Nor is it easy, by this west-country quay, to profit by a conscience which is willing to allow some shameless idleness. I began talking, before the books were even unpacked, with some old acquaintances by the water-side. Most disquieting souls! But I cannot blame them. They have been obliged to add gunnery to their knowledge of seamanship and navigation. They were silent, they shook their heads, following some thoughtless enquiries of mine after the wellbeing of other men I used to meet here. Worse than all, I was forced to listen to the quiet recitals of stranded cripples, once good craftsmen in the place, and these dimmed the blessed sun even where in other years it was unusually bright. That is what put holiday thoughts and literature away. I felt I had been very unfairly treated, especially as the mutilated, being young men, were unpleasantly noticeable in so small a village on fine mornings. It is not right that the calm of our well-earned leisure should be so savagely ruined. There was one morning on the quay when, watching the incoming tide, two of us were discussing Mametz Wood and some matters relating to it which will never be published, and the young man who was instructing me was approached by an older man, who beamed, and held in his hand a news-sheet. "Splendid news this morning," said the elderly man to the young soldier. He wanted the opinion of one who had fought on that ground, and I regret to say he got it. The soldier indifferently handed back the glorious news, without inspecting it, with words which youth should never address to age. So how can I stay by the quay all the golden day long? I have not come here prepared to endure the sudden Arctic shadows which fall, even in summer, from such clouds. The society of our fellows was never so uncertain, so likely to be stormy, as in these days. And the opinions of none of our fellow-men can be so disturbing as those of the rebel from the trenches, who appears, too, to expect us to agree with him at once, as though he had a special claim on our sympathetic attention. While considering him and his views of society, of peace and war, I see what might come upon us as the logical consequence of such a philosophy, and the dread vision does not accord with the high serenity of this Atlantic coast, where the wind, like the hilarious vivacity of a luminous globe spinning through the blue, is mocking these very sheets as I write them, and is trying to blow them, a little before their time, into vacuity.