II
War is declared in Britain, such is the news and true;
Now that the mother 's smitten, what will her litters do?
Volunteers, all come forward, stand to your arms like men,
Let the Germans know that where'er they go,
If at home or here, they will meet their foe
When they come to the Mother's den.
Capt. Brian Brooke, Only a Volunteer.
Before Armageddon was upon us, then, and the old world came to an end, we used to say that all our war songs were written by soft-handed civilians who were never under fire; and this was true enough when we said it, but is true no longer. In the past, the poets seldom became soldiers. When they did they saw too much of what lay behind the glory of war to make any songs about it. No soldier, but the scholarly poet-antiquary, Michael Drayton, enriched our literature with the vigorous, triumphant 'Ballad of Agincourt'; it was the snug civilian Campbell who sang the most bellicose and immortal lyrics on our naval victories; the recluse dreamer, Tennyson, who thrilled
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