To Charles Augustus Strong
66 High Street
Oxford, England. August 9, 1914
It is useless to talk about the war, the subject is too vast, too absorbing, too imperfectly comprehensible. And yet we talk glibly about the universe, nous antres philosophers!
It seems that the line to Paris via Boulogne is still running, and if in the next two weeks events are favourable to the allies, and the way remains open, I may go back to Paris after all, to gather my things together, pack my books, and migrate Southward—very likely to Spain rather than to Italy, because the emotions of the moment make me feel the need of being near my own, and it is in Avila, with my sister, that I have the oldest and tenderest ties of my old and untender being.
From The Letters of George Santayana: Book Two, 1910-1920. Cambridge, MA: The MIT Press, 2001.
Location of manuscript: Rockefeller Archive Center, Sleepy Hollow NY.