A WAR MEMORY 223 



them forward to their goal, the statesmen 

 balancing their little planks upon its crest. It 

 may have spent itself for a time in a great 

 breaker, and the clashing pebbles can be heard 

 in the back-wash, but the tide of human pro- 

 gress is still flowing, and wave after wave will 

 follow. Politicians do not make them, and 

 cannot stop them ; they rise from the people. 

 The statesmen who can gauge the right moment 

 to jump are swept forward on the wave-crest, 

 and their names are passed down with honour 

 to generations to come. Hatred can destroy, 

 it cannot create. It can kill men, or discredit 

 their motives ; it cannot kill the principles or 

 the ideals for which they suffer. Good will is 

 creative, returning in progressive waves from 

 generation to generation. Such, at least, were 

 the thoughts of a fisherman during that day's 

 work in Whitehall, on the Fourth of July, in 

 the last year of the Great Crusade. With that 

 memory of one day's work we can close these 

 reminiscences of happy holidays by stream, 

 river and sea-shore, in the strong belief that 

 " Only on farms or deep in the forest or out 

 on the river while you fish, can you think a thing 

 out clearly. For there your life goes quietly, 

 and you learn only what is worth while." 



