eventual madman. And just as every madman is not named Swift, so every poet does not affect the details of costume above described. There are so many genuine analogies in the world that are missed, that it seems a pity to concoct a number of false ones.

Again, some are ashamed of poetry because, in their opinion, it is unmanly - something to be regarded in the same light as religion. It is not uninteresting to note that what should be the most vital factor in all men's lives is subjected to the same objection. So many persons (unlike the early Christians who went to the lions) are literally afraid to take up their standard of right and wrong from the religious aspect. One thing must not be done because it 'impedes progress'; another, because it 'threatens to undermine society'; the question of moral right and wrong is ignored. In the same manner are many literally afraid of taking an active interest in poetry; and yet, as they journey to and from their various occupations, as they go out during the luncheon hour, as they see the sunset, or perhaps an occasional sunrise as they do or see all these things, they are witnesses of poetic activity without realizing it. They are unreflecting witnesses of spiritual evidence brought about by manifestations of the spiritual through the material; which-it may be noted incidentally is the beginning of religion. And this lurking bashfulness, this sneaking shame, is a rare height of foolishness, simply because its essence is the ignoring of actual existence. Facts are facts, and from them there is no intellectual escape. To be ashamed of such things as goodness, holiness, asceticism, idealism, and sunsetswhich are materials of poetry is to be ashamed of the Universe. And considering that the objector to these things is a speck in the Universe, his

objections scarcely argue in favor of his own significance.

These are two great objections to poetry, if not the greatest. They rest upon absolutely rickety foundations; for they assume that it is unmanly and mawkish to recognize the plainest things in the world, despite the fact that Man is one of the plainest things in the world.

All the remaining charges against poetry that I can think of do not amount to much. For instance, there is the contention that the Englishman is a practical man, with no time for dreaming, and consequently no time for poetry, which must, for some reason, be classed as dreaming. Granted, then, that the Englishman is a practical man, it may just be pointed out that Shakespeare was an extremely practical man. It will not require a very vigorous effort of memory to recall the fact that he held remunerative shares in the 'Globe,' and that he bought the residence upon which he had set his heart: two points worth remembering as indications of business acumen, apart from the practical knowledge abounding in his plays. That, if you are a Shakespearean, ought to satisfy you. If, however, you are of the Baconian persuasion, it is almost needless to mention that the illustrious viscount was a practical man of the world and of the court; even practical enough to enrich himself unlawfully. These two examples which are only two of many possible ones hardly lead to the belief that a true poet or man of letters must of necessity be an improvident fool.

Before dealing with the dreaming charge, alluded to already, the charge of periphrase and circumlocution may be mentioned. This again, is quite unfounded. A careful study of verse discloses the fact that verse tends to be far more condensed than prose. Take,

How happy is he born and taught

That serveth not another's will
Whose armor is his honest thought,

And simple truth his utmost skill. There are just two dozen words in the stanza. Let anybody set himself to paraphrase it, to write down the full meaning in prose, and he will find that the lines are a triumph in condensation.

This applies to poetry generally. Figurative speech may sometimes appear to be roundabout, when in reality it is condensed description which would require a longer form in prose. Of course, description may be left out, but that is hardly condensation. A certain amount of description is necessary, both in prose and poetry; moreover, descriptive prose writing is a style by itself, upon which great masters have expended anxious care. On the whole, then, poetry is the antithesis of periphrase: it is the acme of concise expression.

There remains the objection that poetry, as remarked above, is dreaming, and consequently no sort of company for the average Englishman, who is a practical man and a fighter. It has been shown that poetry is not inconsistent with practicability. But to take the fighter. Granted that dreaming is the possession of some imagination, and that a dreamer is one who sees a little more than the bare material beneath his nose, it would not be far wrong to say that our greatest fighters

and the greatest fighters of any nation have been dreamers. Otherwise, to them the battlefield must needs have been something more like hell than it was. They saw not merely the cannon and the smoke, the carnage and catastrophe; nor, when they galloped into the fray, did they perceive merely naked blades and waving plumes, and merely hear the slogan

that this was all. These physical signs were symbols of the inward emotion. To the warriors, there was glory in the far-flung battle-line: it was idealized by their dreaming. The warrior dreamed his hardest, perhaps, when he rode into the fray; and it is his dream of glory that has urged him on.

The poet does not deserve to be condemned without a hearing. Vex not the poet's mind- until, at least, you can fathom it. You will not vex it then; for in order to fathom it, one must understand it. And if one can but change his point of view to that of the poet, it will not be very difficult to appreciate. For when all is said and done, the real poet is a real friend of mankind. In the making of a nation the fire of poetic thought burns in the heart of the people; and throughout the nation's life it ebbs and swells with the national activity. Remember, the most enterprising and active ages have been the most poetic. This fire, like volcanic lava, demands outlet; and, like volcanic lava, bursts forth at the point of least resistance. The poet is that point. Less phlegmatic, perhaps, than his fellowmen, he lends himself more readily than they as the medium for this fiery expression of human emotion, and sings in songs of surpassing sweetness the things that others thought and would fain have spoken, but they could

not.

[The National Review] THE HUMAN SIDE OF THE GREAT RETREAT

BY M. O. SALE

Two months before the Great Retreat of 1918, which we were destined to view in such queer perspective, an unexpected blow had befallen us. The Battalion, one of the crack units of the

London Territorials, was disbanded. The four companies were dispersed to other regiments, followed soon afterward by the Quartermaster's and Headquarter's Staffs. Only the transport, with half our ordinary personnel of sixty, was spared to carry on. Our duty and destination alike were unknown, and many were the gloomy prophecies that the delay might only mean postponed disbandment after all. It was with a sense of relief, therefore, that we received one day the order to trek in the wake of the old Division through Roye and Noyon to that newest sector of the line opposite La Fère which the British had recently taken over from their French Allies.

There was, indeed, much to be thankful for in our immediate circumstances. We were all old comrades since the first months of the war; a load had just been lifted from our minds, equal almost to a reprieve, for, if you know your horse soldier at all, you will know that he regards the idea of footslogging with as much horror as the average infantryman approaches the task of holding a horse. We enjoyed, too, a glorious feeling of independence, the freedom from restraint of the small section unattached. Our officer, a newly arrived subaltern who was still finding his feet, was the youngest member of a unit in which to be twenty-five was to court the term 'Dad,' 'Old Un,' or even worse. Possessing as we did the complete equipment of a transport section, we had a field kitchen and a watercart for our own use, and ample transport for the wonderful accumulation of 'buckshee' blankets and other 'winnings' which we had amassed.

There was only one fly in the ointment - all our best animals, familiar companions through three years of toil and strife, had been taken by the B.T.O. in exchange for the scourings of the Brigade- and perhaps a worse

horsed, and especially muled, secti did not move in France that day. Ch brute, in particular, I rememb named San Fairy Ann (cela ne fait ri because nothing mattered to him, as his driver used to explain, ‘O word from me and he does what hewell likes.' Nevertheless, it was a co tented crowd that arrived one bitter cold evening, and dossed down am the ghastly ruins of what had on been the town of Chauny.

A word is due here about the con tions that prevailed in this part of t line, if only to serve as a backgrou to the tremendous events that we preparing.

Oh, the delicious quiet of that sect

the creepy, eerie, unholy sort calm, so I sometimes felt, calm, so I sometimes felt, that goes b fore a storm! Strange tales came to of life in the trenches. Scarcely a sh was fired. Sentries lazily watched o another across the water on the beats. The fortunate enjoyed palliass and wire beds. Troops holding the li did bouts of manual drill to pass awa the time. The jade Rumor countedI forget whether it was six or sixtee casualties in the last nine months! Wa was a sort of embattled peace.

Yet behind all this outward show security was a feverish energy in th preparation of defense. Night afte night our little column, now attache to the Divisional Train of A.S.C made the long journey with engineer material to and from the line, throug a desolation accentuated by the weir silence of guns to whose continual roa we had been accustomed at Ypres an the Somme. It seemed a good lif after what we had experienced, and yet-sometimes we wondered. No in the busy daytime, of course, but a night over the camp fire, when w talked of comfort and girls and home Especially there was one article, by Philip Gibbs, that arrested our atten

tion. It dealt with our sector; and it was ominous of much. Behind Laon and the St. Gobain Woods, I remember it concluded, 'the enemy is preparing "evil things." Evil things! How that phrase forces itself upon the imagination! And then, to interrupt our forebodings, came the first rumors of an event which, in its fulfilment, was to give us our quaintest experience in France, and to turn the retreat, so ghastly in its reality, into something like a picnic for ourselves. Six Italian labor companies were due in the district; we were to act as their transport, and leave our good friends, the A.S.C.

It was three o'clock of a bitter morning in early March when confirmation of this came in the form of an order to be at a certain destination by 8.30 A.M. (It should have been P.M., by the way. It was on account of little mistakes like these that the army adopted the twenty-four hour clock.) However, we achieved the impossible. In torrents of sleet and snow, wading through seas of mud, which, together with pitch darkness, surrounded what we called our 'stables,' we packed and harnessed up and were on the road by dawn.

We arrived at our new home to find the Italians in full possession, ravenous after their long journey, and besieging the only two canteens in the place, one of which was run by a blackguard of a corporal who did a roaring trade, charging the newcomers double for what little French silver they possessed, and a truly Hebrew discount on the coins of their native country, which, as he very well knew would be the case, became accepted currency at a later date. We were surrounded and mobbed at once, our 'cooker' the inevitable centre of attraction. One jolly little fellow, nicknamed by us 'Grats' on the spot-his exclamation of thanks for a cold rissole - attached himself permanently to our cook and

never deserted us till the retreat was over. From réveillé till 'Lights out' he varied a busy existence between woodchopping, the mincing machine, and odd jobs on the horse lines; and whatever his legitimate duty should have been with his fellow-countrymen, he seemed to be never missed. Queer, smiling old Grats, he was a willing friend, if ever there was one.

Our pleasantest fortnight in France followed. We had a large French hut to ourselves, designed for a hundred men, with ample accommodation for harness and forage. We were still rationed by the A.S.C.- always a banquet for mere infantrymen!— and yet were independent of any outside control. Perfect weather prevailed. At the same time, we were exceptionally hardworked. Leave had begun in earnest, and we were soon at a third only of normal strength. We had to serve six companies, each three hundred strong, billeted in three different villages, drawing rations from a Corps dump eight kilometres away, while our own rations had to be fetched from Division, in the opposite direction. Seven limbers, a watercart, and a mounted orderly were on duty regularly, and when you deduct from a staff of just a score, cook, N.C.O. in charge of convoy, officer's groom-batman, and the line orderlies, it leaves but a slender margin for watering, feeding, and attending to the thirty odd animals left in. Luckily, we had a large acreage of common land on which to graze them, and two mounted pickets in turn generally managed to guard the whole.

Of the Italians it is very difficult to speak. Report placed them alternatively as disabled men, or weedings from the army of ill-fortune. Militarily, we never took them as a criterion of Italian arms as a whole. (They were only a labor corps, after all, and

of course unarmed.) Individually they had as many peculiarities in our eyes as we, no doubt, had in theirs. Conspicuous was a passion for washing their handkerchiefs and little white collars in our horse-trough in the cold of dawn, and then standing about in greatcoats through the heat of the day. This standing about and blocking the highway seems to be a feature of Italian life. Nothing ever dispersed the groups—except one vicious little roan pony we had. Occasionally, a small party would march off as if to work, but the nature of their labor always remained a mystery, and, in any case, is of no consequence, as it was soon a good thirty miles behind the German lines. Always they were excitable people-what you might call 'intense.' In conversation about business matters this was brought home to us most.

Communication with them was a formidable task. One officer's cook there was, indeed, who knew English well enough as regards the words, but his pronunciation was like a Scotsman's Belgian, and on the first day he retired in high dudgeon because his little mess of six officers could not have a field kitchen to itself, and he helped us, afterward, only under protest. So, knowing no Italian ourselves and the Italians knowing no English, we conversed for the most part in French, which neither party knew. At pidginFrench we were, through long experience, an easy first, but in gesticulation they had us 'beaten to a frazzle.' One or two of their officers spoke it fluently, so we never caught a word. Our own officer's French was a thing at which mules laid back their ears and wept. He helped us quite a lot. The farrier bloke once tried Latin, till someone threw a hammer at his head. The language question was, in fact, a difficulty, and many misunderstandings arose, but there was always one way

out. Whenever argument failed to convince, we did what we wanted in despite.

Perhaps the most amusing feature of those Anglo-Italian times were the sing-songs we held at night. Inside the hut we had a gigantic wood fire, which blazed away merrily despite the regular 'Jerry up,' and this proved a great attraction to the ice cream men. About a score would usually roll in of an evening and group themselves around, while our officer graced us regularly with his presence, though his taste in songs and jokes was not one to raise the tone of a bargees' smoking concert. Then, alternately, either side would favor the company with song'Dixie' and a bit of grand opera; 'The long, long trail' and one of those jumpy, chanson things that the Latin nations love. It made a strange picture in the leaping firelight. Not one of our party could really sing, but on the other hand none could be accused of backwardness in coming forward. Always there was some hero ready to bray his way through the verses, while the chorus-well, there we did flatter ourselves we were good. The Italians, like the Welsh, were all musical. One, a consumptive, narrow-chested boy, six and a half feet talla most unlikely type was a member of Caruso's company and sang divinely. A humorous little chap who took the chansons was an actor and worked himself up into a frenzy of excitement over what the nobility of our musichall stage would no doubt entitle 'Song and Dance.'