1 7 4 D O C U M E N T 1 7 5 D E C E M B E R 1 9 2 3
out of even such an inkling, whenever you told me about your research; and I can-
not tell you how thankful I am that you allow me to partake in your joys.
Betty’s[5]
groom is a good, decent, and in every way respectable man who has
only one fault: he is 25 years older than she. Under normal conditions, she will still
be a vibrant woman when he is already an old man—and a long period of widow-
hood lies ahead of her. But there apparently isn’t much that can be changed about
that anymore.—
My wife is in Kolberg to furnish an orphanage
there.[6]
She is working with the
complete enthusiasm that this holy cause of hers fills her with, despite the atrocious
physical conditions: in cold rooms, without the least convenience, on an irregular
diet, isolation, and night after night almost into the early hours of the morning. It is
still uncertain how long she will be staying away.—
Your wife and Margot are feeling well; Ilse had some complaints again—her
nerves are very
irritable.—[7]
Do fare well, now! Please do adjust yourself somewhat to comply with my sug-
gestions, and delight me with good news soon, your
H. Mühsam
175. From Théophile de Donder
Brussels, 5 de l’Aurore Street, 10 December 1923
My most honorable Colleague,
I thank you very keenly for your kind letter of 4
December.[1]
I delayed a little
in responding to it because I was constantly entertaining the hope of being able to
make my way to Leyden; unfortunately, an unforeseen event will deprive me of the
pleasure and the benefit of a meeting with you. I try to console myself by thinking
that perhaps you will kindly keep me abreast of the development of your new re-
searches and that thus my courses in Paris
(1st
to 8 May 1924) will reflect exactly
your whole thinking at this moment. I shall thus have the satisfaction of having con-
tributed—to a slight degree, it is true—to the dissemination of your theories.
The conclusion you have currently arrived at and which you succinctly express
at the end of your letter (“not any physical significance”) does not surprise me too
much; it had always seemed to me that if [---] a priori electric currents
in the gravitational field, the latter would be equal to zero. The gravitational field
in warped space-time is, in my
view,[2]
, a kind of statistical expression of the influ-
ence of (electrical or massive) phenomena on ultraelectrons. [This is what I devel-
iα σuα) ≡ (