February 15,1939.
 
      
 
 
Dear Roger:-
 
      
 
 
Many thanks for your note and that extremely interesting excerpt 
      from Trevelyan.
 
      I wish the British would stop this "We who are about to 
      die, salute thee" attitude. Lord Lothian was here the other 
      day, started the conversation by saying he had completely abandoned 
      his former belief that Hitler could be dealt with as a semi-reasonable 
      human being, and went on to say that the British for a thousand 
      years had been the guardians of Anglo-Saxon civilization-- that 
      the scepter or the sword or something like that had dropped from 
      their palsied fingers -- that the U. S. A. must snatch it up 
      -- that F. D. R. alone could save the world--etc., etc.
 
      
 
 
I got mad clear through and told him that just so long as 
      he or Britishers like him took that attitude of complete despair, 
      the British would not be worth saving anyway.
 
      
 
 
What the British need today is good stiff grog, inducing not 
      only the desire to save civilization but the continued belief 
      that they can do it. In such an event they will have a lot more 
      support from their American cousins -- don't you think so?
 
      
 
 
As ever yours,
 
      Professor Roger B. Merriman,
 
      Master's Lodgings,
 
      Eliot House,
 
      Cambridge,
 
      Massachusetts.