Page:For remembrance, soldier poets who have fallen in the war, Adcock, 1920.djvu/27

Rh the ideals that led them are the common ideals that have led the best of our race through the past. So much you may learn by reading in the books that have been written by many soldier authors who have fought in this war and revealed in their verse or prose the faith and spirit that prompted them and their comrades-in-arms; and, since it is still true that the soul of a nation lives in its literature, we shall understand them better, perhaps, and see how indissolubly they are linked up with the old traditions of our people, if we look back a little before we go farther.

It is curious to note that some contemporary enthusiasts speak and write of the democratic feeling which has broadened and deepened among us in these days as if it were a quite modern, rather sudden growth—a brand new spirit of common brotherhood that had been called into existence by the exigencies of the war. For most of us know it is merely the coming to full tide of the mighty undercurrent that has been slowly gathering force in our life, as in our literature, all