Cooper, Ethel – November 1917

4.11.17
My dear Emmie,

The offensive against Italy is all that we have been thinking about for the last few days.  It has gone with the usual great rush. If only our troops can come in time to stop it! I have  to be cheerful and make myself more optimistic than I really am…for Mrs. Jaeger is in the depths of despair, and to hear her one would think the whole war were lost.

I have sent off a pile of postcards to you all again, though I have small hope of any of them getting through…

11.11.17
My dear Emmie,

This is Sandor’s birthday and he was trying to get here for it, but was held up on the frontier, and had just time to get straight through to Berlin for the first of three concerts… I am disappointed, for I wanted him to write to you from Sweden – I can’t write that to him, for my letters are often opened and if it were known he might easily lose his pass.

I must get to bed – it is late, and there is a heavy fine for burning more than your monthly allowance of gas or electric light now.

18.11.17
My dear Emmie,

We are just back from a visit, and feel that we have been spending an afternoon outside Germany. We went to tea with a Frenchwoman…. Her husband got her servants who could speak French – she brought all her furniture with her, and from the moment you enter the hall you forget that you are in Germany. She is not particularly interesting or intelligent, but she is as pretty and as chic as a Hellen sketch, and was a really refreshing change for once in a way.

Yesterday I had a letter from Nora, the first of any sort that I have had for months.

We have run out of two very essential things this week – soda and salt! Soda, we are told is being used to help with gas for lighting. There is salt enough in Germany to supply all Europe, but they  have not the workers to extract it, nor means of transport to the towns.

Through the Swiss papers, we are breathlessly following the campaign in Palestine.

25.11.17
My dear Emmie,

Some time ago, Frau Jaeger made the acquaintance of an old Turkish Consul here, and yesterday she asked him to tea. He has given us a letter to the political head of police for Saxony, asking him if he can help me in the matter of a pass. I am ashamed to say we told the old Turkish Consul that I was very ill, and he thought there ought to be no difficulty in getting to Switzerland if one had a doctor’s attest to show to the police. However I am less hopeful.

I hear…that the trains are crammed day and night with soldiers being hurried back from the East to fill the gaps in the West front…We have planned a bath tonight – that is now a luxury which only the rich can allow themselves, and then only once a fortnight! I am going to light the fire for it-.