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. Yet any poet going about the streets today must see and feel a quantity of poetical things. A week or so ago, I saw an endless baggage-train belonging to the artillery, as it passed through Barnet. It had come from Worcester, commandeering horses and wagons on the way; it was going to Brentwood and thence—God knows! It was very long and uneven—the carts had bakers’ and butchers’ names on them—the horses were ridden with halters and sacks for saddles—the men were tired and dishevelled. I spoke to one of them who was watering his horse at a trough, offered to bring him beer from a public-house close by; but someone had given him tea farther back on the road and he would rot. He thanked me and rode away, drooping very much over his horse’s neck. It was all a poem in itself or it gave me the emotions of a poem, because it had none of the conventional glitter of war. It was poetical because it was business-like, just as our khaki service uniforms are more beautiful than the bright clothes the troops wear in peace.