gh of this War
in Drum Taps to have stopped it more than two years ago if only one
European in ten had had so much imagination and enterprise as would take
a man through a strange field gate when he was convinced it was in that
direction he should go, and enough of charity in his heart to stay him
from throwing stones at the sheep while on his way.

XIV. Authors and Soldiers

OCTOBER 26, 1918. If a man who knew no books, but who became serious when
told of his emptiness, and showed eagerness to begin to fill it, were
confronted with the awful strata in the library of the British Museum,
and were told that that was his task, he might fall unconscious. But what
cruelty! He could be warned that the threat has little in it; that the
massed legions of books could do him no harm, if he did not disturb them.
It could be whispered to the illiterate man--whose wisdom, it might
chance, was better than much scholarship--that it is possible to read the
best of the world's drama in a few months, and that in the remainder of
the year he could read its finest poetry, history, and philosophy. I am
but paraphrasing what was said recently by an Oxford professor. I would
not dare to give it as my own opinion, within hearing of the high
priests.

Yet the professor's declaration may be not only outrageous, but right.
It is a terrible thought, except to those who are merely bibliophiles
just as some little boys are lovers of old postage stamps. I think he may
be right, for I have a catalogue of all the books and documents prompted
by the War and published before June, 1916. It runs to 180 pages of small
type. It contains the names of about 3500 books and pamphlets. Now, let
us suppose a student wished to know the truth about the War, for perhaps
a very youthful student could imagine it was possible to get the truth
about it. The truth may be somewhere in that catalogue; but I know, for I
have tried, that it has no significant name to betray its pure gold, no
strange brilliance to make the type dance on that page as one turns the
leaves with a hopeless eye. There are, however, two certainties about the
catalogue. One is that it would require a long life, a buoyant
disposition, and a freedom from domestic cares, to read every book in it.
And the other is that there are no more books in it--which we ought to
count as books--than one evening would see us through, interruptions and
all. The books in that mass are as dead as the leaves o