Dear Jill, MANY of us feel as you do:' that the horrors of war are bad enough but the possible wreckage of peace worse still! All the same I don't agree that a decent life and home is a hopeless dream.
Certainly the social situation will be pretty trying for those of us who survive. There can't be a universal upheaval without a long time of settling down again—but while mankind can destroy a great deal of creation he can't touch the Creator. God will be there just the same as ever and that is why it is a waste of time to worry. Some things are going to be changed for the worse, others doubtless for the better. Prices may be very high and comforts few. Jobs may be scarce and distress acute. Even the old familiar difficulties of trying to live a Christian life in a pagan world may be more intense than before—though that seems hardly possible I
But we don't know that these things arc going to happen. What we do know is that our ever-loving God will still be asking us to save our souls by living good Catholic lives—and therefore He will be giving us the means to do this. God never asks the impossible in no matter what sort of chaos or planned and sterilised existence we have to live.
YOU and Jack may have to give up the hope of a little house and garden and be content with a secondfloor hack ; instead of the family having a holiday by the sea you may have to be glad of a day trip to the Common. But the great things will be unchanged: the love of God and man, the love of husband and wife, the love of parent and child.
Civvy Street may be badly blitzed by the time you are all back in it, but don't let that dismal thought depress you. Whatever the damage to things we'd like to have bad, nothing that matters most has been touched. No ack-ack shell reached even the fringe of heaven, and no bomb blasted love out of our hearts. I have seen greater love and happiness in bombed slums than I would have thought possible. It shows that a lot of the material things we rely on and hope for don't really count, Anyhow, there won't be so many slums, thank God, after the war—Hitler has helped considerably to make us face the housing problem!
Cheer up, old girl ! Think about our Lady's life now and then—it was " love in a cottage " and a poor cottage at that. Then what a smash-up ! And all the time the glory and joy of a heart that loves and is loved, and knows that nothing can touch the love it treasures,