Page:Soldier poets, songs of the fighting men, 1916.djvu/11

 Preface

HIS volume has grown out of a suggestion made by a firm of booksellers who were inspired by a letter in The Times in April last, headed "Soldier Poets," which directed attention to the fine spirit animating the poems by Corporal Streets, whose sonnet "Gallipoli" had appeared a few days previously. Slowly and without effort the scheme of the volume has matured and several distinct features have evolved.

Although this representative collection is not an anthology—it consists of work hitherto unpublished in volume form of a number of "soldier poets" brought together within one cover—the contents have assumed a certain homogeneity. They define, record and illustrate the aspirations, emotions, impressions and experiences of men of all ranks and branches of the Army, and they reveal a unity of spirit, of exultant sincerity and unconquerable idealism that makes the reader very proud and very humble. And if some of them deal with home themes by way of solace amid the horrors of war, the poems are essentially war poems, revealing the soul of the soldier going into battle, describing 7