264 DOC.
276
NOVEMBER
1916
the time but
was
not
quite
sure.[3]
Rubens could
not
remember.
I
spoke
with
Waldeyer recently
after
an Academy meeting.
He
assured
me
that the letter had
not
come
into
his hands and
spontaneously promised
to write
to
you
himself about
the
matter.[4]
He
considers execution feasible
only
after
the
war
but wants to
give
it his full and dedicated
support. He
considers the
suggestion
reasonable
and
fair and
hopes
to
gain,
from
an
eradication of all
confusion,
an
improvement
in
relations between scholars
on
the
opposing
sides.
His honest
stance,
not
stained
by any
utilitarian
considerations
whatsoever, encouraged
me a
great
deal. Nernst
also welcomes
the
suggestion.
He does
not
know whether he has received
the letter
and
admonished
the
unpractical
manner
in which
the
affair
was
staged. People
are
swamped
with
printed
documents
originating
from
strangers.
The
letter
could
therefore have wandered unread into
the
wastepaper basket
with
many
others,
for which
neither
he
nor
other
persons ought
to
be
legitimately reproached.
He
would consider it
proper
that
such
a
suggestion
come
from
locally
known
men
or
corporate
bodies of
neutral
foreign
countries.
Then,
no
one
would
disregard
the
matter.[5]
Prudence,
rather
than
the
unmitigated
wish
to
be
fair,
leads him
to
approve.
But this
also
is
better than the
absence of
prudence
and
a sense
of
justice,
as
is
usually
found.
I
see
best
how
necessary
an
objective
examination
of
the
state
of
affairs would
be, incidentally,
from
the fact that Nernst
provides
me a
bona
fide
account of
the
facts
that
differs in essential
points
from
your
picture.-I
now
think
I
should
not
speak
with
anyone
else,
since Nernst’s
opinion
that the
proposal
ought
to be revived in
a more
effective
manner seems
to
me
to
be correct.-
I
am
sending you simultaneously
with this letter
a
short
paper
in which
I
explained
how,
in
my
view,
the
relation between
the
conservation laws and the
relativity postulate
should be construed.[6] I
made
an
effort
to
present
the
mat-
ter
as
succinctly as
possible,
free
of all
unnecessary trimmings.
Particularly, I
wanted
to
show
that the
general
relativity
concept regarding
matter does not
limit the
variety
of
possible
choices for
the
Hamilton function
to
a
higher degree
than the
postulate
of
special relativity,
since
the
conservation laws
are
satisfied
by any
choice
of
M.
The selection made
by
Hilbert
thus
appears
to have
no
justification.[7]
Cordial
greetings
to
you, your wife,
and
your
children from
your
A.
Einstein.