Evening public ledger. [volume] (Philadelphia [Pa.]) 1914-1942, 1915-02-20
THRILLS IN WAR AND WORDS
There Some Humor Left in Incidents of Baeeds Some
Poetrys Very Stuff But Efficiency Has Knocked
the Spirit Out of Romance.
Bv WARREN BARTON BLAKE

machines. which plunged to earth. the two
aViators meeting Instant death.
This prose is not poetry indeed but Il Il
poetry's very stuff.
There is courage enough and to spare In
this war; the Highlanders who drop behind
their fellows to blow up the bridge over
which they have just passed Gan action
morally certain to be followed by their own
death); the men in planes, safe from the
rifles of the enemy only at mile and
quarter in the air; the Belgian hello girl who
stuck to her switchboard and reported to the
officers in the field just how their shells were
falling-till she was discovered by German
shell herself; the nervy Tommies who nick
name German howitzer shells Jack John
sons,' because, on impact, they send up thick
columns Of greasy black smoke-oh they are
heroes just as much as Napoeon's grenadiers
were heroes, or the men of Pickett's charge
or the Japanese of Thousand Metre Hill And
there has been unreckoning courage on the
German side from princes down to plumbers,
from field marshals to farmers But the fact
remains-it is war of machines
Machines in the air; machines under the
surface of the water; armored machines that
race the roads; machines called siege guns
that demolish the most ponderous fortlhca-
tions; machines that are called bombs and
exploding, poison with their gas whole
trenches full of the enemy, arrestlng in the
pose called death; it Is all matter OF ma
chinery Suppose this last invention Is ''in-
yention' indeed; that only shows that imagi.
nation itself sets itself practicing at me-
chanics Much of the ld-time glamour Of
war faded out of it when suits Of mail and
swords and lances were largely superseded
by powder and ball Today, men still come
to close quarters-trench warfare has en-
forced that; they still spit one another On
cold steel; but the principal weapons in thslf
most deadly combats are machines that pump
bullets across large distances Death by ma
chinery-yet the machine never created the
life 1t destroys, nor can create. The Joy Of
battle Is fainter in this Goth century; not 50
much that we are so very much more civ
ilized, but because there is in modern war
fare less OF romance than of deficiency"
Middling Cobbler, Good Cook
And great martial poems are scarcely 10 q
looked for now because even poets nass
come to understand the nature Of modefn
war. They cannot read much heroism into
the work of the mine-layer, or the submarlns
that comes as a thief I'm the night; they iai'
to see the Sknightly chivalry OF an airsnp
attack on city of hospitals and schools ana
churches and homes of working women
whose husbands are shiyering In bosg
trenches somewhere else. They cannot even
hate their individual enemy in the good oa
way. for they know that he Is merely H'G'
tim of his Governments mlsrepresentatoel
exploitation, superior force. The soldier WV
is on the other side there is mlda'lns
cobbler. fairly good cook, or possibly efss
maker of fiaxen-wigged dolls; one eanng.
hate him. one can only hate the mapss
forces that have brought him into action =
Third Murderer" And without hating hi@s
how can your Homers strike their Tyres eaa
vlncingly, today?
"I have never written love songs eA'ss
when I loved; how, then. could 1 have WIN
ten songs OF hatred without hatingr
That is the way Goethe answered EeA-
mann's question, when the German bosssl
asked why he had never written ha
poetry a la Theodor Korner.