HAS it occurred to you that the powers that have in charge the progress of the world may be obliged to use methods repugnant to your desires, in order to accomplish inevitable purposes at the time when they are due? Man, by rebelling against the tendencies of cosmic progress, may retard it--for a time; but when the wave rises high enough it will carry him along against his will, and inevitable effects are produced in spite of his rebellion. Take this war. The hour had struck on the world clock when races of men should work together for a common purpose. They rebelled in their fear that each would not get his share of world benefits; so the world was attacked by a common enemy, and the races have _had_ to unite for a common purpose, that of preserving civilization from the destruction that threatens it. Could this war have been prevented? By prevision, yes. But no one with influence enough to be heard respectfully had that prevision. Those who stand high in the world’s regard have generally so concentrated upon their individual work and their individual ambitions, that they have lost the ability to see impersonally and to see the world as a whole. Some can see as a whole the tendencies of their own country; few can see the world tendency. And I tell you now that if, when this universal war is ended, the races do not recognize the necessity to unite in a federation for the good of all, there will be after forty years little left of all that has been accomplished during that marvellous nineteenth century which saw material progress equalling that of the preceding two thousand years. Can man not see the stars of his destiny without being struck on the head with a hammer? If man will not work for the good of the whole, then the whole has to be threatened. It is so threatened now, if you could see it. LETTER XXIV MELANCHOLY _December 23, 1917._ I WANT to write about melancholy, not the depression produced by bad digestion or pressure on the nerves, but that cloud of darkness that sometimes descends upon the most brilliant mind and the stoutest heart, making them for a while useless for any purpose--except that of drawing knowledge from the experience of melancholy itself. Not all sadness originates in the heart that is sad, and fear, the basis of melancholy, may be suggested to a soul on earth by a soul beyond the earth. You do not realize what a cloud of dissatisfied and fearful souls this holocaust has let loose in the invisible regions; they flock round the sensitive souls upon the earth, longing to “tell their troubles,” longing for sympathy and help. They are no more self-reliant than many in your world whose very presence depresses a stronger fellow being.