January - March

Ca. 50 letters primarily from Katharine W.M. Elkinton and Howard Elkinton from Germany and Paris and elsewhere in Europe, but also from children Peter and Theodora telling of their experiences at their Dutch school in Ommen and from Katharine's mother, Katharine Evans Mason, giving family news from home and Anna Barlow who stayed with them in May.

Highlights include:

HE to nephew J. Russell Elkinton. Ommen, 1/18. Reports on their 2-week stay in Paris where taxes, metro fares and postage rates have increased. Returning to Berlin. KE thinks Americans will be asked to leave Germany; Jews will soon be starving and cannot earn money as they are "deleted" by law from German life. They had hoped that the inter-government, Rublee, committee would do something worthwhile. Franco and Mussolini seen in newsreels; Chinese blowing up their cities before the Japanese soldiers. Good things about the Reich: solution to unemployment and safety in the city, but the "Jew question gets into people's eyes...hard to escape this psychological misfortune."

KE to family. Ommen, 1/20. Classes at Eerde that the children will take

KE to family. Berlin, 1/27. Reports on some of the cases that come to her in the Quaker office: mid-wives, nurses and university women trying to get visas, which require a job at their destination. Since Schacht's dismissal, the brown shirts are more in evidence; Rublee there again and all countries seem to be losing interest in the problem. No country seems to want people over 49

Mason, KE to KE. Philadelphia, 2/15. Heard George Walton speak of the visit that he Rufus Jones and D. Robert Yarnall made to the Gestapo. Although the information was "pretty thin." the main idea was that they were coming from America to help "the involuntary Germany refugees" resulting in a "distinct lessening of persecution"

KE to family. Berlin, 3/22. Had an evening with a "nice group of middle aged Nazis & their wives." Some disbelief, even after Sudeten Deutschland was taken over that Roumania or Poland might next fall and there would be no war with England over the colonies

KE to family. Berlin, 3/27. Since November, has interviewed & written letters to England for some 68 nurses, 50 mid-wives and 20 domestic situations and others for elsewhere

KE to mother. Berlin, 3/29.General feeling that expansion by Germany will be westward and done by absorption and not be open war; lines of people waiting to buy food, yet cafes and bakeries have cocoa, doffee and beer; movies and theatres are crowded