The Human Boy and the War

by Eden Phillpotts

Then old Peacock, of all men--the new master, I mean--got an idea, and Fortescue thought it was a good one, and Peacock proposed it to the Doctor, and Dr. Dunston agreed to it.

In fact, he announced it after chapel during the third week of February in these words:

"Our new friend, Mr. Peacock, has made a proposal to me, and I have great pleasure not only in agreeing with him, but in congratulating him on a very happy thought. Suspecting that there may be mute, inglorious Miltons amongst us--a sanguine hope I cannot share--Mr. Peacock has thought that it would add an interest to the term and wake a measure of enthusiasm and energy in the ranks of our versifiers if we initiate a competition. He suggests a prize poem upon the subject of the War; and while my heart misgives me, yet I bow to Mr. Peacock's generous proposal. You are invited, one and all of you, from the greatest to the least, to write a prize poem on the subject of the War, and if such a momentous theme fails to produce some notable addition to our war poetry, then Mr. Peacock's disappointment will be considerable. He trusts you to enter upon this task in no light spirit, and when I add that Mr. Peacock proposes to give a prize of one guinea--twenty-one shillings--to the victorious poet, you will see that a real effort is needed. You will have a calendar month to prepare and execute your verses, which must be composed outside the regular school hours; and I may tell you that unless a certain humble standard of intelligence and poetic ability is reached, I shall direct Mr. Peacock to withhold his prize."

Well, there it was; and, of course, a good deal of excitement occurred, and it was jolly interesting to see who entered for the prize poem and who did not. No doubt Travers major would have won it without an effort, being so keen about everything to do with war; but, luckily for the rest, he had left to go to Woolwich the term before. Travers minor entered because he was strongly advised to, being a flier at literature in general and keen about poetry; but he said frankly he should not praise the War, but slate it, because he utterly disagreed with it and hated war in general.

Of course, the prize being a guinea made a lot of difference, and many unexpected chaps decided to write a prize poem, though most of these, when they sat down with pens and ink to do it, found such a thing quite beyond them in every way.

I myself--my name is Abbott--was one of these, and after reading a good many real poems of the War, which Mr. Fortescue, who was a great poet and much interested in the competition, kindly lent me, I found, on setting out to do it, that the difficulties were far too great. Rhymes are easy enough to get, in a way, but when you come to string the poem together, you generally find your rhymes aren't solemn enough. I believe I could have written a screamily funny prize poem; but, of course, that wouldn't have pleased the Doctor, or Peacock either, so it wasn't any good wasting time being funny. For instance, I wrote the following poem in less than ten minutes:

The Hun, the Hun, the footling Hun,

Most certainly doth take the bun.

And Blades and several other chaps said it was jolly good. But Blades, who had also had a shot or two on the quiet, was like me--he could only make comic poems, and the stanzas of his poem took the form of Limericks. He said he could invent them with the greatest ease--in class, or at prayers, or at meals, or going to bed, or getting up, or in his bath--in fact, at any time when he wasn't playing football. He gave me an example, which seemed to me so frightfully good that I thought very likely Peacock would have given him a consolation prize. So he tried it on Peacock; but Mr. Peacock thought nothing of it, and said that was not at all the spirit of a prize poem, but belonged to the gutter-press, whatever that is. It ran like this:

The Kaiser set off for Paree

As if it was only a spree,

But old French's Army,

It soon knocked him barmy,

And now he is melancolee.

He next had a flutter at Nancy,

Though doubtless a little bit chancy;

But his men got a doing,

With plenty more brewing,

So he galloped off, saying, "Just fancy!"

There were hundreds more verses--in fact, you might say the whole history of the War as far as it had got; and I advised Blades to send it to The Times--to buck it up--or Punch, or something; but he wouldn't, and when Peacock decided it was no use, he gave up writing it, so a good poem was lost, in my opinion.