Dec. 16, 1916.

"When the telegram of The Fatherland arrived, asking for a holiday greeting as a contribution to the Christmas number, I was sitting in my psychological laboratory with a group of students engaged in a complicated psychological research. We were just experimenting on some subtle functions of the human memory, studying the conditions under which man remembers and forgets. Some of the results were very queer. We found that the mind does not hold or lose its memory ideas in a mechanical way, but that everything depends upon purposes; ideas which are gathered with a certain aim quickly fade away when the motive is no longer effective. Hence our memories with all the feelings and emotions attached to them are constantly controlled by hidden powers; they really disappear when new motives enter the soul.

"Such scientific experiments carried on with exact instruments seem world-far from the Christmas request of The Fatherland; and yet I cannot send a better message than the results of these researches in the psychological workshop. We feel that soon the World Christmas Tree will gleam with its myriads of peaceful candle flames; at last peace on earth seems near. And yet we all hardly look forward toward such a holy night for warring mankind without the secret fear that unholy struggle may soon disrupt the peoples of the globe again, and that the new peace may be merely a truce. The hateful thoughts which have grown in these years of sorrow are so abundant that they will last and ruin the peace to come; the nations, it seems, will make true harmony impossible for generations.

"This danger would really-threaten us if the old popular doctrine of human memory were right. But it is wrong, utterly wrong; and the psychologist's laboratory message is therefore needed, indeed. It is filled with the promise of a happier future. Those hateful ideas clustered about legends and lies were grasped as weapons of war--when the war is over they have lost their purpose and at once they will fall asunder. No trace will remain; those who hated most hotly will forget most quickly. Men will look one another in the face with astonishment; the spell will be broken. They simply will not believe that they could misjudge and maltreat their friends so grossly. The subtle power of our mind to forget will become mankind's blessing. As soon as peace is secured, we shall keep the peace not only by the method of enforcing it, but by the hundred better methods of making it natural. And it can become natural because all the scorn of today will fall off like the scab of a healing wound. Unless all psychological signs deceive us, after this war ends peace will really be lasting--and I feel sure the end of the war is near, the World Christmas Tree will be glistening tomorrow, the fragrance of its candles already pervades the world.   "HUGO MUENSTERBERG."