V
Humbly, O England, we offer what is of little worth,
Just our bodies and souls and everything else we have;
But thou with thy holy cause wilt hallow our common earth,
Giving us strength in the battle—and peace, if need, in the grave.
Acting-Captain Charles J. B. Masefield, M.C.—Enlisted, or The Recruits.
What finally emerges from the songs of all these dead singers is a gracious but unconquerable spirit of humanity—a sane, civilised spirit, common to them all, that hated war with a hatred that was only strengthened and intensified by contact with the horrors and primeval barbarities of it. The burden of their singing is always that they fight, not for fighting's sake, but to break the last stronghold of ancient savagery, to enthrone Right above Might, to blaze a trail through the dark forest by which the men of to-morrow may find their way into a new and happier world where war shall be no more. From the heights of their idealism this was the hope, the promised land that they could
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