MRS. HUMPHRY WARD
WORDSWORTH'S VALLEY IN WARTIME
August 8th, 1915. It is now four days since, in this village of Grasmere, at my feet, we attended one of those anniversary meetings, marking the first completed year of this appalling war, which were being called on that night over the length and breadth of England. Our meeting was held in the village schoolroom; the farmers, tradesmen, inn-keeper and summer visitors of Grasmere were present, and we passed the resolution which all England was passing at the same moment, pledging ourselves, separately and collectively, to help the war and continue the war, till the purposes of England were attained, by the liberation of Belgium and northern France, and the chastisement of Germany.
A year and four days, then, since the war began, and in a remote garden on the banks of the Forth, my husband and I passed, breathless, to each other, the sheets of the evening paper brought from Edinburgh by the last train, containing the greater part of Sir Edward Grey's speech delivered in the House of Commons that afternoon—War for Belgium—for national honour—and, in the long run, for national existence! War!—after these long years of peace; war, with its dimly foreseen horrors, and its unfathomed possibilities:—England paused and shivered as the grim spectre stepped across her path.
And I stand to-night on this lovely mountain-side, looking out upon the harvest fields of another August, and soon another evening newspaper sent up from the village below will bring the latest list of our dead and our maimed, for which English mothers and wives have looked in terror, day after day, through this twelve months.
And yet, but for the brooding care in every English mind, how could one dream of war in this peaceful Grasmere?
Is it really true that somewhere in this summer world, beyond those furthest fells, and the Yorkshire moors behind them, beyond the silver sea dashing its waves upon our Eastern coasts, there is still going on the
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