234 A GARDEN DIARY 



end ; when the trumpets are beginning to sound 

 the recall, and the fighting, even if it still goes 

 on, appears on both sides to be growing some- 

 what perfunctory ; then thoughts of what it 

 all means, thoughts of War in the abstract, 

 make themselves felt, and in place of hanging 

 breathlessly over the newspapers, one wonders, 

 as one saunters to and fro the garden, whether 

 this same instinct of combativeness really is an 

 integral part of man's nature ? Whether, in 

 other words, it is an absolutely incurable disease, 

 congenital to the species, or merely a sort of 

 youthful malady, destined, like other youthful 

 maladies, to pass away, as a very slowly evolv- 

 ing race attains nearer and nearer to its full 

 maturity ? 



In a year when the roll and rumble of cannon 

 have never ceased even for a day ; when the rattle 

 of rifle-shot has seemed like something that had 

 become part of every brain ; when all public 

 life has centred round a single point, and the 

 most reticent of races has flung its reticence 

 utterly to the winds ; in such a year so remote 

 and speculative a fashion of looking at the matter 

 strikes even the speculator himself as somewhat 

 thin, and cold-blooded. " What right," he turns 

 round, and asks himself hotly, "what right have 

 you, or such as you, people who, far from taking 

 any part in the struggle, have kept out of even 

 the very wind and whiff of it ! Who have char- 



