The Teachers are very grave in this crisis, but they are not crushed to earth. They know that after the storm comes the calm and their faith has survived. In the awful depression in which you have been sunk for the last few days, how could you help anyone? It is not for you to ask help from others, but only from us. You know where we are. It is for you to revive the drooping spirits and the drooping faith of those who have not received the assurances which you have received. This letter is not a reproof, but a lesson. I would not have you retire to a selfish peace above the tumult and stay there, forgetting the world. I do not forget the world. I work by day and by night. But what help could I be to these war-shocked souls that come out here should I weep when I encounter them? No help at all should I be. Instead, I seek to strengthen them with my strength, to encourage them with my hope. I do not mean, when I say that your work begins after the war, that you can do nothing now. Far from it. You can do much, in both worlds. But if you die of the wounds you behold out here, if you are caught yourself in the whirlpool of despair, how can you draw others out of it? I cannot repeat too often that this war is the world’s initiation. It will be a new and an enlightened world which will rise from the ashes of the old one--a phœnix of a world, and I want you to rise with it. The agony cannot endure forever. It is too intense just now, which means that the climax is approaching. When I told you that the issue was settled here, I did not mean that the war would end in a day or two. Study cause and effect. Study the rise and fall of everything according to cyclic law. The tidal wave must spend itself on the shore before it subsides again into the sea. Be calm. Keep faith with those whose task it is to uphold the faith of mankind. When you say that you want to suffer as long as the world suffers, you are speaking as our pupil, and we would not have it otherwise. But remember that one may be strong in suffering. We would not have you shirk the experience; but master and use the experience, instead of letting it master and use you. In regard to America, did I not tell you some time ago that there was “an American on guard to-night,” old Abraham Lincoln, who renounced heaven that he might watch over and guard the land he died for? Rest in confidence on that assurance. The other countries that you love are watched over also. And another country which you do not love is watched over, lest it wander so far that it cannot find its way back into the fold of human brotherhood. There are souls in that country who are keenly aware that she has gone as far as she safely may without becoming an outlaw among the nations. There are even Germans in America who know it. If I named a few of them, you might be surprised.