talls,
Lurching to rag-time tunes, or 'Home, sweet Home!'--
And there'd be no more jokes in Music-halls
To mock the riddled corpses round Bapaume."

It is this note of bitter anger, miles away from the serenity of Rupert
Brooke, the lion-heart of Julian Grenfell, the mournful passion of
Robert Nichols, which differentiates Lieut. Sassoon from his fellows.
They accept the war, with gallantry or with resignation; he detests it
with wrathful impatience. He has much to learn as an artist, for his
diction is often hard, and he does not always remember that Horace,
"when he writ on vulgar subjects, yet writ not vulgarly." But he has
force, sincerity, and a line of his own in thought and fancy. A
considerable section of his poetry is occupied with studies of men he
has observed at the Front, a subaltern, a private of the Lancashires,
conscripts, the dross of a battle-field, the one-legged man ("Thank God,
they had to amputate!"), the sniper who goes crazy--savage,
disconcerting silhouettes drawn roughly against a lurid background.

The bitterness of Lieut. Sassoon is not cynical, it is the rage of
disenchantment, the violence of a young man eager to pursue other aims,
who, finding the age out of joint, resents being called upon to help to
mend it. His temper is not altogether to be applauded, for such
sentiments must tend to relax the effort of the struggle, yet they can
hardly be reproved when conducted with so much honesty and courage.
Lieut. Sassoon, who, as we learn, has twice been severely wounded and
has been in the very furnace of the fighting, has reflected, more
perhaps than his fellow-singers, about the causes and conditions of the
war. He may not always have thought correctly, nor have recorded his
impressions with proper circumspection, but his honesty must be
respectfully acknowledged.

I have now called attention to those soldier-writers of verse who, in my
judgment, expressed themselves with most originality during the war.
There is a temptation to continue the inquiry, and to expatiate on
others of only less merit and promise. Much could be said of Charles
Hamilton Sorley, who gave evidence of precocious literary talent, though
less, I think, in verse, since the unmistakable singing faculty is
absent in _Marlborough_ (Cambridge University Press, 1916), than in
prose, a form in which he already excelled. Sorley must have shown
military gifts as well as a fine courage, for when he was killed in