January 3, 1925.

Dear Otto:

On my return from spending my Christmas holidays in Elsted I had the happy  
surprise of your letter announcing a clearer self-insight and the consequent  
desire to re-establish friendship. That friendship, my dear Otto, has never  
been broken on my side and you will find no difficulty whatever from me in  
resuming it. I greet unhesitatingly, therefore, your advances with full cordial-  
ity and shall be only too happy if we make uninterrupted progress towards re-  
establishing the former relationship.

As it is a long time since I have been able to write to you with the hope of  
securing an objective understanding of what I want to say, I will at once seize  
this opportunity of adding a few remarks of my own on the situation. To do so, I  
must divide it into what may be called the general and the personal. Of the  
former there is little of special importance that I can say, for the situation  
there is fairly clear. I shall probably be united with our other friends in  
welcoming the change you describe and in looking forward to the necessary ways  
in which this will be registered externally. In these respects it is of course  
plain to you that the past cannot, unfortunately, be wiped out by a mere word  
or even the best intentions alone: „Am Ende ist die Tat“, to vary a favourite  
quotation. But I am perfectly sure that you will meet with nothing but willing  
help from us all, and in this respect you are in an exceptionally favourable  
position.

On the personal side there is a little more to say. In the past few years  
you have met with some opposition from me, and occasionally also with criticism.
 

This you have always tended to ascribe to affective and personal resistance on my  
part against you and you have not even yet freed yourself from this illusion („noch  
bestehende Widerstände gegen mich“). The phenomena you thus interpret had, however,  
another source, in no way a personal one, and they would have been present whoever  
had behaved towards me as you did. It suits my nature to work together with a col-  
league rather than alone, in which respect I appear to differ from you, and I have gener-
ally been successful in such combinations. I was therefore enthusiastic about the scheme  
you unfolded to me in Switzerland, and it was disappointing to find I had increasingly  
to deal with your habit of secret taciturnity and your refusal to consult together with  
me before making decisions in affairs for which actually I was responsible. This prod-
uced in me feelings of regret, and finally of despair, and it became plainer that your  
attitude was the first sign of a neurosis against which one could do nothing. But the  
reason, or one of them, why your hostile feelings were more directed against me than  
anyone else was mainly because I was the only member of the whole committee who refused  
to accept the neurosis, i.e. would not agree to the conditions and inhibitions it wished  
to impose, and insisted on treating you as normal and responsible for everything. Then  
I became critical of the way in which you allowed personal feelings to interfere ser-  
iously with interests common to us all, putting the subjective before the objective.  
My attitude became one of moral disapproval, which no doubt was still more offensive  
to you, but which was unavoidable in the circumstances. Yet, and this is the important point,  
a word from you of friendly cooperation would at any moment have been able to change  
the whole situation and immediately to restore our old relationship, for few things  
have ever given me more pain than the impairment of this. I can assure you that none of  
this impairment proceeded from my side, it being thoroughly against my will, and this  
will I hope be easy for me to prove now that you are more willing to listen.  
May 1925 be an historic turning point is my ardent wish to you for the New Year.  

your friend  

Ernest.