The real war-story of to-day, even for to-morrow, ought to arrive soon. This is an age for an epic. Some keen and comprehensive mind will arise--a literary genius who will include the patriot, the anarchist, the poet, dramatist, humanitarian, theosophist, dreamer, judge and statesman, even the iciest aces of the air--and tell the story of War, a tale of trenches, kings and arms; blood, heroism and monstrous greed; vast far-reaching causes and the slow, inevitable hell of effects--told from a viewpoint so inclusive that thrones are merely pawns in a Planetary Game. Inclusion is the first business of the writer who is truly allied with the modern element. Propagandists do not fill the picture. Yesterday the wreckers and agnostics--to-day the specialists and onesided enthusiasts--to-morrow, the embodiers, the includers. * * * * * 16 VALLEY ROAD GIRL The Valley Road Girl, who gave us the title, and helped us to see how the New Race will become in due time the planetary hive, asked not to appear in this book. A letter this morning asks it again. She is in the stress and heat of a series of ordeals, learning what it means suddenly to be parted from friends and the centre of her work. A wise and sensitive young woman--I rather thrill over her sufferings. We don't commiserate; we congratulate, when one is called to a stretch of particularly stiff and solitary going. We know that one must be passionately worthy to take the big-calibred ordeals. There is pain to all births--pain, the precursor of greater joys. Pain is not the expansion of the flower to the sun; that is joy, that comes afterward. Pain is the necessary rupturing of the bud-sheaths before the final unfolding into the new dimension. Pain is within, inarticulate--merely finds a correspondence in some outer cause. Part of the Valley Road Girl's letter follows: ... It hurt to let that last Lamentation go to you. I thought of the times when I had put up a braver fight, bolstered only with pride. But pride is low now, and still dwindling in the glass. Even the gods withdraw from the pathetic. They love us more when we challenge with doubt than when we implore. The many are God-fearing. They must have some divine power to shift their responsibility upon. They can ask the Flame to cleanse them, but quail at working out their own salvation. I have done some crying out to God, but I am finished. The one good path I have is Work--self-expression every day. I made another mistake--in looking back. Regret identifies us with the past and impedes progress. Youth is smileless, inclined to regard to-day's struggles as ultimate evil, but gradually we learn that all things pass. To consider everything as in transition, we place ourselves in the very current of growth.... For rapid journeying, we must travel light. We can only carry along the spirit of things--the essence of our joys and lessons. That's what I have from Chapel days.