Memory Hold-The-Door by John Buchan — Read

After some six years of my ivory tower I grew restless. I rejoiced as much as ever in the prospect from it, but I came to feel that it should be a sanctuary to return to and not a heritage for continuous habitation. In addition to the work of my firm I held several directorships, but I did not find that business absorbed all my energies; while my writing, which gave me enormous pleasure, would have lost its charm for me unless kept as a relaxation. The fatigue of the War, moral and mental, was passing, and my bodily ailments could be kept within bounds. The truth is that in my late forties I experienced a ridiculous resurgence of youth. In Scotland I was as active as ever on the hill, and in my early morning rides in Oxfordshire I seemed to recapture the precise emotions of twenty-one. The very tunes I had hummed then were back on my lips. Reason told me that it was folly, that I was only Donne's "aged childe and grey-headed Infant"; but I had not a single grey hair, and I was unfeignedly grateful for this return, even if illusory, of what had been a most happy youth.

That horrid possession, a social conscience, also began to prick me. My forecast of the grim consequences of the War had not been quite realised, but I believed that they were only retarded. I clung to a hope in the League of Nations and expounded it to many audiences, but my confidence was declining; I did not believe that such an institution could be effective straight from its birth, and I did not find the spirit abroad in the world which would encourage an organic growth. I had an ugly fear that its foundations were on sand, and that the first storm would overthrow it.