Page:For remembrance, soldier poets who have fallen in the war, Adcock, 1920.djvu/323

Rh gaping holes and broken walls have been smoothed and beautified. The snow has covered and conquered everything—except the mud. King Mud still reigns supreme, coiling his clammy self two feet deep along the trenches. Mud! Mud that clings like a burr, that has to be pushed away with your legs before you can walk, mud that squelches and squeals as you tread on it, and gurgles and chuckles as you lift your heavy swollen boot out of its embrace. Snow and mud!' 'One of our best servants has been killed, and my sergeant has died of wounds. I have just written to his wife. At such times one feels sick and weary of this world silliness, this mud and death called war. There are times when the greatest victory seems small compared to the grief in one little home.'

To understand all the inner significance of the poetry of the war you must read the prose of it; such letters as Stephen's are the complement of much of the verse that the poets have written, and not infrequently they are as fine, in feeling and