Page:Poems, Alan Seeger, 1916.djvu/31

 And made night gorgeous and morning fair;

And all that had sense to reason knew

That bloody drama must be gone through.

Some sat and watched how the action veered—

Waited, profited, trembled, cheered—

We saw not clearly nor understood,

But, yielding ourselves to the master hand,

Each in his part, as best he could,

We played it through as the author planned.

It was not, in his own conception, a "war against war" that he was waging; it was simply a fight for freedom and for France. Some of us may hope and believe that, in after years, when he was at leisure to view history in perspective and carry his psychology a little deeper, he would have allowed, if not more potency, at any rate more adaptability, to the human will. In order to do so, it would not have been necessary to abandon his fatalistic creed. He would have seen, perhaps, that even if we only will what we have to will, the factors which shape the will—of the individual, the nation, or the race—are always changing, and that it is not only possible but probable that the factors which make for peace may one day gain the upper hand of those which (for perfectly definite and tangible reasons) have hitherto made for war. The fact remains, however, that he shouldered his knapsack without any theoretic distaste for the soldier's calling. In so far he was more happily situated than thousands who have made all the better soldiers for their intense detestation of the stupidity of war. But this in no way detracts from his loyalty to his personal ideal, or from the high chivalry of his devotion to France.

The story of his life as a soldier shall be told, so far as possible, in his own words.

After some brief preliminary training at Rouen he was xxvii