Now, God be thanked who has matched us with his hour,
And caught our youth, and wakened us from sleeping!
With hand made sure, clear eye, and sharpened power,
To turn, as swimmers into cleanness leaping,
Glad from a world grown old and cold and weary;
Leave the sick hearts that honor could not move
I wonder, would he still feel the same had he lived to see Gallipoli, the Somme, Verdun and Passchendaele....not to mention the Versailles treaty and the rise of Hitler.
The recruiting centres in WW1 were overwhelmed in 1914. Excitement was in the air and the music halls did their job. By 1916 however, the news filtered through. Horrific casualties, the lice, the cold, the trenches. Men slaughtered by the tens of thousands. Sent against machine gun fire regardless.
The recruiting offices were deserted and the War Office threatened dire action if a million men did not volunteer forthwith. There were over one million, six hundred thousand applications for deferral. Then conscription took place.
Excuse the ramble, but Brooke had not got a clue. Nor had the initial excited young men who lined up in 1914. Stories abounded when I was a child in England about the dodges used by men to escape the horror of the trenches.
Ruyland Kipling provides us with the answer. Compare his verse of early in the war, and later after his son was killed at the Front.
“For All We Have And Are”
1914
For all we have and are,
For all our children’s fate,
Stand up and take the war.
The Hun is at the gate!
Our world has passed away,
In wantonness o’erthrown.
There is nothing left to-day
But steel and fire and stone!
Though all we knew depart,
The old Commandments stand: —
“In courage keep your heart,
In strength lift up your hand.”
Once more we hear the word
That sickened earth of old: —
“No law except the Sword
Unsheathed and uncontrolled.”
Once more it knits mankind,
Once more the nations go
To meet and break and bind
A crazed and driven foe.
Comfort, content, delight,
The ages’ slow-bought gain,
They shrivelled in a night.
Only ourselves remain
To face the naked days
In silent fortitude,
Through perils and dismays
Renewed and re-renewed.
Though all we made depart,
The old Commandments stand: —
“In patience keep your heart,
In strength lift up your hand.”
No easy hope or lies
Shall bring us to our goal,
But iron sacrifice
Of body, will, and soul.
There is but one task for all —
One life for each to give.
What stands if Freedom fall?
Who dies if England live?
________________________________________The Children
________________________________________
THESE were our children who died for our lands: they were dear in our sight.
We have only the memory left of their hometreasured sayings and laughter.
The price of our loss shall be paid to our hands, not another’s hereafter.
Neither the Alien nor Priest shall decide on it. That is our right.
But who shall return us the children ?
At the hour the Barbarian chose to disclose his pretences,
And raged against Man, they engaged, on the breasts that they bared for us,
The first felon-stroke of the sword he had longtime prepared for us -
Their bodies were all our defence while we wrought our defences.
They bought us anew with their blood, forbearing to blame us,
Those hours which we had not made good when the Judgment o’ercame us.
They believed us and perished for it. Our statecraft, our learning
Delivered them bound to the Pit and alive to the burning
Whither they mirthfully hastened as jostling for honour.
Not since her birth has our Earth seen such worth loosed upon her!
Nor was their agony brief, or once only imposed on them.
The wounded, the war-spent, the sick received no exemption:
Being cured they returned and endured and achieved our redemption,
Hopeless themselves of relief, till Death, marvelling, closed on them.
That flesh we had nursed from the first in all cleanness was given
To corruption unveiled and assailed by the malice of Heaven -
By the heart-shaking jests of Decay where it lolled on the wires
To be blanched or gay-painted by fumes - to be cindered by fires -
To be senselessly tossed and retossed in stale mutilation
From crater to crater. For this we shall take expiation.
But who shall return us our children ?
________________________________________