For Remembrance. By A. St. John Adcock. (Hodder and Stoughton.
7s. 6d. net.)—Mr. St. John Adcock's new book is an eloquent appreciation of the works of our soldier-poets fallen in the war, together with numerous extracts, biographical notes, and portraits. The New Army has produced a multitude of poets, and it would be impossible for the average reader to become acquainted with more than a fraction of them were it not for such collections as these. Some of the names—Rupert Brooke, Francis Ledwidge, William Noel Hodgson, Edward Thomas, among others—will be well known, but readers will be grateful to Mr. St. John Adcock for introducing them to the wistful verses of Leslie Coulson, with their love of the English countryside ; to the " high idealism and mystical exaltation " characteristic of the poems of J. W. Streets, the young miner who left the coalpit to join Kitchener's Army; to the beauty of thought and expression of Arthur Lewis Jenkins, Robert Sterling, and many another gallant young singer who has " gone West." Mr. Adcock in an interesting analysis says that " what finally emerges from the songs of all these dead singers is a gracious but unconquerable spirit of humanity—a sane civilised spirit, common to them all, that hated war with a hatred that was only strengthened and intensified by contact with the horrors and primeval barbarities of it." The soldier-poets, whether of the Old or the Now Army'
sang little of the " pomp and circumstance " of war. They were inspired by " a deep love of country, a clear, rational sense of the tragedy and dire necessity of what must be done." As J. W. Streets wrote :—
" There is a dawn whose flush outlives the day, Engraves itself upon the consciousness : There is a fate that Youth will gladly pay So honour flourish, beauty grow no less : To Liberty their heritage they gave, And won immortal glory at the grave."
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