I wonder how you are getting on with your flying since you first went solo-- the last news we had of this. I especially noted your observations on the skimming martins. That touches to the heart of things, doesn't it? There is the tragedy and despair of all machinery laid bare. Unlike art which is content to create a new secondary world in the mind, it attempts to actualize desire, and so to create power in this World; and that cannot really be done with any real satisfaction. Labour-saving machinery only creates endless and worse labour. And in addition to this fundamental disability of a creature, is added the Fall, which makes our devices not only fail of their desire but turn to new and horrible evil. So we come inevitably from Daedalus and Icarus to the Giant Bomber. It is not an advance in wisdom! This terrible truth, glimpsed long ago by Sam Butler, sticks out so plainly and is so horrifyingly exhibited in our time, with its even worse menace for the future, that it seems almost a world wide mental disease that only a tiny minority perceive it. Even if people have heard the legends (which is getting rarer) they have no inkling of their portent...Well, I have got over 2 thousand words onto this flimsy little airletter; and I will forgive the Mordor-gadgets some of their sins, if they will bring it quickly to you... (7 July 1944, letter 75)