Now there is a hard and bitter fact of life, very different from the story of the fenland.  I am not going to argue about it or discuss it, because to trace the threads of it back into life entangles one at once helplessly in a dreadful series of problems:  namely, how it comes to pass that a calamity, grievous and intolerable beyond all calamities in its pain and sorrow and waste, a strife abhorred and dreaded by all who are concerned in it, fruitful in every shade of misery and wretchedness, should yet have come about so inevitably and relentlessly.  No one claims to have desired war; all alike plead that it is in self-defence that they are fighting, and maintain that they have laboured incessantly for peace.  Yet the great mills of fate are turning, and grinding out death and shame and loss.  Everyone sickens for peace, and yet any proposal of peace is drowned in cries of bitterness and rage.  The wisest spend their time in pointing out the blessings which the conflict brings.  The mother hears that the son she parted with in strength and courage is mouldering in an unknown grave, and chokes her tears down.  The fruit of years of labour is consumed, lands are laid desolate, the weak and innocent are wronged; yet the great war-engine goes thundering and smashing on, leaving hatred and horror behind it; and all the while men pray to a God of mercy and loving-kindness and entreat His blessing on the work they are doing.

Is there then, if we are confronted with such problems as these, anything to do except to stay prostrate, like Job, in darkness and despair, just enduring the stroke of sorrow?  Is there any excuse for bringing before the world at such a time as this the delightful reveries, the easy happiness, the gentle schemes of serener and less troubled days?  The book which follows was the work of a time which seems divided from the present by a dark stream of unhappiness.  Is it right, is it decent, to unfold an old picture of peace before the eyes of those who have had to look into chaos and destruction?  Would it not be braver to burn the record of the former things that have passed away?  Or is it well to fix our gaze firmly upon the peaceful things that have been and will be once more?

4

Yes, I believe that it is right and wholesome to do this, because the most treacherous and cowardly thing we can do is to disbelieve in life.  Those old dreams and visions were true enough, and they will be true again.  They represent the real life to which we must try to return.  We must try to build up the conception afresh, not feebly to confess that we were all astray.  We cannot abolish evil by confessing ourselves worsted by it; we can only overcome it by holding fast to our belief in labour and order and peace.  It is a temptation which we must resist, to philosophise too much about war.  Very few minds are large enough and clear enough to hold all the problems in their grasp.  I do not believe for an instant that war has falsified our vision of