To Rosamond Thomas [Sturgis] Little
Via Santo Stefano Rotondo, 6
Rome. April 17, 1952
The illustrated weekly reviews, that you usually put in for padding into your food-parcels, entertain me a good deal. There is confusion of subjects and colours, but all contributes to produce a sense of millions and millions of people and dollars going it as hard as they can. I think it will all prove a comedy, not a tragedy. The world is in a terrible mess philosophically, but at least in Rome life is orderly and apparently prosperous, and the possibility of a communist conquest (perhaps without much fighting) seems unreal. When one thinks of the French Revolution, and the ease with which the Empire and Restoration reestablished respectibility and peace, and fashionable society, it seems as if civilisation would not really disappear, but there would be at most a carnival of rowdyism, a counter revolution, and modern routine once again.
From The Letters of George Santayana: Book Eight, 1948-1952. Cambridge, MA: The MIT Press, 2008.
Location of manuscript: The Houghton Library, Harvard University, Cambridge MA.