Translations:CP 02812/55/en

Thank you many times over for your letter. I know that its kindness is without indulgence, while its bluntness is a sign of your friendship. I did not fully understand, not being an expert in the stock market, what you meant by "Count as nil in your inventory those stocks where you are the buyer, and if you find yourself penniless, sell them off." Of course there is no need to send me a detailed explanation. In the terrible days we are going through, you have other things to do besides writing letters and bothering with my petty interests, which I assure you seem wholly unimportant when I think that millions of men are going to be massacred in a "War of the Worlds" comparable with that of Wells, because the Emperor of Austria thinks it advantageous to have an outlet onto the Black Sea. I have just seen off my brother who was leaving for Verdun at midnight. Alas he insisted on being posted to the actual border. As for my stocks, no need to answer me, especially since the market is suspended. When it starts up again, I will ask you what I should do and whether your sentence meant "do not hope for an increase and sell them off at any price." If in my enormous and deplorable list (and all the more deplorable for it being enormous) I did not include the 200 Mexico City Tramways (although I thought I had) it was not in order to hide my sins, for I have told you everything. I must have simply forgotten them. I thought I had included them, but I am not sure, and admitting the truth the other day was difficult enough that I do not want to take the risk of not having told it completely. I thank you again and ask you to thank M.M. Warburg for the assistance you have given me in the current circumstances, and although I do not know exactly where all those you love are, where they are going, and what risks they face in this terrible war, please know that my deepest and most heartfelt sympathy is with them, and with you. I still hope, non-believer though I am, that some supreme miracle will prevent, at the last second, the launch of the omni-murdering machine. But I wonder how a believer, a practicing Catholic like the Emperor Franz Joseph, convinced that after his impending death he will appear before his God, can face having to account to him for the millions of human lives whose sacrifice it was in his power to prevent.