last diary of Bruce Cummings is sad enough, for he could but lie
inert, listen to the last news of the War, and wonder incidentally who
would come to him first--the postman bringing the reviews of his first
book, or the bony old gentleman bringing the scythe. He felt, of course,
the mockery of this frustration of his powers. He thought--and, it
seemed, with good reason--that he was a tragic failure. But was he? Read
his books, and admit that he accomplished a little that is beautiful and
enduring, and that he did it obscurely at a time when they who held most
of the fearful attention of the world were but working gravely on what
their children would execrate.

Some critics find in the diary of Barbellion's last days evidence that he
remembered he was writing for an audience. It may be there, but it is not
plain to me. It is likely that if we were writing a paragraph while
doubtful whether the hair which held the sword over us would last till we
had finished, we might find we were not so joyously abandoned to pure art
as we used to be. The interest of the book is that it is some more of
Bruce Cummings when we could not have expected another line from him.
Apart even from their literary value, it seems to me that some day his
three volumes may prove to bear historic witness as important as that of
Colonel Repington's diary. It was just such minds as Barbellion's, not
uncommon in the youth of our war time--though in his case the unusual
intuitions and adventurous aspirations were defined by genius--it was
such minds that the war-mongers condemned and destroyed. Those men were
selected for sacrifice because they had the very qualities which, when
lost to the community, then it dies in its soul. They were candid with
themselves, and questioned our warranty with the same candour, but were
modest and reticent; they were kindly to us when they knew we were wooden
and wrong, and did our bidding, judging it was evil. In France they
subdued their insurgent thoughts--and what that sacrifice meant to them
in the lonely night watches I have been privileged to learn--and
surrendered, often in terrible derision, to our will; and then in cool
and calculated audacity devised the very tasks in which the bravest and
most intelligent would be the first to die.

XXXIII. Breaking the Spell

APRIL 8, 1921. My seat by the Serpentine was under a small and almost
impalpable cloud of almond petals. The babbling of ducks somewhere in the