3 io IN BERKSHIRE FIELDS 



revealing in our relations with but' a pitiful few of 

 our fellows. For the rest, we guess at the verities 

 in their souls, as we might guess at the exquisite 

 curve of the brook when it is half lost in sedgy ver- 

 dure, or at the delicate, spired loveliness of the 

 lettuce stalk when it is a rank, ungainly green shoot 

 by the roadside, with ugly, insignificant flowers. 



It is not alone in my own small circle that I yearn 

 for some gentle obliteration alike of outer ugliness 

 and rank summer richness, and a revelation of those 

 still, cold winter lines of the human spirit that tell 

 so surely whether its essential form is fair. After 

 all, in our immediate circle, we arrive in time at 

 approximate, if unsatisfactory, estimates. But how 

 is it in the wider relations of men? As the snow 

 buries, so we talked of the war burning away, the 

 unessentials, and we did indeed seem to see the 

 stark skeletons of men's ideals, fine and rigid and 

 at a white heat. But in the crackling haze of a 

 conflagration the vision is often deluded. It is 

 over the cool calmness of snow that outlines are 

 best estimated snow which is white like peace. 



The white benediction of peace! When that de- 

 scends on the world is not then the time to look 

 for those spiritual perfections, those inner, essential 

 beauties of soul in our fellows, which can give us 

 so deep a moment of contemplation, in the belief 

 that in essence the world and the world's people are 

 drawn clean and fine and delicate, the delicacy of 

 infinite strength under perfect control? Ah, if we 

 could but find it so ! If we could but admit to our 

 deeper beliefs the belief that war is a purge, or peace 

 a soft-fallen obliteration of rank excesses and things 



