. And the opinions of
none of our fellow-men can be so disturbing as those of the rebel from
the trenches, who appears, too, to expect us to agree with him at once,
as though he had a special claim on our sympathetic attention. While
considering him and his views of society, of peace and war, I see what
might come upon us as the logical consequence of such a philosophy, and
the dread vision does not accord with the high serenity of this Atlantic
coast, where the wind, like the hilarious vivacity of a luminous globe
spinning through the blue, is mocking these very sheets as I write them,
and is trying to blow them, a little before their time, into vacuity.

It is not easy, and perhaps this summer it would not be right, to find
the exact mood for a holiday. In the frame of mind which is more usual
with us, I put Ecclesiastes--forsaken by a previous visitor, and used to
lengthen a short leg of the dressing-table--in my pocket, and leave the
quay to its harsh new thoughts, and to the devices by which it gets a
bare sustenance out of the tides, the seasons, and the winds, complicated
now with high explosives in cunning ambush; and go out to the headland,
where wild goats among the rocks which litter the steep are the only life
to blatter critical comment to high heaven. I left that holiday quay and
its folk, and took with me a prayer which might go far to brace me to
support the blattering of goats, if that, too, should be my luck even
when in solitude. I passed at the hill-top the last whitewashed wall of
the village, where the open Atlantic is sighted, and stopped to glance at
the latest official poster on the wall. That explained to me, while the
west wind blew, what the penalties are for young men who are in the wrong
because they are young, not having attained the middle-age which brings
with it immunity for the holding of heroic notions. Yet how if those
young men are not bellicose like their wise seniors? Why should they get
the evil which their elders, who will it, take so much care to avoid?

The dust of official lorries in a hurry no longer made the wayside hedges
appear aged. The wind was newly arrived from mid-ocean. I met it coming
ashore. It knew nothing about us, so far. In the distance, the village
with its shipping was a faint blur, already a faded impress on earth, as
though more than half forgotten in spite of its important problems. It
was hardly more than a discoloration, and suggested nothing of
consequ