. If you lose your heads, you may lose much
besides—You may lose more than you can win back in a hundred years.
I am not excited. I have not lost my head. (Yes, I still have a
head, and hands and feet. If I should try to live out here without hands and
feet, the adjustment to that unaccustomed condition would have a reactionary
effect upon my head. I am not experimenting in the elimination of my
members.)
You see a country now, Russia, that is
making the experiment of living without its head. No nation can continue as
a nation without a head, and a level one. Even the most extremely
republican, democratic, socialistic, or any other kind of a nation must have
a head. A completely anarchistic aggregation of people could not be called a
nation. Its land would be only a geographical section populated with units,
and such units unrelated to other units might as well be ciphers.
Do not be impatient because I write seldom at present. I am
rather busy. I shall always come when I have something that must be said.
A change is coming in America. Quite a change has already come
about, has it not? *
This country is great, this country is
strong, this country is adaptable. It can adjust itself to change. The
people of this country have not been slaves for a long time. The people of
Russia have been so many kinds of slaves that their reaction to freedom is
unexpected by a free world. Wait! Do not lose your heads about this matter.
I do not object to there being a few
persons who know that I am writing with you again. They cannot affect me,
save to encourage me with their interest.
*
It was about this time, if I remember
rightly, that many of our wealthy men began working for the government at
one dollar a year.
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