Page:For remembrance, soldier poets who have fallen in the war, Adcock, 1920.djvu/243

Rh military height. But the youngster who, a year before, could pour such a passion of sympathy for the Black Country strikers into his verses, 'My People's Voice,' could not be deaf to Belgium's greater agony, and was too bent on doing his duty to be easily baulked. He wrote to Lord Kitchener direct, says the memoir which prefaces the privately printed sheaf of his verse, and 'stated his case as to how he had presented himself for enlistment at various recruiting offices and been rejected every time owing to a slight shortness of height. He concluded his letter thus: "My Lord, I have answered your appeal, will you answer mine?" It cannot be said that the letter ever reached Lord Kitchener, but a reply came from the War Office by return of post, enclosing a sealed document which he was instructed to deliver to the recruiting officer. It was an order to "Enlist the bearer, Clifford Flower, at once." And it worked like magic. Without any further examination, he was passed as a private into the 2nd Battalion of the Warwickshire