Page:For remembrance, soldier poets who have fallen in the war, Adcock, 1920.djvu/303

Rh and his own course was clear to him. 'To any one who knew Kilmer,' as his biographer has it, 'it would have been perfectly dumbfounding if, when war was declared between his country and Germany, he had not done exactly as he did. It is inconceivable...to picture him moving about here, from restaurant to office, in this hour. Flatly, the thing can't be done.' Which is what I, too, should have said, even from the little that I saw of him.

In 1914 he paid a flying visit to England 'to rescue his mother from war difficulties in London,' and it must have been during this visit that I met him for the first and last time. He lunched with me at the Savage Club, and I have the vividest recollection of him and the three hours of that afternoon spent in his company. I remember how alive and alert he was; how, with all his geniality and ready humour, he was keenly and seriously interested in everything that was happening among us here, and spoke with warm enthusiasm of the self-control and imperturbable resolution with which our