The Pacifist's Task Today Is To Find

I Know One Husband And Wife Who, Whatever The Official Reasons Given To The Court For The Break Up Of Their Marriage, Were Really Divorced Because The Husband Believed That Nobody Ought To Read While He Was Talking And The Wife That Nobody Ought To Talk While She Was Reading.

Nevertheless, Hateful As Saying 'no' Always Is To An Imaginative Person, And Certain As The Offence May Be That It Will Cause To Individuals Whose Own Work Does Not Require Isolated Effort, The Writer Who Is Engaged On A Book Must Learn To Say It. He Must Say It Consistently To All Interrupters; To The Numerous Callers And Correspondents Who Want Him To Speak, Open Bazaars, See Them For 'only' Ten Minutes, Attend Literary Parties, Put People Up, Or Read, Correct And Find Publishers For Semi-literate Manuscripts By His Personal Friends.

Belated Maternity Has Had Its Compensations; Small Children Have A Habit Of Conferring Persistent Youth Upon Their Parents, And By Their Eager Vitality Postpone The Unenterprising Cautions And Timidities Of Middle Age.

Few Of Humanity's Characteristics Are More Disconcerting Than Its Ability To Reduce World-events To Its Own Level, Wherever This May Happen To Be.

For A Woman As For A Man, Marriage Might Enormously Help Or Devastatingly Hinder The Growth Of Her Power To Contribute Something Impersonally Valuable To The Community In Which She Lived, But It Was Not That Power, And Could Not Be Regarded As An End In Itself. Nor, Even, Were Children Ends In Themselves; It Was Useless To Go On Producing Human Beings Merely In Order That They, In Their Sequence, Might Produce Others, And Never Turn From This Business Of Continuous Procreation To The Accomplishment Of Some Definite And Lasting Piece Of Work.