Page:For remembrance, soldier poets who have fallen in the war, Adcock, 1920.djvu/283

Rh for East Gloucestershire. His warmest sympathies went out to the poor and unfortunate, and he gave much of his time to useful work with the Oxford and Bermondsey Mission. In September 1914 he obtained a commission in the 1/5 Gloucestershire Regiment, and was in Flanders and France from March 1915 until his death. 'He was essentially a man of peace,' writes his mother, 'and had a horror of war and bloodshed, but when the call came he did not hesitate—every other feeling gave way to the desire to serve his country, and to deliver the oppressed. He sacrificed his own ambition to the great cause of Liberty and Honour, to which he believed he was called by God Himself. His horror of it all made no difference to the doing of what he felt was his duty, even to the laying down of a life which had always been pleasant to him and held so much promise for the future.' He was only twenty-nine when he died, and those two last poems of his, written on active service, shall surely give him a lasting place in our remembrance among the soldier poets of this war.