T. E. Lawrence Correspondence – Page 534

To Isham, 20.X11.32 I thought it over and saw clearly that my interest was limited to England only. It is here I have to live. What happened in U.S.A. or our Empire did not concern me. So I told ... ( who runs the New York Oxford Press) that he could do as he pleased with his edition in the States and in places like Australia, so long as he left the English market utterly alone. The ballyhoo of which you sent me a sample is his idea of the best. Offensive as it is, to you who live in America, to me it is harmless. Our booksellers and papers are stubbornly national, and not a whisper of New York publicity will be repeated here. So you see,if you have patience to read all this, that its only my American mind that changed, and for good reasons. It was too late,by 1932,to hope to keep the secrets. How are your affairs? Bad, probably. Everyone rich here is now very hard hit, while the poor are flourishing. Indeed we live in socialistic times. How happy Morris would have been over such redistribution of wealth. Or is the wealth merely disappearing from the top downwards? Anyway I shan't translate the Iliad! Yours ever- T.E. Shaw.