Evening public ledger. [volume] (Philadelphia [Pa.]) 1914-1942, 1915-02-20


" tional thrills" writes the editor of a
popular magazine, "ls the British soldiers
moving by night and silently entraining,
crossing the channel and marching into
France for the first time in 100 years. II
there is any poetry left in Kipling, W, ought
to have 1t now" This was before Mr. Kip
ling had written the spirited doggerel which
contains the line, "The Hun is at the Cate
lively lines yet, however lively, less stridently
jingostic than some of what has gone be-
fore-slnce in fact as well as poetry
There's nothing left today
But steel and fire and woe.
We read that penny reprints of Kipling's
For All We Have and Are have Id like
bread on the streets OF London. But 1t is
time to ask ourselves the question, What Is
the world war doing for literature?
The glorious days of the war correspondent
are ancient history now; during the Russo
Japanese war he scarcely had a look-in, and
his status has not improved since then. And
yet-and yet there is the splendid feat of the
correspondent of the London Express q
have seen it heralded nowhere save in the
headlines Of that Journal:
AUSTRIAN wARsHIP SUNK
BY ]. A. Sinclair Pooley
Express Correspondent.
But not all war correspondents are Pooleys
fortunately for the Teutons' navles
War plays are another matter-but neither
BarrIe's play about Der Tag" nor any Of
the other dramas that have so promptly
come from patriotic pens reward ones read
ing. Verse Is another matter, too; poets
don't need to reach the front to write good
verse, nor do they need to tremble lest the
words, "Deleted by the Censor" replace their
purplest patches. And Brtain's poets have
been mobilized-mobilized as one man, from
Maurice Hewlett to popular Harold Begbie
from William Watson to the Poet Laureate
they have all fired their shots-and their
shots have found no echo overseas Verify,
verify is this a war of machines-and only
Kipling and some of our extreme modernists
can hear the music OF machines Less verse
has been perpetrated by Frenchmen than by
Engllshmen so far-and though the French
verse may be mediocre. It is at least medi-
ocre.
Surely Young
"There is an appalling soullessness about
II, and that is savagely unhuman," writes
the London Mails correspondent. Men turn
handles, and death flies out in large bundles"
And yet even this war, conceived and exc
cuted in inhumanity, has its emotional thrills.
There is humor in the incident of the
wounded German officers notebook in which
he had jotted down French phrases that he
was evidently memorlzing for future repet-
tion-much dyspeptic might turn to
cook book for courage to survive his regi-
men of broth and rice pudding. "Give me
three chickens; "I want two bottles of
champagne; "Three bottles OF very old bur-
gundy"i "Give me some of your best cog
- I
One sympathizes with the young offieer-why
is it that one is sure that he is young?-yes.
even though one may rejoice that he isn't
marching into Paris with his corps. One can
Imagine John Maseheld who has already
achieved his august, 1914" writing a grlmly
humorous set OF verses round this young Ger
mans disappointment-a hospital prisoner
instead of a roysterer on the houleYards! But
there are other incidents, less humorous.
more moving.
Some OF them concern the airmen; the
bomb -throwers careless OF the lives below
them the men in their machines careless OF
their own lives There is jules Vedrlnes,
who in three days sent TO earth two German
Taubes. In times OF peace D'Annunzlo and
Rostand have been thrilled by air nights, ana
have made poetry out OF their thrilling What
should they not and TO write OF duels at a
height of 1000 feet9 But the most heroic OF
ali the actions in the air have been those OF
a French and Russian ayiator-the one on
the Franco Belgian frontier the other on the
line between Russia and Galicia. But here Is
the newspaperman's matter r-of-f6ot account:
Captain Hestsroh. the first Russian aviator
20 loop the loop was returning from an serial
reconnaissance when he saw an Austrian aero
plane lowering over the Russian forces pre-
aumably with the intention Of dropping bombs
The Russian imsnediately eheneed ne diFee-
tiuu u the machine and headed straight lar
that q tho Austrian at qua speed Tha fafes
Of tie impact eaa4ed the Ecllapse of helk