MARCH 22, 1919. There is an astonishing number of books on what is called
Reconstruction in the new publications of this spring. Reconstruction
seems to be as easy as conscription or destruction. We have only to
change our mind, and there we are, as though nothing had happened. It is
the greatest wonder of the human brain that its own accommodating
ratiocination never affords it any amusement. We use reason only to make
convincing disguises for our desires and appetites. Perhaps it is fear of
the wrath to come that is partly responsible for the clamour of the
economists and sociologists in the publishers' announcements, almost
drowning there the drone of the cataract of new novels. But it is too
late now. The wrath will come. After mischievously bungling with the
magic which imprisoned the Djinn, we may wish we had not done it; but
once he is out there is nothing for it but to be surprised and sorry.
The lid is off; and it is useless for the clever reconstructionists to
press in upon us with their little screw-drivers, chattering eagerly
about locks and hinges. When the crafty but ignorant Russian generals and
courtiers got from the Czar the order for mobilizing the armies, and
issued it, they did not know it, but that was when they released Lenin.
And who on earth can now inveigle that terrific portent safely under lid
and lock again?

XXII. Old Sunlight

APRIL 5, 1919. I find the first signs of this spring, now the War is
over, almost unbelievable. I have watched this advent with astonishment,
as though it were a phantom. The feeling is the same as when waking from
an ugly dream, and seeing in doubt the familiar objects in a morning
light. They seem steadfast. Are they real, or is the dream? The morning
works slowly through the mind to take the place of the night. Its
brightness and tranquillity do not seem right. And is it not surprising
to find the spring has come again to this world? The almond tree might be
an untimely, thoughtless, and happy stranger. What does it want with us?
That spiritual and tinted fire with which its life burns touches and
kindles no responsive and volatile essence in us. I passed a hedge-bank
which looked south and was reviving. There were crumbs and nuggets of
chalk in it, and they were as remarkable to me this year as though I had
once seen those flecks of white showing through the herbage of another
planet. That crumbling earth with the grey matting of old grass was as
wa