d for the sun
again and leisure even to weep, and the untimely bones of the young as
usual now as flints in the earth of Europe, had deliberately put out
the glimmer of dawn.

Well for those who may read the papers without personal knowledge of
what happens when such a combat has begun; but to know, and to be
useless; to be looking with that knowledge at Meredith's country in
radiant April! There are occasions, though luckily they come but once
or twice in life, when the mind is shocked by the basal verities
apparently moving as though they were fugitive; thought becomes dizzy
at the daylight earth suddenly falling away at one's feet to the
vacuity of the night. Some choice had to be made. I recalled another
such mental convulsion: by Amiens Cathedral, near midnight, nearly four
years ago, with the French guns rumbling through the city in retreat,
and the certainty that the enemy would be there by morning on his way
to Paris. One thing a campaigner learns: that matters are rarely quite
so bad or so good as they seem. Saying this to my friend, the farmer
(who replied that, in any case, he must go and look to the cows), I
turned to some books.

Yet resolution is needed to get the thoughts indoors at such a time.
They are out of command. A fire is necessary. You must sit beside a
company of flames leaping from a solidly established fire, flames
curling out of the lambent craters of a deep centre; and steadily look
into that. After a while your hand goes out slowly for the book. It has
become acceptable. You have got your thoughts home. They were of no use
in France, dwelling upon those villages and cross-roads you once knew,
now spouting smoke and flames, where good friends are waiting, having
had their last look on earth, as the doomed rearguards.

The best books for refuge in times of stress are of the "notebook" and
"table-talk" kind. Poetry I have tried, but could not approach it. It
is too distant. Romance, which many found good, would never hold my
attention. But I had Samuel Butler's _Note Books_ with me for two years
in France, and found that the right sort of thing. You may begin
anywhere. There are no threads to look for. And you may stop for a
time, while some strange notion of the author's is in contest for the
command of the intelligence with your dark, resurgent thoughts; but
Butler always won. His mental activity is too fibrous, masculine, and
unexpected for any nonsense. But I had to keep a sharp eye on