EDITORIAL 



The Brighter Phages of War. 



"War is hell." This war in particu- 

 lar seems to be the most hellish of all. 

 Its bad features have been so promi- 

 nently brought to the minds of the 

 people in its awful horror and devas- 

 tation that there is no need for us to 

 dwell on the subject. In the main we 

 are trying to publish a magazine that 

 shall be especially valuable at this time 

 distracting the mind of the reader from 

 horrible things. It is in this spirit that 

 attention is invited to some of the good 

 features of the war, and these mostly 

 from the nature or the Arcadian point 

 of view. They are exactly what we have 

 all the time been preaching and prac- 

 tising. 



To depart from the subject for a 

 moment by way of illustration, consider 

 that darkness will not make a photo- 

 graph. It is the light that changes the 

 sensitive plate, yet darkness is essen- 

 tial to good photography, not only in 

 the dark room, but in the shaded por- 

 tions of all such pictures. And the 

 photograph, no matter of how favor- 

 able a subject, depends upon the black- 

 ness to bring out its beauty. In re- 

 gard to this much discussed question 

 of war, is not the situation much the 

 same? 



From our point of view, among the 

 brightest things in this war era is the 

 fact that it has done what the enthus- 

 iasists in the study of nature in times 

 of peace were unable to do. For the 

 last decade or more a few faithful nat- 

 uralists and teachers have been ursrinsf 



1 i • 



the cultivation of school gardens as an 

 important part of an education. By the 

 majority of the public these earnest 

 people were regarded as faddists or as 

 overly enthusiastic. But everybody 

 now believes not only in school gardens 

 but in every other kind. There are 

 many of us faithful workers in garden- 

 ing, especially as a factor in the child's 



education, who can hardly refrain from 

 exultantly murmuring even if we do 

 not audibly express it, "I all the time 

 told you so." Then another company, 

 faithful yet at times discouraged, have 

 been clamoring, "Leave the crowded 

 city with its artificial life and go back 

 to the farm ; return to the simplicity 

 of life of the early settlers ; go back to 

 hard work, earnest endeavor and direct 

 dealings with old Mother Nature." 



Everybody agrees with that, and it 

 is one of the bright spots brought out 

 in a beautiful picture by this blackness 

 of war. There are many of us, and 

 some have been called cranks, who have 

 argued for the beneficial results to be 

 obtained by leaving stuffy homes and 

 taking to the woods and fields, or that 

 nature's sanitarium is the best in ex- 

 istence. Plenty of enthusiasts believe 

 that a good position for a young man 

 to assume is not to bend himself like 

 a bow, to support the sides of build- 

 ings at street corners, to engage in 

 frivolous talk and to spit on the side- 

 walk. That kind of position is not the 

 best developer of physique and that 

 kind of talk on the worthless things of 

 life is not the best mental gymnastics 

 for the developing of intellectual 

 strength. We all the time have said. 

 Go away from the cities ; go into camp ; 

 take long walks ; get out in the realms 

 of that beautiful old Sovereign, Mother 

 Nature. 



And now the "I-told-you-so" is visi- 

 ble in the vastly improved appearance 

 of all those young men who return 

 from camp on a furlough. They have 

 been in the open for only a few weeks, 

 but they have been transformed by the 

 magic of outdoor living, blow erect, 

 how well poised, how graceful they are. 

 As we look at some of them, we ex- 

 claim, "Can these be the slouchy, pale, 

 weak-kneed fellows that some of them 

 appeared to be before they went into 

 military training !" It is a curious fact 

 that peace and prosperity tend to de- 

 velop hunched shoulders, bow-like 



