Article August 7, 1920 Issue

Signs of the Times

with contributions from Charles R. Brown

[The Congregationalist and Advance ]

The world of growing things is a witness just now to the power of quiet and hidden forces. Yesterday—or it seems but yesterday—the fields were gray and sodden, the trees gaunt and bare; to-day the grasses are quickened into green, and a misty wonder of verdure clothes every tree with gracious beauty which will soon have deepened into the full foliage of early summer. The meadows are gemmed with gold, and shy and sleeping things have awakened to their all too brief season of blossoming. Winter wheat is tall enough to bend to passing winds and the corn has begun to draw faint emerald lines across new-planted fields. All this has been done in silence and by forces which, though we may work with them and be thereby tremendously reinfored, nevertheless go about their business with a kind of elemental certainty, unhastened by our restlessness, unchecked by our hesitations.

This steadfastness of quiet things is a great comfort in a world like ours, so divided in its counsels, so doubtful of its purposes. If spring had been left to us, quite likely we should never have had any spring at all. The Senate would have debated it, the Supreme Court adjudicated it, and the Administration would have considered it in the light of the next election. The Labor Unions would probably have voted to strike over it and Capital, doubtful of its dividends, would have been unwilling to have made any investments in anything so unsubstantial as leaves and blossoms and grass. We should probably have called meetings and passed resolutions and appointed committees. The committees would not have met until July and meanwhile we should have lived through a springless world.

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