A Writer's Recollections — Volume 2 by Ward, Humphry, Mrs., 1851-1920

Of all this--of the historic figures of Sir William van Home, of beloved Lord Grey, of Sir Wilfrid Laurier, and Sir Robert Borden, as they were ten years ago, there would be much to say. But my present task is done.

Nor is there any room here for those experiences of the war, and of the actual fighting front, to which I have already given utterance in _England's Effort_ and _Towards the Goal._ Some day, perhaps, if these _Recollections_ find an audience, and when peace has loosened our tongues and abolished that very necessary person, the Censor, there will be something more to be written. But now, at any rate, I lay down my pen. For a while these _Recollections_, during the hours I have been at work on them, have swept me out of the shadow of the vast and tragic struggle in which we live, into days long past on which there is still sunlight--though it be a ghostly sunlight; and above them the sky of normal life. But the dream and the illusion are done. The shadow descends again, and the evening paper comes in, bringing yet another mad speech of a guilty Emperor to desecrate yet another Christmas Eve.

The heart of the world is set on peace. But for us, the Allies, in whose hands lies the infant hope of the future, it must be a peace worthy of our dead and of their sacrifice. "Let us gird up the loins of our minds. In due time we shall reap, if we faint not."

And meanwhile across the western ocean America, through these winter days, sends incessantly the long procession of her men and ships to the help of the Old World and an undying cause. Silently they come, for there are powers of evil lying in wait for them. But "still they come." The air thickens, as it were with the sense of an ever-gathering host. On this side, and on that, it is the Army of Freedom, and of Judgment.

_Christmas Eve, 1917._

THE END OF VOLUME II