icy of the iron hand in Poland. Neither Germany nor Britain
can escape being impressed by the characteristics of the other in the
shock of conflict. It may seem a paradoxical outcome of the spiritual
conflict Mr. Asquith announced. But history is quick with such ironies.
What we condemned in others is the measure which is meted out to us.
Indeed it might almost be said that all war results in an exchange of
characteristics, and if the element of hatred is strong in the conflict
it will certainly bring a nation to every baseness of the foe it fights.
Love and hate are alike in this, that they change us into the image we
contemplate. We grow nobly like what we adore through love and ignobly
like what we contemplate through hate. It will be well for us if
we remember that all our political ideals are symbols of spiritual
destinies. These clashings of solidarity and freedom will enrich
our spiritual life if we understand of the first that our thirst for
greatness, for the majesty of empire, is a symbol of our final unity
with a greater majesty, and if we remember of the second that, as an old
scripture said, "The universe exists for the purposes of soul."

1915

ON AN IRISH HILL

It has been my dream for many years that I might at some time dwell in a
cabin on the hillside in this dear and living land of ours, and there
I would lay my head in the lap of a serene nature, and be on friendly
terms with the winds and mountains who hold enough of unexplored mystery
and infinitude to engage me at present. I would not dwell too far from
men, for above an enchanted valley, only a morning's walk from the
city, is the mountain of my dream. Here, between heaven and earth and my
brothers, there might come on me some foretaste of the destiny which the
great powers are shaping for us in this isle, the mingling of God and
nature and man in a being, one, yet infinite in number. Old tradition
has it that there was in our mysterious past such a union, a sympathy
between man and the elements so complete, that at every great deed of
hero or king the three swelling waves of Fohla responded: the wave
of Toth, the wave of Rury, and the long, slow, white, foaming wave of
Cleena. O mysterious kinsmen, would that today some deed great enough
could call forth the thunder of your response once again! But perhaps
he is now rocked in his cradle who will hereafter rock you into joyous
foam.

The mountain which I praise has not hitherto been c