Page:For remembrance, soldier poets who have fallen in the war, Adcock, 1920.djvu/110

80 this boy could cherish it hopefully still amid scenes of savage slaughter and devastation where, as he was presently writing to his mother, everything was 'absolutely inhuman and unlovely: all that relieves the sordidness of the business is the pluck and cheeriness of the boys, and that is amazing to a degree.' He is so possessed by that ambition of his that it comes into several of his letters. To his friend Mundy, touching on his love of children and his longing to be of service to them, he writes, 'I have never attempted to analyse why exactly this love is so strong, though probably it is because children are so pure and innocent and unstained as much as may be by the sins of civilisation. This is the material upon which we must begin our gigantic task. Let us show to the child that there are greater and more wonderful things in the world than self and money; let us see that the instinctive love of beauty and the right things, which is such a wonderful prerogative of children, is fostered and developed by every means in our power, and when these children