From ‘Literature and Soliders’, The Spectator, 19 June 1915:
In this war some of the most moving poetry has been written by young soldiers. The most vivid accounts of fighting have been extracted from soldiers’ letters. These were certainly not written with- out a close companionship with letters. We wonder how many torn and thumbed copies of Shakespeare, Milton, Homer, or Virgil are in trenches and dug-outs at this moment. We wonder how many officers have added an entirely non-military zest to their movements by studying domestic Gothic architecture, or the buildings bearing the more grandiose imprint of Louis XIV’s days, as they passed through the interesting towns of Flanders. We wonder how many among the naturalists have recorded in diaries the comings and goings and the nest-building of birds on the battlefields. We undertake to say that a great many have. When after Wolfe’s death at Quebec, in one of his pockets was found a copy, in Wolfe’s handwriting, of Sarpedon’s speech to Glaucus (Iliad XII.) the fact was ever afterwards remembered. Bat, there was nothing remark- able in the fact itself that Wolfe should have loved Homer, and have found help and inspiration in writing down his lines. Thousands of soldiers might do so to-day, and would have the learning to do it. When Sir Philip Sidney wrote verses about his fatal wound he only did what might—if we knew all —be matched a hundred times over to-day in the military hospitals at the front.
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