286 THE SOUTH DEVON HUNT 



fact, we learned in the first days of August that war 

 had been declared, and we found ourselves up against 

 the might and the power and, though we knew it not 

 then, the brutal barbarity of the German Empire. 



With the hideous nightmare still upon us of 

 eighteen months of struggle with a monster so hard 

 to strangle, with an ever-lengthening roll of honour 

 which includes so many young and gallant sportsmen 

 among its bravest, and with the ever-present thought 

 of what would happen to our own fair country and 

 our dear ones at home should the fortunes of war, 

 proverbially uncertain, prevail against us, it is 

 difficult to attune one's mind to write of peaceful 

 pursuits or to think that any can be found to take 

 interest in what may be written. And yet, on the 

 blackest of these dark days there is ever the fragrance 

 of the breath of hope and a sense of a spirit of promise 

 that tells of days yet to be, when we shall welcome 

 home as conquerors some, at least, of those who are 

 doing for us what we, alas ! ourselves cannot do, and 

 when the sportsman will be able once again to ride 

 forth without the company of that atra cura of whose 

 presence behind the saddle he is so conscious to-day. 



It was some such undefined feelings as these, 

 coupled with the knowledge of the difficulty, and 

 often impossibility, of resuscitating a hunt once 

 abandoned, and the thought of what was due to 

 those who should return after fighting our battles, 

 that determined the hunts of the kingdom, and 

 among them the South Devon, to make every effort 

 to keep alive the sport, even though for the time there 

 should be no hunters left to ride and but a handful 

 of followers remaining behind to snatch an occasional 

 day with hounds. The order therefore went forth 

 to carry on as best might be, with the paradoxical 



