INTRODUCTION
When the first days of August loured over the world, time seemed to
stand still. A universal astonishment and confusion fell, as upon a flock
of sheep perplexed by strange dogs. But now, though never before was a
St. Lucy's Day so black with "absence, darkness, death," Christmas is
gone. Spring comes swiftly, the almond trees flourish. Easter will soon
be here. Life breaks into beauty again and we realize that man may bring
hell itself into the world, but that Nature ever patiently waits to be
his natural paradise. Yet still a kind of instinctive blindness blots out
the prospect of the future. Until the long horror of the war is gone from
our minds, we shall be able to think of nothing that has not for its
background a chaotic darkness. Like every obsession, it gnaws at thought,
follows us into our dreams and returns with the morning. But there have
been other wars. And humanity, after learning as best it may their brutal
lesson, has survived them. Just as the young soldier leaves home behind
him and accepts hardship and danger as to the manner born, so, when he
returns again, life will resume its old quiet wont. Nature is not idle
even in the imagination. It is man's salvation to forget no less than it
is his salvation to remember.
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