vi COMPILER'S NOTE 



according to those people, is but a frail 

 base for art-creation. Those authorities, I 

 discovered, did not know the difference 

 between a linnet and a celandine. And 

 they did not want to be told. But I imagine 

 that, as children, they would have been 

 delighted to see a linnet's woven nest, and 

 to be told that the celandine is the first of 

 the wild flowers to fashion after a dreary 

 winter a gold cup in the February meadows 

 and woods. My own belief is that associa- 

 tion with birds and flowers in childhood 

 when the brain is plastic and the mind is 

 eager tends to widen human sympathy 

 in an adult life. The hope of civilisation 

 (since we cannot remake the world's history) 

 is in the fraternity of nations, or so it seems 

 to myself, whose adolescence was spent at 

 the war; the hope of amity and goodwill 

 of the nation is in the individual in the 

 human heart, which yearns for the good 

 and the beautiful; and the individual is 

 a child first, eager to learn, but unwilling 



