August 10, 1916 
LAND & WATER 
2T 
nerveless ? Will the nation sink back into that lethargy 
from which its higher being was called by " the quick 
resounding drum " ? 
That it can so fall back, history holds in its pages. 
The story of the Commonwealth and the Restoration, 
of the P'rench I^cvolution and the American civil war, 
have each their warning note. A nation at war can only 
think of the expenditure of bloc d and treasure, the price 
which must be paid in lives and g )ld. A nation at peace 
thinks of the wealth to be got out of the toil of human 
lives, and how it can capture its neighbour's markets. 
The lust after wealth can be more cruel than the desola- 
tions of war. We know to our cost how great nations 
can bring themselves to beheve that there is nothing 
worth upholding, or fighting for, if only their worldly 
prosperity is assured. If the soul of a nation dies in its 
lust after gold, it has been destroyed because the people 
have ceased to have vision, and the women are sunk 
in frivolous folly. " Show me the women of a country 
and I will tell you its history," is a saying which with 
Aariations has been often repeated. In the downfall 
of corrupt empires and ages, the women have always 
been the shameless advertisers of the corruption of the 
social state. 
Judged by this high and sacred test, we may take 
courage and go forward in the path of reconstruction, 
and building again the waste places. The women have 
not failed the nation during the war, and they will not 
fail when the dawn of the age of peace breaks on 
the mountains of time. There are and there will remain 
" the careless daughters " who will not be warned even 
by the judgments which are upon the earth. Women 
have done their part in the spheres which have always 
been their own, and they have responded nobly to the 
call that has come to them to take up new responsibilities 
and to enter on new professions. For them as for their 
comrades and brethren in the armies of the nation has 
come a new sense of citizenship. The old order is passing 
away " down the ringing grooves of change." If men 
have learnt how to die that the eternal verities may live, 
women have learn to live so as to show forth these sacred 
truths in their walk and conversation. They are being 
prepared for all that must come after the war. For 
them will come the testing point when society begins its 
reconstruction. It will fall to them to relight the fires 
on many a cold hearth. J'hey must stand in the broken 
and torn ranks of the citizens. No longer can they be 
counted, or count themselves, as mere supernumeraries in 
_ society, or in industry. If nations have learnt the 
" lessons the war has presented in pictures set in a frame- 
work of lire and steel, it is the, women who must 
lead the way in the social revival. The prophets, who 
concern themseh'cs with the things peace will bring, 
forget in their forecasting to reckon with the changes 
in conditions and the disappearance of ancient myths 
and popular j)rejudices. Necessity has proved that 
women can and must fill many spheres aforetime arrogated 
to men. The opportunity for this new testing of the 
capabilities of women has proved that in all classes 
women have risen to these new occasions. A statesman 
of the Victorian age observed as a new discovery, " there 
has been no hysteria among women." That form of 
feminine sensibility is no longer required of them by the 
male se.\, and as it is not asked for, and not appreciated 
if produced, it has died out. Women have been allowed 
to become healthy and normal members of society, 
("liven the inch they ha\e taken the ell, and arc found 
ready when the call of the country has come to their cars. 
As they have fallen into Une in the time of disorganisa- 
tion and change, so they will be found ready for the 
hour of reconstruction. 
A new vision has dawned on many as to the sure 
foundations on which the new order must be constructed, 
the dignity of work in the service of God and humanity. 
Home and the homelands stand for more, for they have 
been bought with a price. Women can never again be 
treated, nor may they treat themselves as toys and play- 
things, or the slaves of lust and cupidity. In them lies 
the hope of the future in the new estate of the Realm 
into which we are about to enter. 
Literature During the War 
By W. L. Courtney 
SOME months ago, at the very beginning of the 
war, a distinguished critic writing in the Edin- 
burgh Revicu.', gave it as his opinion that the 
war would kill literature. As we look back over 
the past eighteen or twenty months, we discover that 
such a lamentable . catastcophe has not occurred, and 
that the fears of the critic were ill-founded. For a 
month or so after the outbreak of hostilities the whole 
literary output was suspended. Nothing more remarkable 
than that first arrest of all productiveness has occurred 
in the history of Pasternoster Row. But after a little 
time old habits reasserted themselves, authors went on 
writing, books were "published— here a little and there a 
little— as if to prove that literary activity was, it might 
be, scotched, but not killed. Since those earlier months 
of the war publishers have been voluble in their complaints, 
authors' prices have not ruled so high, the paper famine 
has caused several difficulties, and bookbinders ha\c 
increased their costs. But in spite of these difliculties 
the literary output, though not yet normal, does not 
differ in a very startling degree from corresponding periods 
in earlier times. 
Of course, the first rush was for books about the war. 
It was assumed that the public would want to read 
fe\-crishly and continuously anything that bore on the 
subject Which so entirely engrossed their minds. But 
this did not continue. Perhaps too many books were 
produced, perhaps readers wanted some change from 
their daily perusal of newspapers. Whatever may have 
been the cause there was a slump in the market for 
war books, and only the best survived. What, in point 
of fact, are the books in this department to be most 
remembered ? We can count them on the fingers of 
both hands. There is Mr. F. S. Oliver's Ordeal by Battle, 
and also The Soul of the War, by Mr. Philip Chbbs, the 
news])aper correspondent who has since done yeoman s 
service in his battle pictures from the Front. There is 
Mr. Boyd Cable with his Between the Lines and Action 
Front ; Mr. Ian Hay with that notable work originally 
issued in Blackwood's Magazine, The First Hundred 
Thousand ; and there is Lord Ernest Hamilton's First 
Seven Divisions. To these we may add a clever book by 
" Student in Arms," parts of which saw the light in the 
Spectator ; Professor J. H. Morgan's Leaves from a Field 
fJote-book : Mr. Fred Coleman's From Mons to Ypres, 
and Mr. Fred Palmer's My Year of the War. There may 
be a few others, as, for instance, Hilaire Belloc's and 
John Buchan's more formal Histories of the War. 
One of the most notable results of the war has beert 
the lavish and prodigal production of poetry. It is not 
unnatural when feelings are raised to a high pitch that 
an outlet should be sought in verse, and perhaps it is 
equally natural that verse produced in such conditions 
should be lacking in quality. If the critic was right in 
defining the essence of poetry as " emotion remembered 
in tranquillity," it becomes obvious that hasty and per- 
fervid ebullitions of feeling will not represent the higher 
flights of the muse. Some of the poetry, nevertheless, 
evoked by the war has been of a distinctly lofty kind, 
and in this connection we may especially note that Sir 
Henry Newbolt and Mr. Laurence Binyon have done good 
work. There was an Ode written by Mr. Binyon at the 
very commencement of hostilities which remains as one 
of the finest things. With it can be compared Mrs. Woods's 
recent poem The First Battle of Ypres, both representing 
a very high level of technical accomplishment and poetic 
feeling. 
But there is more to be said than this. Apart from 
occasional contributions in verse, there is a young schoo 
of poets writing and working in our midst who represent 
a very interesting department of literature. Those who 
have read the two \olumes of Georgian Poetry which. 
