Dear and profoundly [esteemed]
Miss Jane [Addams]!
You made me very glad by sending the lovely words which reached me some days ago. I was sorry very long for I knew about your illness and the misunderstandings which were so [painful] to you, dearest and honorable woman, you worked so sincerely all your life [endeavoring] to restore your best feelings in the souls of your countrymen, which end you attained in a certain [page 2] degree, nevertheless your heart was strongly hurt by those who didn't [mind?] so frankly and so noble as you did.
All the years I am acquainted with your magnific country I cannot imagine it [otherwise] as ornamented with the excellent friends I acquired there. Your [person], as well as those of my other friends are always alive, and America without them would be in another light to me. For you all, women and men, who left in my [page 3] memory the best impression, you are like [stars] on the heaven which were somber and like an [abyss] without them. [Therefore] as well as for the love of distinguished people I am anxious about the welfare of every one of my friends there. And you, dear Miss [Addams], you were [cherished] by your people for so long a time, that the loss of such a [person] would render sorry, unhappy all those who prize the very [treasure] of their fatherland. You were so boldly against the "preparedness" meant by your [ex-campaigner?] Mr [Roosevelt] and now you can enjoy the joy of your best countrymen to see America save and prospering [page 4] perhaps for ever. For I think that the spectacle of the terrible war with its issues, with its undescribable horrors does mean a historical [lesson] never to be forgotten. No imagination can represent the awfulness, the [abyss] of darkness and misfortune, of disasters and crimes -- which this universal war does involve from hour to hour over all the Earth. Never heard, never read such atrocities. Never [apprehended] such dark [future] for the mankind. They people do become more reasonable if they will not perish and let perish the [future] generations.
Such nests of honesty and goodness as Hull House and the like will always watch on the truth and the rights of the mankind. With you my Soul and heart.
Catherine Breshkovsky.
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