John Oxenham, Poet-Preacher, is giving articulation to the voice of Christianity--a voice ringing out from over and above the thunder of the guns, the blare, the flare, the outcry, the hurt, the pain and anguish of the most awful war that earth has ever suffered. Some of us have been thinking of this war in terms of Christian hope. We have thought that we see in it a new Calvary out of which shall come a new resurrection to the spiritual world. We have dreamed that men are being redeemed through the sacrifice, through the spirit of service and brotherhood thrust upon the world by war's supreme demands. We have thought all of this, but we have not been able to make it articulate. Now comes a poet to do it for us. What magnificent hope sings out, even in the titles that Oxenham has selected for his books in these days of darkness, anguish and lostness. After his first book, Bees in Amber, comes that warm handclasp of strength: that thrill of hope; that word of a watchman in the night, like a sentinel crying through the very title of his second book, "All's Well." Then came The Vision Splendid, and soon we are to have The Fiery Cross. The publishers were kind enough to let me examine this last book while it was still in the proof sheets. It is the one great hope book of the war. Every mother and father who has a boy in the war, every wife who has a husband, every child who has a father will thrill with a new pride and a new dignity after reading The Fiery Cross. WAR AND ITS VOICE No poet has voiced America's reasons for being in the war as has Oxenham, and nowhere does he do it better than in "Where Are You Going, Great-Heart?" the concluding stanza of which sums up compactly America's high purposes: "Where are you going, Great-Heart? 'To set all burdened peoples free; To win for all God's liberty; To 'stablish His sweet Sovereignty.' God goeth with you, Great-Heart!" The Vision Splendid. To those who go to die in war the poet addresses himself in lines which he titles "On Eagle Wings": "Higher than most, to you is given To live--or in His time, to die; So, bear you as White Knights of Heaven-- The very flower of chivalry! Take Him as Pilot by your side, And 'All is well' whate'er betide." The Vision Splendid. "If God be with you, who can be against you?" is the echo that we hear going and coming behind these great Christian lines. Indeed, behind every poem that Oxenham writes we can hear the echoes of some great scriptural word of promise, or hope or faith or courage. The Christian, as well as those who never saw the Bible or a church, will feel at home with this poet anywhere. The advantage that the Christian will have in reading him is that he will understand him better.