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WiHiams Watt. Wis.
August 30, 1919.
Dr. Max Wolf,
Heidelberg, Germany,
Dear Dr. Wolf:-
I have just received your card. There
have been few days during all this horrible, needless
war in which I have not thought of you and hoped
for the safety of you and your family. I have
watched with wonder and admiration the splendid
work that you have untiringly done through all this
frightful calamity. I long for the day when happi-
ness and peace will be restored to Germany. But I
hope that the German people will never again submit
to the rulers that have caused such endless desolation.
I wish I could be of service to you or
that I could help you in any way. I have made many
observations of your periodic comet at this return
which I hope to print soon. Each time that I
observed it I thought of you and wondered how you
were.
I must explain about my discovery of the
strange star 7.1917 Serpentis. I did not know
that you had discovered it previously. The war
prevented our receiving the A.N. and neither Harvard
College Observatory nor the Yerkes Observatory had
seen your announcement, and it was only recently
that we got any copies containing your discovery,
and that was through Switzerland when unbound volumes