"October Lake."

Bates describes the magic of a country lake — its leaves, lilies, waterfowl, fish, and profusion of colours — noting that in most ways the scene is timeless and could be occurring in any century past.

However, he also describes the signs of war: "None of them [countrymen of the past] would have understood the thunder that shakes the earth on days when there obviously is no thunder, the moan and stutter of a sky that seems quite empty, or the object which suddenly flowers out of the sky like a giant convolvulus of pure white silk and floats down to rest somewhere on Kentish earth. None of them would have understood — and seeing the glowing quince-trees reflected in the calm golden October lake among the dying lily-leaves you could excuse them for it — that this was a battlefield."

In The Spectator (November 1, 1940, clxv, p. 439, attached).