self; 'and I could come here,
and to all the lovely places I know, without this awful contraction of
the heart, and this knowledge that at every tick of my watch some human
body is being mangled or destroyed. Ah, if only I could! Will there
never be an end?'

And now there is an end, and I am up on this green hill once more, in
December sunlight, with the distant sea a glitter of gold. And there is
no cramp in my heart, no miasma clinging to my senses. Peace! It is
still incredible. No more to hear with the ears of the nerves the
ceaseless roll of gunfire, or see with the eyes of the nerves drowning
men, gaping wounds, and death. Peace, actually Peace! The war has gone
on so long that many of us have forgotten the sense of outrage and
amazement we had, those first days of August, 1914, when it all began.
But I have not forgotten, nor ever shall.

In some of us--I think in many who could not voice it--the war has left
chiefly this feeling: 'If only I could find a country where men cared
less for all that they seem to care for, where they cared more for
beauty, for nature, for being kindly to each other. If only I could find
that green hill far away!' Of the songs of Theocritus, of the life of
St. Francis, there is no more among the nations than there is of dew on
grass in an east wind. If we ever thought otherwise, we are
disillusioned now. Yet there is Peace again, and the souls of men
fresh-murdered are not flying into our lungs with every breath we draw.

Each day this thought of Peace becomes more real and blessed. I can lie
on this green hill and praise Creation that I am alive in a world of
beauty. I can go to sleep up here with the coverlet of sunlight warm on
my body, and not wake to that old dull misery. I can even dream with a
light heart, for my fair dreams will not be spoiled by waking, and my
bad dreams will be cured the moment I open my eyes. I can look up at
that blue sky without seeing trailed across it a mirage of the long
horror, a film picture of all the things that have been done by men to
men. At last I can gaze up at it, limpid and blue, without a dogging
melancholy; and I can gaze down at that far gleam of sea, knowing that
there is no murk of murder on it any more.

And the flight of birds, the gulls and rooks and little brown wavering
things which flit out and along the edge of the chalk-pits, is once more
refreshment to me, utterly untempered. A merle is singing in a bramble
thicket; the dew