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Erie, Pa.,
Sunday, Sept. 3, 1939.
This may go down in history as the most fateful day in human history! Today England, France and most of the British Dominions declared war on Germany! What the eventual outcome will be no one can even guess. America will do her best to stay out this time but some think we cannot any more than we could before. The implications of this terrible day stagger the imagination! All day we have listened on the radio to the swiftly moving events that in a few days, maybe hours, will make an inferno of a large part of Europe! Italy is still on the sidelines, Russia is a large question mark. No one knows what all this will ultimately mean to us all. But in spite of it all, I could get a thrill out of hearing over the radio, a Davis Cup doubles match between Bromwich and Quist of Australia and Joe Hunt and Kramer of the U.S., which the Americans, a couple of kids, lost but nevertheless put up a surprisingly good battle. So life will go on here but just how these terrible things will affect us we don't know. Went to bed with a radio new dispatch from Amsterdam ringing in my mind – "Fleet of planes reported flying eastward over Holland."

Erie, Pa.,
Labor Day, Monday, September 4, 1939.
The war so completely overshadows everything else that there is nothing much to report but listening anxiously to the radio. This is a holiday but there is no holiday spirit – only the thought of death and calamity. How could any sane man deliberately start such a thing!

Transcription Notes:
Note that there is no continuity between p. 277 and p/278. Large date gap leaving out the unwrapping of the joke coat.