The Republican journal. [volume] (Belfast, Me.) 1829-current, 1916-04-06
Two Poets Clash on Wars
Mission.

There, on the field of carnage and death,
Stand forth the highest instincts of the soul;
There find We courage, strength, nobility, I'M
grudging service;
There find We infinite tenderness and compass
sion.
Happy those who die on the field of battle!
Happy the souls that leap forth singing
Happy the proud and loving God who waits
with loving arms!
four country calls! Our country and our
KingD
A curse upon each king who leads his state,
No matter what his plea, to this foul
Who fiji the rivers of the world with dead,
And turn their murderers loose on all the
To go forth killing in White Mercy's name.
Making the trenches stink with spattered
brains,
Tearing the nerves and arteries apart.
Sowing with flesh the unreaped golden
This is the sin no purging can atone:
To send forth rapine in the name of Christ:
To set the face and make the heart stone!
vachel Lindsay. "War. September. 1914"
AS the two men shook hands, they
looked to me as though each had written
the others poems on the Great War.
Yet it was Lincoln Colcord, belying the
spare, chlselled face and frame of stu
dent and the gentle retrospective look
behind his eyeglasses, who had glorlfled
the European holocaust and war IN gen.
eral. and Vachel Lindsay, muscular-look-
ing, strong-voiced, kinsman to the white
fleshed, blond-haired, fighting Norsemen
of old, who had written curse on the
Great War and all other wars and their
engineers. had brought them together
to thresh out their difference face to
face.
Their first interest was in each other
Their works had met in the same maya
zines and were brought out by the same
publisher-V achel Lindsay's poems and
tramping sketches and Lincoln Colcord' S
poems and sea tales. Both had been
wanderers. Colcord, born on board his
fathers ship off Cape Horn, had sailed
the seven seas. Lindsay, forsaking the
city, had begun life anew and had tramp
ed half the States of the Union, beg
ging ''handout" and nights bed in
return for little sheaf of verse. Both
men, entering on their thirties and
emerging into recognition, became alb
sorbed in comparing and agreeing
which was not what had planned.
What do you think of WARP l asked
in the first lull of their get-together
talk. The spark touched powder.
WAR is not only mans greatest curse
it breeds ali the other curses!' Lind
say exclaimed, turning OH Colcord. How
can you see any possible good il it?''
He shot his challenge out, flinging him
self down on his bed. and ground his
chin in his palm. Colcord, scrooged
down to a smallest space in bis chair,
arms tensely folded, legs tightly crossed.
scrutinjzed his man over the tops of his
glasses.
did you ever fight? he shot back.
''No matter whom-yourself or some
one else? You did; and you know the
good that came of 1.-THE tautened will,
the access of strength and power! Your
body lost fear, your spirit took on more
daring! well, nations are only individ-
uals acting together. What struggle
does for the individual, war does for the
nations of men. l grant you the horrors
of war But mans spirit transcends
them. He loses his fear of war, wages
greater war than before. He seems to
feel some need that war supplies. He
gains in courage to dare, to sacrifice
himself, to aspirei Isn't that gain?
lHHEG lS llO iOSSI III any w Oh. hC ali
pushed as well as the victor has screwed
up his spirit to a higher, sterner test
than peace ever makes on ltp
Then you forget what demands on the
spirit peace can make, Lindsay retorted.
'fLook at the fight Tom Osborne is wag
ing against the forces of rottenness in
our prisons! I'd sooner take three years
of physical war than 90 through the wal
low of unspeakable filth the penitentiary
ring is heaping on him! | admit the
transcendent moment of sacrifice the
soldier feels at the moment of attack.
The very next moment, however, he is
only weller of torn fiesh-deadl After
Tom Osborne or his like has passed
through his hell fires, you have the man
left, to pass on what good his soul has
got out of the struggle. We don't have
to cut throats to develop our souls. War
means only winning or losing lives. But
the conflicts of peace mean winning or
losing souls.
''But for every Osborne who keeps his
spirit alive there are millions to whose
spirit peace brings only decay" Colcord
objected. MAN is born of pain, is in
ured naturally to strife, and is equipped
physically and spiritually for struggle and
hardship. Then he strikes easy going in
peace, becomes self-indulgent and soft;
too conscious of his body and his comfort;
makes mountains of mole-hils; becomes
selfish and pampered. Or, he slavishly
truckles down to exploitation and the
sapping of his spirit by slow starvation.
Look at society today-divided between
the few who have too much and do not
earn it but decay by it, and the mass
who have not enough and who break
their bodies TO get that little and whose
spirits starve because their bodies dol"
Lindsay sat bolt-upright.
"Colcord, l remember some such pic
ture as you draw, in the South. l was
tramping it from Atlanta, Ga, to Ashe-
vile, N. c., some years ago. and in all
that stretch | met only two wheeled We
hicles-I remember because wagon
meant lift for me- Well, fifty years
after the Civil War that country was still
like scraped bone-its people hollow
chested, poor, full of hookworm, under
nourshed, benighted, holders of the
lynch record-and all largely because one
of those wars you consider so benefcent
had passed over that land as far back as
half a century,"
'Do you deduce, then. that the Civil
War had done no good?" Colcord asked
eleven million negroes are freemen to-
day because of that war! The whole
American nation owes its independence
to another war! Do you suppose the col
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