To George Sturgis
Hotel Danieli,
Venice, Italy. September 28, 1939
Sept. 28, 1939
I have ideas about what is going to happen anent the war, but I won’t communicate them, partly because you wouldn’t think them reasonable, and partly because I might prove a false prophet. But this is not a gay confident war, as that of 1914 was at the beginning. It is something people have been too stupid and stubborn to avoid, although they hated and feared it so much as to be entirely upset at the thought of it’s actually overtaking them. It is a result of bad government by good men more than of good government by bad men: although there is something of this too.
And now Russia!
From The Letters of George Santayana: Book Six, 1937-1940. Cambridge, MA: The MIT Press, 2004.
Location of manuscript: The Houghton Library, Harvard University, Cambridge MA.