events between officers and men, runs pleasantly through the verse of Lieutenant-Colonel Short, who was killed in France in June 1917; it is in his warm-hearted response on receipt of a Christmas card from the Sergeants' Mess of his battery, and you glimpse it in and between the lines of other of his poems. He was of the Old Army, and in character and temperament had much in common with Brian Brooke. There is sometimes a sombre touch, but always a sturdy, breezy, soldierly courage, in his war verse and often a delightfully whimsical humour. Perhaps one lingers most over the tender, fanciful series to his wife—such as this, 'To Venus,' with its gallant, gracious ending:
Mars leads me now, but shall thy worship cease?
Shall war blot out the memory of ease?
When I am 'under arms before the dawn,'
Thy star shines just as brightly as in peace.
No, Venus, Aphrodite, Ashtoreth,
Whatever pretty name whatever faith
Has given thee, thou Perfect Woman, I
Am still thy servant to my dying breath.—
and over the three charmingly playful
