INTRODUCTION


Because man is both militant and pacific, he has expressed in
literature, as indeed in the other forms of art, his pacific and
militant moods. Nor are these moods, of necessity, incompatible. War may
become the price of peace, and peace may so decay as inevitably to bring
about war. Of the dully unresponsive pacificist and the jingo patriot,
quick to anger, the latter no doubt is the more dangerous to the cause
of true freedom, yet both are "undesirable citizens." He who believes
that peace is illusory and spurious, unless it be based upon justice and
liberty, will be proud to battle, if battle he must, for the sake of
those foundations.

For the most part, the poetry of war, undertaken in this spirit, has
touched and exalted such special qualities as patriotism, courage, self-
sacrifice, enterprise, and endurance. Where it has tended to glorify war
in itself, it is chiefly because war has released those qualities, so to
speak, in stirring and spectacular ways; and where it has chosen to
round upon war and to upbraid it, it is because war has slain ardent and
lovable youths and has brought misery and despair to women and old
people. But the war poet has left the mere arguments to others. For
himself, he has seen and felt. Envisaging war from various angles, now
romantically, now realistically, now as the celebrating chronicler, now
as the contemplative interpreter, but always in a spirit of catholic
curiosity, he has sung, the fall of Troy, the Roman adventures, the
mediaeval battles and crusades, the fields of Agincourt and Waterloo,
and the more modern revolutions. Since Homer, he has spoken with martial
eloquence through, the voices of Drayton, Spenser, Marlowe, Webster,