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Correspondence from Aleister Crowley to Gerald Yorke
Hotel Metropole, Bruxelles, Belgique
April 23rd, 1929
Care Frater:
Do what thou wilt shall be the whole of the Law.
Thanks for yours of Sunday, with the two cuttings. There were several errors in the Paris-Midi story. I don't know why journalists always can never get anything straight. The fact remains that they can't. However, there are much more important things to consider.
The fact that you really missed about the "unlimited submarine campaign" was that Wilson had been re-elected in 1916 purely and solely on the slogan "He kept us out of War." I heard on all sides that the cause of the allies was desperate, and I don't believe that any other move would have solved the problem.
We will discuss my coming over and interviewing people when you arrive. At the present moment, I don't see who I am to interview. I don't think that the situation in France is at all bad.
My health is pretty good, but it takes me a long while to get to sleep at nights. I am trying to think of the original basis of the trouble, and how we can force on the open battle on our own chosen ground. I shall have some strange discoveries to impart when you arrive.
You don't understand French politics at all. How should you, with no experience of the country, when I, with over a quarter of a century to my discredit, understand very little. If you study an affair like that of Panama, Madame Humbert, Dreyfus, and now Hanau, you will find the most surprising combinations. Take the Dreyfus case in particular. I, and most reasonable people, think that Dreyfus was guilty; in spite of that, he obtained complete vindication and reinstatement. The point was that they really did not dare to produce the real evidence against him. Something not too dissimilar may here be the case. Raynes of New York and Oxford, the foreign editor of the Library Digest during the war, a man of really remarkable intelligence and knowledge, always maintained that the persecution to which I was subjected—you must remember it dates from the time I left Cambridge or thereabouts—was due to the personal animus of some great English family.
There are no press agents here. We have got, I think, all the connections we require, and the matter must be allowed to develop as quietly as possible, pending further news from my lawyer.
(By the way, within the last fortnight, a curious example of the way the French mind works has turned up. Poincare and Tardieu warmly welcomed the reelection to the Chamber of Deputies of their bitterest opponent. In France the inside story of a case is harder to dig out than in any other country.)
I will discuss the Lecram [Press] question with you when you arrive.
Following your constant tendency, you take too literally what I say about Archdukes when it comes to the financial question. We are not spending more in Brussels than we did in Paris. In fact, rather less. The difference is that here we have not got the assets for making money, but work is being done at a great pace and the results should appear within a few days.
Love is the law, love under will.
Yours fraternally
666.
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