June 26, 1917
My Dear Friend: Poetry, A Magazine of Verse publishes for July, a war series by your humble servant, which is probably more military than any previous utterance of mine yet not so military, after all. The more I read of the German-American papers the more inevitable seems the conflict. I say, if this is the effort to meet us half way, what must they be saying and planning <when> by themselves?
The situation seems to me to be almost analogous to that of the Civil War when slavery was preached <in the south> as a divine institution. Prussianism is preached as a divine institution in all its workings, in the German-American papers, and that under the <Picture of the> American flag. Their minds are as closed on any common ground as was the Methodist Church South or the Presbyterian Church South.
But I do not want you to think that the three poems in Poetry for July express my whole view of the matter. I see the possibility of enlisting, a year hence, yet that does not express all I say or feel. Next fall very likely, I will bring out another addition of the Congo, with four new sections in the back, two of them dealing with the war. They trace the [illegible] change of the American mood, at least certain milestones of it. I shall include in the series a tribute to Bryan, and several other pieces I hope will please you as records, particularly two peace poems printed in the Chicago Herald on the sinking of the Lusitania. [page 2]
I hope you have not given up the idea of having me recite some day at Hull House. I will be in Chicago the last of November, and very likely will be able to do it then.
I hope your health has improved. Be sure I have given you many a thought of late. Some day this war will end.
With every good wish
Nicholas Vachel Lindsay [signed]
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