ash one upon another in my riven heart!
Join hands and dance along!

We move forward calmly and without haste,
For Time is not our quarry.
Time is on our side.
With the osiers of the ages my Peace weaves her nest.

* * * * *

I am like the cricket who chirps in the fields.
A storm bursts, rain falls in torrents, drowning
The furrows and the chirping.
But as soon as the flurry is over,
The little musician, undaunted, resumes his song.

In like manner, having heard, in the smoking east,
on the devastated earth,
The thunderous charge of the Four Horsemen,
Whose gallop rings still from the distance,
I uplift my head and resume my song,
Puny, but obstinate.

Written August 15 to 25, 1914.[2]

"Journal de Geneve" and "Neue Zuercher Zeitung,"
December 24 and 25, 1915; "Les Tablettes,"
Geneva, July, 1917.

II

UPWARDS, ALONG A WINDING ROAD

If I have kept silence for a year, it is not because the faith to which
I gave expression in _Above the Battle_ has been shaken (it stands
firmer than ever); but I am well assured that it is useless to speak to
him who will not hearken. Facts alone will speak, with tragical
insistence; facts alone will be able to penetrate the thick wall of
obstinacy, pride, and falsehood with which men have surrounded their
minds because they do not wish to see the light.

But we, as between brothers of all the nations; as between those who
have known how to defend their moral freedom, their reason, and their
faith in human solidarity; as between minds which continue to hope amid
silence, oppression, and grief--we do well to exchange, as this year
draws to a close, words of affection and solace. We must convince one
another that during the blood-drenched night the light is still burning,
that it never has been and never will be extinguished.

In the abyss of suffering into which Europe is plunged, those who wield
the pen must be careful never to add an additional pang to the mass of
pangs already endured, and never to pour new reasons for hatred into the
burning flood of hate. Two ways remain open for those rare free spirits
which, athwart the mountain of crimes and follies, are endeavouring to
break a trail for others, to find for themselves an egress. Some are
courageously attempting in their respective lands to make their
fellow-countrymen aware of their own fau