You do not know me, and it is hardly likely that we shall ever meet. Yet something I cannot quite explain bids me to write you this note, because of something which happened yesterday – a chance meeting between two strangers.

Last night, I suppose two great statesmen drank to each other in Washington...your President and our Prime Minister. They drank to our countries’ friendship too, I expect, and to our joint enterprise in the war. Last night another American and another Englishman sat at a table in a London restaurant, exchanged names and handshakes, and added another little link, they think, to the chain of trans-Atlantic friendship. Yes, you are right; the other was your son. Through him, I get a little bit of you and Michigan, and other values that he cherishes. So I thought it would be friendly to send you a line across the sea to thank you for the "Eagle" you have lent to England, and to say; "Sir, you have a fine son."

It was a slender and happy chance that made us meet, I am working in London, 200 miles from my Devonshire home. Christmas Eve found me lonely. So I left my solitary lodging and sought the lounge of a well known restaurant in the west end for a spot of company, a smoke, and a drink. The only seat in sight was where a Sargent Pilot sat at a table alone, so I joined him, and soon we were arranging the war to our satisfaction, and the peace, too.

From a dull homeless Christmas Eve, this meeting made for me a jolly and stimulating finish to an otherwise trying and tiring day. And even if our future duties should give us little or no chance of a further meeting, your son and I have agreed to exchange a line sometimes, and he has accepted the freedom of my modest Devonshire home if ever he should be within reach of it.

I admire my new friend, Mr. Wonnacott, his outlook, his zest for life, his zeal for the present adventure, his attachment to home and all that it embodies, and the straight look in the eye with which he faces the future. I am exactly twice his age, so that if I had married, it is possible that I might have a son as old as he. I should have been proud for that son to be of the same caliber as he is. I cannot say more, and to say less would be to tell less than the truth.

From our conversation I gather that he sees much about England and its people that he finds good. Not everything of course, for there are many superficial differences in our styles and our ways, that is only natural. But it seems to me that one of the good results of this hideous war is going to be that your people and ours will discover – indeed I think we are already discovering – that we have much more in common that we had either of us dreamed. It may have been taken a war to reveal it; that of course is a great pity; but the knowledge is dawning, and I believe that when it touches noonday heat, it will prove to be a mighty boon to all the world.

So this informal note is to set out for Michigan. I am sending it to your son, for him to address. Please accept it, not only as one unknown Britons gesture of friendship, but as a hearty and comradely greeting from the last stronghold of democracy in the old world to the invincible fortress of that same principle of statesmanship in the new.

Yours very sincerely,

//s// William H. W. Woodley