WCP4656

[1]

Parkstone, Dorset

Feb[ruar]^y 17th. 1901

My dear Mr. Russell

Thanks for the copy of your new review, which I wish every success. I am glad to see republished your fine but alas! too optimistic poem, Pax Brittannica, which I have cut out of the "Echo".

I am afraid I cannot promise you a contribution, as I have pretty well exhausted myself of subjects to write on in my recently published "Studies etc.", and am now very much occupied with almost rewriting my "Wonderful Century" for a new, enlarged, & illustrated edition. [2] Should, however, anything occur to me on which I feel that I have anything fresh to say I will try & write it for you.

The great difficulty of new periodicals, such as yours, is to get them read, or even seen, by the people who are most in need of their teaching. I always urge on the starters of new periodicals for propagandist purposes, that one article in an old-established review is worth a years’ issue of a new periodical to advocate an unpopular cause. For example — Mrs. Green’s paper in the "Nineteenth [3] Century", on the prisoners at St. Helena, must have reached thousands of readers to whom her facts must have been a revelation. It seems to me possible that that article was one of the causes of which opened the Queen’s eyes to the lies & iniquity of the war.

With kind remembrances to Mrs. Russell | Believe me | Yours very truly | Alfred R. Wallace [signature]