" A silence
follows, then some heads are shaken in dissent whose faces have been
blanched anew by the stale tragedy of sleepless night--"Stop war?
Stop war? Impossible! There is no cure for the world's disease."
Some one coughs, and then the Vision is swallowed up in the huge
sunlit peace of the lush meadows. In the rich colors of the glowing
kine, the black forests, the green fields and the blue distance,
dies the reflection of the fire where the old world burns and
breaks. Infinite silence engulfs the uproar of hate and pain from
the dark swarmings of mankind. They who have spoken retire one by
one within themselves, absorbed once more in their own mysterious
malady.
But when evening is ready to descend within the valley, a storm
breaks over the mass of Mont Blanc. One may not go forth in such
peril, for the last waves of the storm-wind roll even to the great
veranda, to that harbor where they have taken refuge; and these
victims of a great internal wound encompass with their gaze the
elemental convulsion.
They watch how the explosions of thunder on the mountain upheave the
level clouds like a stormy sea, how each one hurls a shaft of fire
and a column of cloud together into the twilight; and they turn
their wan and sunken faces to follow the flight of the eagles that
wheel in the sky and look from their supreme height down through the
wreathing mists, down to earth.
"Put an end to war?" say the watchers.
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