tedly criminal. Mr. Sassoon has now collected all his war
poems into one volume, and one is struck by the energetic hatred of those
who make war in safety that finds expression in them. Most readers will
remember the bitter joy of the dream that one day he might hear "the
yellow pressmen grunt and squeal," and see the Junkers driven out of
Parliament by the returned soldiers. Mr. Sassoon cannot endure the
enthusiasm of the stay-at-home--especially the enthusiasm that pretends
that soldiers not only behave like music-hall clowns, but are incapable of
the more terrible emotional experiences. He would like, I fancy, to forbid
civilians to make jokes during war-time. His hatred of the jesting
civilian attains passionate expression in the poem called _Blighters_:

The House is crammed: tier beyond tier they grin
And cackle at the Show, while prancing ranks
Of harlots shrill the chorus, drunk with din;
"We're sure the Kaiser loves the dear old Tanks!"

I'd like to see a Tank come down the stalls,
Lurching to rag-time tunes, or "Home, sweet Home,"--
And there'd be no more jokes in Music-halls
To mock the riddled corpses round Bapaume.

Mr. Sassoon himself laughs on occasion, but it is the laughter of a man
being driven insane by an insane world. The spectacle of lives being
thrown away by the hundred thousand by statesmen and generals without the
capacity to run a village flower-show, makes him find relief now and then
in a hysteria of mirth, as in _The General_:

"Good-morning; good-morning!" the General said
When we met him last week on our way to the Line,
Now the soldiers he smiled at are most of 'em dead,
And we're cursing his staff for incompetent swine.
"He's a cheery old card," grunted Harry to Jack
As they slogged up to Arras with rifle and pack.
* * * * *
But he did for them both by his plan of attack.

Mr. Sassoon's verse is also of importance because it paints life in the
trenches with a realism not to be found elsewhere in the English poetry of
the war. He spares us nothing of:

The strangled horror
And butchered, frantic gestures of the dead.

He gives us every detail of the filth, the dullness, and the agony of the
trenches. His book is in its aim destructive. It is a great pamphlet
against war. If posterity wishes to know what war was like during this
period, it will discover the truth, not in _Barrack-room Ballad