FROM A BERKSHIRE CABIN 171 



blue. I am aware with a pang of almost intolerable 

 sorrow of the peacefulness about me. How strange, 

 how bitter the very word sounds! Even here, 

 where I have come to forget for a day, I cannot for- 

 get. Dear friends, youngsters I have watched grow 

 up, relatives, a myriad unknown brothers of every 

 creed and color, are to-day plunged in bloody battle 

 killing and being killed, and man has made of peace 

 a mockery. I will not take the easy way and say a 

 man has done so, for no one man could do it, though 

 he were twenty times an emperor. It will ill avail 

 for a too-long-complacent multitude to rise up 

 now and put all the blame upon a few. Some of 

 the sins are of our own omission. But I let that 

 pass. What I try to do just now is to realize with a 

 care never before exercised in what was essentially 

 a care-free enjoyment what it is exactly in my sur- 

 roundings that gives me so much pleasure, and from 

 that to realize, if possible, what strange duality in 

 our natures must be explained in order to under- 

 stand even a little the terrible facts of armed 

 conflict. I do not expect to get far on the road of 

 explanation. But at least I shall learn a little, it 

 may be, about myself. 



Something that interests me greatly as I observe 

 the process from my cabin is the succession of forest 

 trees. I remember reading Thoreau on the subject 

 in my boyhood, and thinking even then that per- 

 haps he overworked the squirrels. How trans- 

 parently obvious the process is in certain spots, 

 like this where my cabin nestles. I can sit on the 

 corner of my little veranda and have it all under 

 my eye. It is based, practically, on two facts that 



