CHAPTER VI 



WHAT WOMEN-GARDENERS ARE WANTED FOR 



The New Year has come in an unkind, boisterous 

 mood, echoing in a measure the sorrows and 

 terrors that the Great War has brought with it. 

 The Christmas hymn, speaking as it does of quiet 

 and peace in the island of the Cyclades whence it 

 was handed down to us, has not been realised for 

 long: 



" As when in the moon of midwinter 

 God fills fourteen days with His Grace, 

 And dwellers on earth call it the season wind- forgotten, 

 The holy birth- tide of the Glittering Kingfisher." 



Only for a few days was there this lull, as 

 if Nature in her moods were in sympathy with 

 the hearts of men. We have been told of that 

 astonishing respite from fighting, arranged for 

 privately by the soldiers of the Allies and their 

 enemies, when members of opposing forces met 

 and talked between their respective trenches, join- 

 ing together in song and voicing thus for once in 

 unison a peace-offering for the holy season. After 

 those few hours of quiet, the deafening din of 

 battle and heavy fighting recommenced with re- 

 newed vigour, and together with it came violent 



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