Page:For remembrance, soldier poets who have fallen in the war, Adcock, 1920.djvu/39

Rh grew up while they were men of peace, and inevitably it fashioned them in its likeness when they became soldiers themselves.

Certainly, some little has been written in praise of war by some of our last century authors who had only seen it from a distance—they were reconciled to it because they imagined it had regenerating influences on mankind, that it gave fresh impetus to commercial enterprise and fostered the arts. There may be a sediment of truth in this; but with equal truth you might say as much of religion. Ruskin considered it a subtle testimony to this influence that spears, shields, helmets, implements of warfare, were lovingly and richly enchased with artistic decorations, whilst no man was moved to carve images of beauty on his spade or on the handles of his plough. But whatever significance lay in these facts belongs to the past; it is in the same sense significant that nothing could be more severely unadorned than the modern cannon, rifle, or machine-gun. In sober earnest, we have arrived at a recognition of war as