124 MELD AND HEDGEROW. 



gold, are for ever prowling about collecting every golden 

 coin they can scent out and shipping it over sea. And 

 what does not go abroad is in consequence of this great 

 drain sharply locked up in the London safes as reserves 

 against paper, and cannot be utilised in enterprises or 

 manufacture. Therefore trade stands still, and factories 

 are closed, and ship-yards are idle, and beautiful vessels 

 are stored up doing nothing by hundreds in dock ; coal 

 mines left to be filled with water, and furnaces blown 

 out. Therefore there is bitter distress and starvation, 

 and cries for relief works, and one meal a day for Board 

 school children, and the red flag of Socialism is unfurled. 

 All because of these little grains of wheat. 



They talked of bringing artillery, with fevered lips, 

 to roar forth shrapnel in Trafalgar Square ; why not 

 Catling guns? The artillery did not come for very 

 shame, but the Guards did, and there were regiments of 

 infantry in the rear, with glittering bayonets to prod 

 folk into moving on. All about these little grains of 

 wheat. 



These thoughts came into my mind in the winter 

 afternoon at the edge of a level corn-field, with the 

 copper-sheathed spire of the village church on my right, 

 the sun going down on the left. The copper did not 

 gleam, it was dull and brown, no better than discoloured 

 wood, patched with pieces of later date and another 

 shade of dulness. I wish they would glitter, some of 

 these steeples or some of our roofs, and so light up the 

 reddish brown of the elms and the grey lichened oaks. 

 The very rooks arc black, and the starlings and the 

 wintry fieldfares and redwings have no colour at a dis- 

 tance. They say the metal roofs and domes gleam in 

 Russia, and even in France, and why not in our rare 

 sunshine ? Once now and then you sec a gilded weather- 



