Meanwhile the literary result of the war is nothing but disastrous. All our more or less “official” poets—Mr. Bridges, Mr. Newbolt, Mr. Binyon, Mr. Watson, Mr. Phillips, and so on—have come forward with amazing arrays of abstract nouns. Mr. Bridges, who is almost the worst as well as almost the best of living poets, printed a copy of verses in The Times which rhymed far less often than is proper in a ceremonial piece and ended thus:
Up, careless, awake!
Ye peacemakers, fight!
ENGLAND STANDS FOR HONOUR:
GOD DEFEND THE RIGHT.
Mr. William Watson has been prodigal of poetry and has reached his highest level in a poem which contains the following singular lines:—
We bit them in the Bight,
The Bight of Heligoland.
It is a very sad business. These gentlemen have retired to their studies, determined to feel what is proper, and they come out having done their best; but they will be heartily ashamed of it—I hope—in a few months. Unfortunately, Mr. John Lane has collected their verses in a volume and is selling their shame for charity. Three good poems have come out of the welter, one by Mr. G. K. Chesterton—The Wife of Flanders, a very fine composition—and two by Mr. De La Mare.
The trouble is that a poet does not feel war fever very acutely in a general sense. Patriotic poetry is nearly always bad. If there is a worthy reference to the Armada in Elizabethan poetry, it has escaped me; and the English resistance to Napoleon has never been a very happy subject for English writers. The good poetry that is provoked by war is of a different character: it is personal, visual, and concrete. It never expresses any general aspect of war, but only such subjects as have been personally observed and felt by the poet. I would give as instances Rudyard Kipling and the German poet Liliencron, both of whom have written well about soldiers and fighting, but foolishly about War and Patriotism.