1 8 8 D O C U M E N T 1 8 6 D E C E M B E R 1 9 2 3
186. To Marcel Grossmann
[Berlin,] 28 December 1923
Dear Grossmann,
I am always delighted with any sign of life from you, whether you are giving me
a lecture about the League of Nations now or telling me anything
else.[1]
Nothing
will come of the
lecture.[2]
Because, first, I don’t want to go on such a major trip
yet again, and second, I have nothing to present to the wild public at large. What
you write about my filius pleased me very
much.[3]
One sees from one’s own chil-
dren how one is gradually maturing into a
veteran.[4]
I don’t regret my behavior to-
ward the League of Nations one
bit.[5]
It is simply a tool of the party in charge with-
out any independent power; and it doesn’t look at all as if anything really valuable
could come out of it. If it must languish on, it can just as well carry out individual
little functions to reduce tensions. It just discredits its true goal due as a result of
lack of energy and good will. I’m glad not to have anything to do with it.
Scientifically, I have just found a very interesting possibility for perhaps (!) do-
ing justice to the facts of the quanta, seen from relativity theory; I want to send you
the article when it’s
printed.[6]
If only the pursuit of this thought didn’t run up
against such infamous mathematical
obstacles![7]
Now it seems as if the redshift of
spectral lines is also finally becoming true, despite the existence up until today of
very weighty doubts about it put forward on the observational side. St. John at
Mount Wilson, who has hitherto been the most skeptical, now regards the effect as
verified on the grounds of very comprehensive and careful
measurements.[8]
Thank you very much for wanting to preserve the option for me of coming to
Zurich.[9]
But I am being treated so well and solicitously here and I have it so good
that it really would be mean if I left. Besides, theoretical physics is so exceptionally
well represented by Debye and Weyl in Zurich anyway, as perhaps nowhere else in
the
world.[10]
Wishing you and yours a happy 1924, your
A. Einstein.