, none of the youngest
poets approached Sir Owen Seaman in the vigour of their invective. Most
of them seemed to be overpowered by the political situation, and few
could free themselves from their inured pacific habit of speech. Even
when they wrote of Belgium, the Muse seemed rather to weep than to
curse. Looking back to the winter of 1914, it is almost pathetic to
observe how difficult it was for our easy-going British bards to hate
the Germans. There was a good deal of ineffective violence, and
considerable misuse of technical terms, caused, in many cases, by a too
hasty reference to newspaper reports of gallantry under danger, in the
course of which the more or less obscure verbiage of military science
was picturesquely and inaccurately employed. As the slightly censorious
reader looks back upon these poems of the beginning of the War, he
cannot resist a certain impatience. In the first place, there is a
family likeness which makes it impossible to distinguish one writer from
another, and there is a tendency to a smug approval of British
prejudice, and to a horrible confidence in England's power of "muddling
through," which look rather ghastly in the light of subsequent
struggles.

There was, however, a new spirit presently apparent, and a much
healthier one. The bards became soldiers, and in crossing over to France
and Flanders, each had packed his flute in his kit. They began to send
home verses in which they translated into music their actual experiences
and their authentic emotions. We found ourselves listening to young men
who had something new, and what was better, something noble to say to
us, and we returned to the national spirit which inspired the Chansons
de Geste in the eleventh century. To the spirit--but not in the least to
the form, since it is curious that the war-poetry of 1914-17 was, even
in the most skilful hands, poetry on a small scale. The two greatest of
the primal species of verse, the Epic and the Ode, were entirely
neglected, except, as will later be observed, in one notable instance by
Major Maurice Baring. As a rule, the poets constrained themselves to
observe the discipline of a rather confined lyrical analysis in forms of
the simplest character. Although particular examples showed a rare
felicity of touch, and although the sincerity of the reflection in many
cases hit upon very happy forms of expression, it is impossible to
overlook the general monotony. There used to be a story that t