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Dvr H.Adler
PAL/30775
650, G.T.Coy R.A.S.C
“B”Platoon  

22 July 1943

Between Hanna and Adela, I really don’t know who is right, darling. It’s possible that both are right. It is true, darling Yvette, that you now dominate all my thoughts; it’s true that my heart is filled with the infinite love that I have for you; it’s true that I now give much more place to the beauty of nature in which I see you, than before. Yes, all that is perfectly true and there is no reason to fool oneself and there is no reason, either to be ashamed of it. It is fine as it is, it is normal, and it is healthy. It is a fact and that counts. And I cannot blush about it as I cannot blush because my nose is big or that my forehead is only getting bigger. (On the contrary: since you love them, I am even a very little bit proud!)

But where she is mistaken, that good Hanna, is when she thinks that nothing else interests me any longer, that I am passive to everything, that I find in myself a certain apathy for all those things which I have previously shown so much vivacity, such enthusiasm.

Certainly, if I compared my current activity  to that of a year ago, that would be a shock and I would tend to seek for the causes in my love for you exclusively and to say that Hanna is right.

But it is however, not like that. And you feel it at least, if you cannot know it. And that’s good.  One can occasionally very well be passive in action without at the same time being passive in the heart, without yet losing any of the weight of enthusiasm for the thing itself. It’s a question of circumstances. I wrote you several weeks ago a letter about Dov and our other friends, a letter in which I spoke of things of that nature, a letter which you no doubt did not receive. It would be useless now to try and repeat it. I can only tell you this, my well beloved: drive far away the idea, the least suspicion that you have come to uproot me from my past life. What you have done is to uproot me from the ugly, the unwholesome, the empty and futile in my past life. But the beautiful, the healthy, the useful – that, with your love for me, merely because you have permitted me to love you, that, you raise it in me a natural law inherent in all my being.

I interrupt this letter that I have wished more explanatory. I wanted to show you, or more or less to try and show you, at what point my life is a function of our love.  That it is a fact, a powerful fact defying all analysis.

To show you also that it is you who have rendered me more human and consequently much more useful to the cause of humanity, than I have ever been before.

But I must break off, darling, my best beloved, the road awaits me. I have every reason to believe that this time it will identify itself with all the roads that cross my heart and which all lead me towards you, solely towards you.  And it is only through you, with you, by you that they will lead me to all the other beauties of the world-

Goodbye darling!

I love you – one cannot more

Your

Henri