Page:For remembrance, soldier poets who have fallen in the war, Adcock, 1920.djvu/356

290 Allies had fought on to victory. Here from various letters are some of the things he wrote: 'I still think it right that war should be damnable, but I wish everybody could have an idea of how beastly it can be.... The papers are so complaisant over every little success that they are almost bound to be equally downhearted over every failure—don't believe them. Only believe that we shall win in the end.... The Germans seem to have been behaving abominably; that is in keeping with their traditions apparently, but it makes me feel that they won't realise the war till they have had their own houses deliberately blown up by a number of insulting fiends. Losing colonies or navies doesn't affect the individuals at all closely, and though they mayn't have the guilt of their government, I think they have to bear the punishment of the crimes they commit to order.' He hopes that when the war is past 'people won't altogether forget it in our generation. That 's what I wanted to say in the verses I began about—