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SOME SOLDIER POETS

modern peace. The plough lacerates the turf, many lowly and lovely lives are sacrificed that wheat may be sown and a taller, straighter growth raised to sustain a higher pulse of life. But how many of our modern machines create what is useless or harmful, at the expense of the best life both of those whose profit is intended and of those whom they exploit! Is there so much choice between the horrors of war and those of peace when they are truly estimated that the pacifist should prefer them or the imperialist wish to re-establish them? That men should be forced by the self-seeking of others to linger in want or to die in cruel torture is equally abhorrent. The hope of all generous spirits is to have done by means of the war with the peace that they have known and to usher in a better order. And Grenfell cheers this hope as few can, foreshowing a better proportioned life. The limpidity and strength of his emotion, though it creates beauty and reveals wisdom, was seconded by no matured art; yet those who have this at command are so liable to fail just where he succeeds, in sureness of aim.

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