Out of your past illusions, make fires
as the peasants do with the fallen leaves; the fresh grass, the new
faith, will grow all the more thickly, for it is there waiting. Nature
does not die, it changes shape continually; like her, let us cast off
the garment of the past.
Look carefully, and reckon up these hard years. You have fought and
suffered for your country, and what have you gained by it? You have
discovered the brotherhood of the men who fight and suffer. Is the
price too high? No, if you will listen to your heart, if you will
dare to open it to the new faith which has come to you when you least
expected it.
The thing that disappoints and drives us to despair is that we cling
to what we had at the beginning; and when we no longer trust that, we
feel that all is lost. A great nation has never reached the object
sought; and so much the better, for almost always what is reached is
superior to what was sought, though different. It is not wise to start
out with our wisdom ready made, but to gather it sincerely as we go
along.
You are not the same men that you were in 1914. If you dare admit it,
then dare to act it also! That will be the chief gain--perhaps the
only one--of the war. But do you really care? So many things conspire
to intimidate you; the weariness of these years, old habits, dread of
the effort needed to examine yourself, to throw away what is dead, and
stand for what is living.
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