, nor shall my sword sleep in my hand,
Till we have built Jerusalem in England's green and pleasant land!"

A long vigil his sword is keeping, while the clock strikes every hour of
the twenty-four. We have not yet even laid Jerusalem's foundation stone.
Ask one of those maimed soldier boys. "I like it here. Oh, yes, it's
very pleasant for a change." But he hastens to tell you that he goes in
to Brighton every day to his training school, as if that saved the
situation; almost surprised he seems that beauty and peace and good air
are not intolerable to his town-bred soul. The towns have got us--nearly
all. Not until we let beauty and the quiet voice of the fields, and the
scent of clover creep again into our nerves, shall we begin to build
Jerusalem and learn peacefulness once more. The countryman hates strife;
it breaks his dream. And life should have its covering of dream--bird's
flight, bird's song, wind in the ash-trees and the corn, tall lilies
glistening, the evening shadows slanting out, the night murmuring of
waters. There is no other genuine dream; without it to sweeten all, life
is harsh and shrill and east-wind dry, and evil overruns her more
quickly than blight be-gums the rose-tree or frost blackens fern of a
cold June night. We elders are past re-making England, but our children,
even these crippled children here, may yet take a hand....

We left the tinies to the last--all Montessorians, and some of them
little cripples, too, but with cheeks so red that they looked as if the
colour must come off. They lived in a house past the white mill, across
the common; and they led us by the hand down spotless corridors into
white dormitories. The smile of the prettiest little maid of them all
was the last thing one saw, leaving that "Heritage" of print frocks and
children's faces, of flowers and nightingales, under the lee of a group
of pines, the only dark beauty in the long sunlight.

XV

'A GREEN HILL FAR AWAY'

Was it indeed only last March, or in another life, that I climbed this
green hill on that day of dolour, the Sunday after the last great German
offensive began? A beautiful sun-warmed day it was, when the wild thyme
on the southern slope smelled sweet, and the distant sea was a glitter
of gold. Lying on the grass, pressing my cheek to its warmth, I tried to
get solace for that new dread which seemed so cruelly unnatural after
four years of war-misery.

'If only it were all over!' I said to my