Page:For remembrance, soldier poets who have fallen in the war, Adcock, 1920.djvu/312

254 but fell short of the standard of measurement, and was rejected. Towards the end of 1916 he arrived in England, bent on joining the Royal Flying Corps, and, after surmounting the usual War Office obstacles, succeeded in getting into the Service, and qualified as a pilot.

The Letters of an Airman, and the diary included in the same volume, published after his death, narrate his experiences and express shrewd and frank opinions on some of our national institutions, and on things and people in general. He took the rough as cheerfully as the smooth; was full of pluck and energy and eager to play his part in the war, but he saw the absurdities as well as the necessity, in the circumstances, of Army discipline. 'How do I like it?' he wrote to his mother. 'Well, frankly I hate it. I was never cut out for a soldier and have no desire to be one longer than I can help.... It is easy enough to theorise and idealise at a distance, but when you get right up against it you begin to see that absolutely nothing can justify war.'