Dear Editor,

I am sitting in P’s study, at the solid commodious desk which you know so well; it has a glass top under which he has stuck picture postcards from all over Europe. It is Friday, 23 August, night is falling: the fourth night after the invasion. I have spent the day, as I spent the others since the Russians came here, walking the streets of Prague and talking to friends in this most beautiful of old cities. Several times I have crossed Charles Bridge where we stood with you and Nina—how long ago was it, only about a fortnight? Save for the tanks at each end it hasn’t changed since then, and today I even saw a tourist there who was quite unconcernedly taking photo­graphs, not of the young people who were collecting signatures for a petition in support of Party Secretary Dublek, but of the river and the castle, as tourists have done here all this summer. Who is to say he is not right?