paring for his final when, as with so many others, the war put an end to his plans. After a year of hard fighting in the Ypres trenches, he was appointed town mayor of Varennes, and had risen to the rank of captain when he was killed 'very gallantly leading his company' in the attack on Passchendaele Ridge. Writing to his mother on the eve of that action a letter that reached her when he was dead, he tells her that, apart from 'a shrinking of the nerves which I always have to conquer, I can honestly say that I have not the slightest fear of death in me, which makes it vastly easier.' That is in keeping with the lines on 'Death,' where he turns from his question indifferently and sees how a man may find life in losing it:
What is it? Though it come swiftly and sure
Out of the dark womb of fate,
What that a man cannot dare and endure,
Level heart steady, eyes straight?...
The fight shall roll o'er us—a broad crimson tide,
Feet stamp, shells wail, bullets hiss,
And England be greater because we have died:
What end can be finer than this?
