y active; and now and then its flashes of flame lighted up the
whole beautiful valley between the temple and the mountain.

At each flash of fire, the tall Bamboo and Cocoanut trees loomed like
graceful Javanese women in the midst of far-reaching, green, rice
paddies; while two rivers that met below us, wound under that light like
two silver threads in the night.

Once, when an unusually heavy flash came from Merapi, we saw below us a
beautiful Javanese girl clasped in the arms of her brown lover. Each
seemed to be stark naked as they stood under a Cocoanut tree like Rodin
bronzes.

It was this beautiful girl's voice that we later heard singing to her
lover a Javanese love song in the tropical night.

This, I take it, was the Flame of Love; a flame which lights up the
world forever; everywhere her devotees, clothed or naked, are the same;
forever and a day; be it on the streets of Broadway; along the lanes of
the Berkshire Hills of New England; up the rugged trails of the Sierras;
or along the quiet, tree-lined streets of an American village. It is a
flame; this business of love; a flame which, flashing by day and night,
lights the world to a new glory.

* * * * *

One night the missionaries in Korea saw flames bursting out against the
hills.

"What is it?" they cried, filled with fear.

"The Japanese are burning the Korean villages!" said one who knew.

All night long the villages burned and all night long the people were
murdered. Runners brought news to the hillsides of Seoul where anxious,
broken-hearted American missionaries waited.

"One, two, three, four, five; ten, fifteen, twenty; thirty, forty,
fifty; a hundred, two hundred, three hundred; villages are burning," so
came the messages.

The entire peninsula was lighted as with a great holocaust.

It is said that the light could be seen from Fusan itself, a hundred
miles away.

"From our village it looked like a light over a great American
steel-mill city," said a missionary to me.

And when the morning came, the flames were still leaping high against
the crimson sky of dawn.

For days this burning of villages continued. Belgium never saw more
ruthless flame and fire; set by sterner souls; or harder hearts!

That was two years ago.

The villages are charred ruins now. Some of them have never been
rebuilt. The murdered people of these villages have gone back to dust.

The Japanese think that the fires are out.