APPENDIX A LXI 



course but a little stream. Perhaps in both these respects — technique 

 and volume — it may equal the work of the poets of the United States. 

 But in three aspects it is unexcelled : no other verse is more bathed in 

 the blood and agony of bitter struggle: none speaks from a soul of 

 more uncompelled and undiluted chivalry; and none other proceeds 

 specifically from our Canadian point of view, and so to speak courses 

 directly in our national veins. It has indeed a notable relation to 

 the whole present and subsequent revolution which the war is bring- 

 ing, and is to bring, into the life of nations. All over the world these 

 common impulses are taking form, and all humanity will surely aim 

 at closer links of fraternity, mercy, justice and liberty and the attempt 

 to establish a better world. 



It is bound up, too, with the incoming tide of vital changes in 

 the British Commonwealth. We have made it clear that the Empire 

 is a living family, that all its people are our brethren, all its territory 

 our country, its greatness our pride, its unity our concern, its organi- 

 zation one of our tasks, its future one of our grandest hopes. Those 

 who have dreamed the British Commonwealth would fall apart have 

 proved as foolish as those who proclaimed that chivalry is a myth. 



The office of our war verse will be to apply the deep lessons of the 

 struggle to the making of a better Canada as well as a more secure 

 Empire. Racial passions, appetites for domination, ignorance, 

 cowardice, materialistic ideals, will receive strong shocks from the 

 forces of the new crusade; and the next generation will see many 

 resultant changes in Canadian affairs. Few ideals are ever perfectly 

 successful here below. But just as certainly, they form an enriching 

 alloy when poured into the baser metal of the world: and just as cer- 

 tainly the world is advanced by each, to some extent. The law of 

 conservation of moral energy is as valid and exact as the law of con- 

 servation of physical energy. None is ever lost. Whoever does a 

 heroic deed, whoever enshrines it in a lyric line, have both achieved 

 something immortal and eternal in their influence. The poets of 

 Confederation had and will have a profound though noiseless influence. 

 So will the War School. And as the war is a greater, wider, nobler 

 event for us than Confederation, its influence will be so much the 

 stronger. 



But are those who have already written on the War the whole of 

 our War School of Canadian poets ? Are they not rather the pre- 

 cursors ? In Pisgah view, I think I descry the real school as yet to 

 come. The Confederation Poets came chiefly after Confederation. 

 The War School will, I believe, appear chiefly after the wa^. Young 

 men and women of genius — some probably returned from the 

 contest — will celebrate its glorious deeds, will drink deep inspiration 



