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Writer's pictureLinda Odhner, with photos by Liz Kufs
Nov 15, 20230 min read

Excerpted Inspirations #103


[Anne Morrow Lindbergh has been struggling to express her views about whether the US should enter World War II, and has written an essay called The Wave of the Future, published as a small book in 1940. She writes in a letter to her mother:] One of the hardest things to bear of this new life of opposite camps is finding there are things you don't like in your own "camp." It is part of this age I have dreaded where one must take "sides" and there is no place for the moderate -- or, at least, the moderates are forced to join with extremists. There is no middle way. I suppose one has got to learn and bear that there are unworthy elements in any crusade. And that being so, the moderates are bound to be "used," so to speak. It is an awful feeling but there does not seem to be any defense against it one has got to go ahead anyway on what one believes. I have felt it strongly and bitterly this year and because of that I was terribly pleased -- or, rather, helped -- by a letter from Auden (W. H. -- whom I don't know at all) on the book. He put it so well -- this pain of not knowing whether or not one is being used -- that I feel like handing it on to you. He said: "As a writer myself, I know that it is not neglect and scorn that is the hardest solitude to bear, but the knowledge that everything one writes goes out helpless into the world to be turned to evil as well as good, that every work of art is powerless against misuse; yet one has to take the risk, and pray that the good may outbalance the evil." Diaries and Letters of Anne Morrow Lindbergh: War Within and Without (1939-1944), p. 132

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