234 A GARDEN DIARY 
end; when the trumpets are beginning to sound 
the recall, and the fighting, even if it still goes 
on, appears on both sides to be growing some- 
what perfunctory; then thoughts of what it 
all means, thoughts of War in the abstract, 
make themselves felt, and in place of hanging 
breathlessly over the newspapers, one wonders, 
as one saunters to and fro the garden, whether 
this same instinct of combativeness really is an 
integral part of man’s nature? Whether, in 
other words, it is an absolutely incurable disease, 
congenital to the species, or merely a sort of 
youthful malady, destined, like other youthful 
maladies, to pass away, as a very slowly evolv- 
ing race attains nearer and nearer to its full 
maturity ? 
In a year when the roll and rumble of cannon 
have never ceased even for a day; when the rattle 
of rifle-shot has seemed like something that had 
become part of every brain; when all public 
life has centred round a single point, and the 
most reticent of races has flung its reticence 
utterly to the winds; in such a year so remote 
and speculative a fashion of looking at the matter 
strikes even the speculator himself as somewhat 
thin, and cold-blooded. ‘What right,” he turns 
round, and asks himself hotly, “what right have 
you, or such as you, people who, far from taking 
any part in the struggle, have kept out of even 
the very wind and whiff of it! Who have char- 
