Perhaps that was destiny and all, for are we not mere p.a.w.ns in the game of fate and destiny?

The plough is then the sword; and the tears of war will produce the daily bread for the generations to come.

And so this little frontier town appeared to me as the symbol of a great task. But in another regard also it points to a lesson that is applicable to our day. Over a hundred years ago this sequestered spot was the scene of a tragic calamity which affected the whole kingdom and will be remembered for ever, at least in the annals of history. At the time, though I did not realize the importance of my birthplace, for if I had known, my world would never have gone down in flame as it did.

My father was a civil servant who fulfilled his duties very conscientiously, an Earth Mage in the task of building the town housing and surrounding development. My mother looked after the household and lovingly devoted herself to the care of her children. From that period I have not retained very much in my memory; because after a few years my father had to leave that frontier town which I had come to love so much and take up a new post farther down the Inn valley, at Gausa, therefore actually in the originating Kingdom itself.

It was at this period that I first began to have ideals of my own. I spent a good deal of time scampering about in the open, on the long road from school, and mixing up with some of the roughest of the boys, which caused my mother many anxious moments. All this tended to make me something quite the reverse of a stay-at-home. I gave scarcely any serious thought to the question of choosing a vocation in life; but I was certainly quite out of sympathy with the kind of career which my father had followed. I think that an inborn talent for speaking now began to develop and take shape during the more or less strenuous arguments which I used to have with my comrades. I had become a juvenile ringleader who learned well and easily at school but was rather difficult to manage.

In my freetime I practised singing in the choir of the monastery church at Urkuo, and thus it happened that I was placed in a very favourable position to be emotionally impressed again and again by the magnificent splendour of ecclesiastical ceremonial.

What could be more natural for me than to look upon the Abbot as representing the highest human ideal worth striving for, just as the position of the humble village priest had appeared to my father in his own boyhood days? At least, that was my idea for a while. But the juvenile disputes I had with my father did not lead him to appreciate his son's oratorical gifts in such a way as to see in them a favourable promise for such a career, and so he naturally could not understand the ideas I had in my head at that time.

This contradiction in my character made him feel somewhat anxious.

Life is Harsh, it is cruel and it is most unkind. In my ideal of a peaceful world, to have happiness is to have other put in place, but no it should never be weak human, because weak human are cruel and mad with greed when they are put atop a pedestal. No.....they would never be able to shoulder the burden of keeping the world at peace.

Browsing through my father's books, I chanced to come across some publications that dealt with military subjects. One of these publications was a popular history of the Demonic Continent.

These became my favourite reading. In a little while that great and heroic conflict began to take first place in my mind. And from that time onwards I became more and more enthusiastic about everything that was in any way connected with war or military affairs.

But this story of the Demonic-Human War had a special significance for me on other grounds also. For the first time, and as yet only in quite a vague way, the question began to present itself: Is there a difference - and if there be, what is it -

between the Human who fought that war and the other? Are we not all the same inhabitants that live in this world? Do we not all belong together?

That was the first time that this problem began to agitate my small brain. And from the replies that were given to the questions which I asked very tentatively, I was forced to accept the fact, though with a secret envy, that not all intelligent living creature had the good luck to belong to a single community. This was something that I could not understand.

It was decided that I should study. Considering my character as a whole, and especially my temperament, my father had decided that idea that his son also should become an official of the Government just like he was.

Indeed he had decided on that career for me. The difficulties through which he had to struggle in making his own career led him to overestimate what he had achieved, because this was exclusively the result of his own indefatigable industry and energy. The characteristic pride of the self-made man urged him

towards the idea that his son should follow the same calling and if possible rise to a higher position in it. Moreover, this idea was strengthened by the consideration that the results of his own life's industry had placed him in a position to facilitate his son's advancement in the same career.

He was simply incapable of imagining that I might reject what had meant everything in life to him.

My father's decision was simple, definite, clear and, in his eyes, it was something to be taken for granted. A man of such a nature who had become an autocrat by reason of his own hard struggle for existence, could not think of allowing 'inexperienced' and irresponsible young fellows to choose their own careers. To act in such a way, where the future of his own son was concerned, would have been a grave and reprehensible weakness in the exercise of parental authority and responsibility, something utterly incompatible with his characteristic sense of duty.

And yet it had to be otherwise.

For the first time in my life - I was then thirteen years old - I felt myself forced into open opposition. No matter how hard and determined my father might be about putting his own plans and opinions into action, his son was no less obstinate in refusing to accept ideas on which he set little or no value.

I would not become a servant, begging for sc.r.a.ps from the table of those above me.

I will not beg.

I will not have my destiny be blocked by those I deem unworthy of their position.

One can imagine what kind of thoughts such a prospect awakened in the mind of a young fellow who was by no means what is called a 'good boy' in the current sense of that term. The ridiculously easy school tasks which we were given made it possible for me to spend far more time in the open air than at home.

I thank the heaven that I can look back to those happy days and find the memory of them helpful. The fields and the woods were then the terrain on which all disputes were fought out.

Even attendance at the choir could not alter my way of spending my time.

But I had now another battle to fight.