Chapter XIV: Letter XII: Level Heads

_May 15, 1917._

DO not get excited, you Americans. If you keep your heads, you will come through this all right. If you lose your heads, you may lose much besides--you may lose more than you can win back in a hundred years.

I am not excited. I have not lost my head. (Yes, I still have a head, and hands and feet. If I should try to live out here without hands and feet, the adjustment to that unaccustomed condition would have a reactionary effect upon my head. I am not experimenting in the elimination of my members.)

You see a country now, Russia, that is making the experiment of living without its head. No nation can continue as a nation without a head, and a level one. Even the most extremely republican, democratic, socialistic, or any other kind of a nation must have a head. A completely anarchistic aggregation of people could not be called a nation. Its land would be only a geographical section populated with units, and such units unrelated to other units might as well be ciphers.

Do not be impatient because I write seldom at present. I am rather busy. I shall always come when I have something that must be said.

A change is coming in America. Quite a change has already come about, has it not?[2]

This country is great, this country is strong, this country is adaptable. It can adjust itself to change. The people of this country have not been slaves for a long time. The people of Russia have been so many kinds of slaves that their reaction to freedom is unexpected by a free world. Wait! Do not lose your heads about this matter.

I do not object to there being a few persons who know that I am writing with you again. They cannot affect me, save to encourage me with their interest.

FOOTNOTES:

[Footnote 2: It was about this time, if I remember rightly, that many of our wealthy men began working for the government at one dollar a year.]