MARGINAL COMMENT
By HAROLD NICOLSON
WE have reached the time of year when the first yellow leaf appears upon the fig-tree, when the lupins have become a tangle of cracked and sodden seed-pods, when a few besotted
wasps creep drowsily on rotting plums. At night-time one can hear the apples dropping in the orchard, and any morning now will come the cobwebs glistening on the yews. The hop-gardens, which throughout these summer months have stood aloof as vine- yards, are filled suddenly with the clamour of women and children from Rotherhithe or Bermondsey. Laughing and singing, they strip the bines to nakedness ; a sense of southern vintage warms the cool fields of Kent, and the women, with bright scarves around their heads, seem strangely alien, bringing to our gentle weald the sounds and colours of Balkan peasants stripping tobacco plants or rose petals in the valleys of the Rhodope or Vardar. Already the oast- houses emit small puffs of sulphurous smoke and the light and brittle hop-cones are rammed tight into the long pockets which will carry them to the great breweries of the Medway. The summer is over, and the breath of autumn, as it begins to stir around us, brings with it the thought of the winter that is to come : the cruel winter of 1945-46, which may live in history as the most tragic period through which Europe has ever passed. Our hearts, which for six years have been tautened and strained by frequent despair, are almost atrophied ; our imagination, being glutted by a succession of unbelievable horrors and inventions, has folded its wings in weariness ; the very energy of our brain quails at the contemp!ation of what is bound to happen and slinks away from reality into futile evasions. How natural it is that we in this island, being at last immune, should smile contentedly as we gaze down into the valley and see the bonfire in the hoppers' camp and hear their distant voices raised in song! How natural it is that we, who have borne such vast responsibility, should seek to deny the responsibility which still remains! How natural it is that we, who have paid so great a price to save humanity, should cease, in utter exhaustion, to feel humane!
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