The Canadian Poetry of the World War is, as was previous martial verse by Canadian poets, both inspirational and commemorative. What is significant for literary history, is, first, that there is a distinct advance in the excellence both of the ideas and of the artistic form of the Canadian poetry of the world war; and, secondly, that both the activity in poetic composition occasioned by the late war and the quality of the poetry became an inspiration to other poets whose genius was dormant and unawakened, and caused a genuine Renascence of the Poetic Spirit and of Poetry in Canada. In what respect may the Canadian Poetry of the world war be said to be excellent, or even unexcelled by the martial poetry of the United States, if excelled by that of England and France? It is relatively great in noble ideas. In it we see clearly and vividly what Canadian men and women, at home and in the field of war, really thought and felt about war and death, love and home and country, self-sacrifice, and the good green earth, and peace. _Truth, beauty and splendor of ideas_—these are the three supreme excellences of the Canadian poetry written by the soldier-poets in active service on the fighting field, and by the professional or amateur non-combatant poets at home, during the war. As to the artistic form of this poetry, considering all the conditions of distraction and perturbance under which it was written, the wonder is that it has any formal finish at all. As a matter of fact, however, the Canadian poetry inspired by the world war cannot be depreciated as ‘twinkling trivialities’ either in substance or in form. All the best of it is good poetry—originally conceived, winningly suffused with beauty of sentiment, rich in noble ideas and spiritual imagery, engaging in verbal music, and technically well-wrought. If the formal finish of Canadian Poetry of the world war is not always quite the equal of the British and American poetry similarly occasioned, still the altogether most famous and most popular poem of the war and most likely to perdure in the popular memory, is neither the sonnet of the English soldier-poet, Rupert Brooke, _The Soldier_, nor the poem of the American soldier-poet, Alan Seeger, _I Have a Rendezvous with Death_, but the lyric of the Canadian soldier-poet, John McCrae, _In Flanders Fields_. Further, special circumstances, special sentiments, and special color and form went to making the poem by McCrae the supreme lyric of the world war, and the popularity of _In Flanders Fields_ affected the appreciation of other Canadian poetry of the late war to such a degree as to cause the popular imagination, as well as the critical sense of the cultured, to estimate all other Canadian poetry of the world war as so far below McCrae’s exquisite lyric as to be second-rate in substance and form. This is not so. Save that they do not embody a special form and are not as musically insinuating as McCrae’s, the best of other