i8 
LAND & WATER 
April iq, 1917 
is a rare sight, say the flying men. And it has been left so fdr 
to ii civilian versifier to explain how and why, by trans- 
ferring the naval tradition of always seizing the weather 
gauge to an element even more treacherous than the sea, we 
have gauied the command of the air : 
Then did the British airman's sea-born skill 
Teach wood and metal to foresee his will ; 
In" every cog and joint his spirit stirred ; 
The Thing possessed was man as well as bird. 
A falcon among timorous fowl he flies 
.And Ix'ars Britannia's battle to the skies. 
In vain the Hun seeks covert in a cloud ; 
'i'he marching snow-wTeath is his shaken shroud. 
It was " Theta," an R.F.C. pilot, who felt he would hke to 
get out and make snowballs when flying above the dazzling 
white upper surface of a great cumulus cloud. The time is 
not yet come to make ballads of great air actions or of the 
relentless pursuit of broken armies by low-flying aeroplanes 
with their stuttering machine-guns. 
So many sided are these lighting poets that this dissertation 
is always side-slipping into minor issues. There aYc both nearer 
and further symbols of their vast love of England. In the 
absent womenfolk they see incarnations of the one and only 
land's infinite graciou.^ness — this is an ever-reciuring motive of 
the more personal jwems. Very touching are the songs 
they send to England personified in motherhood ; it is 
clear that the fighting Englishman now — it was not always 
so — loves his mother as passionately as the fighting Frenchman. 
ICxamples are the rule. . Captain Colwyn I'hillipps' dedi- 
cation of ail his ix)ems to 
You, my loved one and no other, 
You, my only lovely mother. 
You, the pilot of my soul. 
and a curious poem in which Captain H. S. Graham devotes 
all the joyous toil of a sapper's busy day as a birthdaj' gift : 
It w;is good to drill the men on mother's birthday. 
All the company in column on the field ; 
It was good to sec their arms were clean and steady. 
And 1*0 see them marching firmly as they wheeled. 
The Alma Mater of school or college is celebrated duly, with 
reverential regard, in a number of fine pieces. So are the 
more humane games, which are so inextricably wrought into the 
life of such places. But there is a new, and strangely 
beautiful emotion added to all this old symbolical living 
and loving — the passionate love of the regimental officer 
for his men which moves Lieutenant Robert Nichols to 
exclaim : 
Was there love once ? I have forgotten her. 
Was there grief once ? Grief still is mine. 
Other loves I have ; men rough but men who stir 
More joy, more grief, than love of thee and thine. 
Faces cheerful, full of whimsical mirtli 
Lined by the wind, burned by the sun, 
Bodies enraptured by the abounding turf. 
As whose children brothers we are and one. 
Or causes Lieutenant E. A. Mackintosh, M.C., to say, in 
verses addressed to fathers of the fallen : 
You were only their fathers, 
1 was their officer. 
Of poems before action there is a great number, and the 
finest of all is Julian Grenfell's Inlo Battle which every boy 
should have by heart. " His lii>5 must have been touched " 
said Mr. Kipling when he read this wonderful vindication 
of struggle as the driving force of all true living and a return to 
natural truth. It reveals that cameraden'c (known to all 
sportsman of the " Julianesque " type) which transcends 
humanity and embraces all living creatures : 
The wpodland trees that stand together. 
They stand to him each one a friend ; 
They gently sjjeak in the winfly weather ; 
They guide to valley and ridge's end. 
The kestrel hovering by day, 
And the little owls that call by night. 
Bid him be swift and keen as they. 
As keen of ear, as swift of sight. 
The blackbird sings to him, " Brother, brother. 
If this be the last song you sliall sing. 
Sing well, for you may not sing another ; 
Brother, sing." 
tt was the last but not the first song sung in the grand style 
by this own brother of Sidney. Had he lived, Julian Grenfell 
would have been one of the hieraichy of great luiglish poets. 
The Hills, a memory of his Indian travels, is as fine in its way 
as hilo Battle 
The mountains stand and laugh at Time ; 
They pillar up the earth. 
They watcli the ages pass, they bring 
Hew centuries to birth. 
They feel the daybreak shiver. 
They see Time passing ever, 
-Vs ilows the Jumna river. 
As breaks the white .sea-surf. 
And his brother Lieutenant " Billy " Grenfell, whose loss 
we deplore, was a poet in becoming. His hnes To John 
(John Manners), are the best of the In Memoriam \erse ot 
which there is abundance by the fighting poets : 
O heart-and-soul and careless played 
Our little band of brothers, 
And never recked the time would come 
To change our games for others. 
It's joy fur tho.se who played with you • 
To picture now, what grace 
Was in your mind and .'ingle hear*- 
And in your radiant face. 
Your light-foot .strength by flood and field 
For I^ngland keener glowed ; 
To whatsoc\er things are fair 
We know through you, the road ; 
Nor is our grief the less thereby ; 
O swift and strong and dear, good bye. 
The one jwem before action which can be coniparcd with 
Julian Grenfell's is that of Lieutenant William Noel Hodgson, 
AI.C, which has the power and \'i\id exactness of a Latin 
collect. It ends : 
I, that on my familiar hill 
, Saw with unajmprchending eyes 
A hundred of thy sun.seti spill 
Their fiery and sanguine sacrifice, 
Kre the sun swing his noonday sword 
Must say good-bye to all of this ' — ■ 
By all delights that I shall mis? 
Help me to die, O Lord. 
The many battle pictiu-es are, unfortunately, all too long 
/or the quotation which is — if it be not tearing a single petal 
from a rose — the sincerest form of criticism. A strangely 
fascinating group among the many remaining is that of the 
poems which wonder at the ghostly company. Lieutenant E. 
A. Mackintosli, watching the departure of the 4th Camerons 
sees that they have spectral comrades : 
And there in front of the men were marching 
M'ith feet that make np mark. 
The grey old ghosts of the ancient fighter 
Come back again from the dark ; 
And in front of them all MacCrinnnon piping 
A weary tune and sore, 
" On the gathering day, for ever and ever, . 
MacCrinimon comes no more." 
(Compare with this Homecoming by Sergeant Josej))! Lee 
the poet of the Black Watch) : 
When this blast is overblown 
And the beacon fires shall burn, 
And in the street 
Is the sound of feet — 
They also shall return. 
When the bells shall rock and ring 
When the flags shall flutter free 
And the choirs shall sing 
" God .save our King " — 
They shall be there to see. 
Lastly there are the poems, few but precious, which carry 
and keep the vision of a newer and dearer and better England 
rebuilt by the sword. 
The bright spirituality of British warfare is revealed in this 
new volume of English poetry. Out of it quivers skyward 
a white flame of victorious confidence — men who are thus 
inspired, who are so far above rancour and repining could 
never be beaten by the singers of a Hymn of Hate. 
JOHN BUCHAN'S 
The BATTLE OF THE SOMME 
(NeUon'f History of the War. Vol. 16) 
DESCRIBES THE SUPERB ACHIEVEMENT 
OF OUR ARMIES IN SHATTERING THE 
GERMAN WESTERN LINE. 
Just Ready. Cloth. Price 1/3 net. 
