182 IN BERKSHIRE FIELDS 



to knit the nations in a league of peace, to substi- 

 tute another rule for the iron rule of selfishness, 

 which is, after all, the greatest foe of beauty, the 

 ugliest thing in the world. 



But it is not going to be easy. Human selfish- 

 ness, alas! in the form of greed has not always been 

 scotched, even under the stress of war. Its tremen- 

 dous grip on the world's affairs in times past, how- 

 ever, as we can now see only too plainly, has been 

 in no small measure due to the lazy selfishness of 

 myriads of good people, who would not sacrifice 

 their own comfort, their own delightful leisure in 

 their ivory towers of beauty, or whatever equiva- 

 lent they possessed for such an architectural retreat, 

 to fight for control of the civic machinery, to make 

 what they knew in their hearts to be the right pre- 

 vail. Those times must pass. We must descend 

 from our mountain cabins, from our towers of ivory; 

 we must come out of our gardens and up from our 

 slums, forgetting our beautiful enjoyments, or our 

 precarious jobs which carry no attendant enjoy- 

 ments, and remembering only the ideal of beauty 

 in our hearts, the ideal of beauty which means, too, 

 the ideal of justice and mercy and peace and happi- 

 ness for each and all, demand of what rulers we 

 shall find that they give over to us the machinery 

 which controls our destinies, and the destinies of 

 all our fellows. The world to-day is fighting for 

 democracy. I see my crime to have been that I 

 considered democracy a condition wherein I was 

 let alone, not wherein I was an active participant 

 three hundred and sixty-five days in the year, 

 fighting to write my best personal ideals into the 



