CHAPTER I ARRESTED AS A SPY "Start August First. Book tickets immediately." Such were the instructions I received at Brighton early in July, 1914, from Prince ——. A few days previously I had spent considerable time with this scion of the Russian nobility discussing the final arrangements concerning my departure to his palace in Russia, where I was to devote two months to a special matter in... more...

Over Here Pledged to the bravest and the best,We stand, who cannot share the fray,Staunch for the danger and the test.For them at night we kneel and pray.Be with them, Lord, who serve the truth,And make us worthy of our youth! Here mother-love and father-loveUnite in love of country now;Here to the flag that flies above,Our heads we reverently bow;Here as one people, night and day,For victory we work... more...

CHAPTER I It was a warm, golden-cloudy, lovable afternoon. In the big living-room at Ingleside Susan Baker sat down with a certain grim satisfaction hovering about her like an aura; it was four o'clock and Susan, who had been working incessantly since six that morning, felt that she had fairly earned an hour of repose and gossip. Susan just then was perfectly happy; everything had gone almost... more...

AN UPBRAIDING Now I am dead you sing to me   The songs we used to know,But while I lived you had no wish   Or care for doing so. Now I am dead you come to me   In the moonlight, comfortless;Ah, what would I have given alive   To win such tenderness! When you are dead, and stand to me   Not differenced, as now,But like again, will you be cold   As when we lived, or how? "These... more...

Strange Meeting It seemed that out of the battle I escapedDown some profound dull tunnel, long since scoopedThrough granites which Titanic wars had groined.Yet also there encumbered sleepers groaned,Too fast in thought or death to be bestirred.Then, as I probed them, one sprang up, and staredWith piteous recognition in fixed eyes,Lifting distressful hands as if to bless.And by his smile, I knew that... more...

Foreword I've tinkered at my bits of rhymesIn weary, woeful, waiting times;In doleful hours of battle-din,Ere yet they brought the wounded in;Through vigils of the fateful night,In lousy barns by candle-light;In dug-outs, sagging and aflood,On stretchers stiff and bleared with blood;By ragged grove, by ruined road,By hearths accurst where Love abode;By broken altars, blackened shrinesI've... more...

TO OUR MOTHERSOurs the Great Adventure,Yours the pain to bear,Ours the golden service stripes,Yours the marks of care.If all the Great AdventureThe old Earth ever knew,Was ours and in this little book'Twould still belong to you!These Sketches were made during a year's service as a camion driver with the French army in the Chemin-des-Dames sector and a year's service with the A.E.F. as an... more...

In Flanders Fields In Flanders fields the poppies blowBetween the crosses, row on row,That mark our place; and in the skyThe larks, still bravely singing, flyScarce heard amid the guns below. We are the Dead. Short days agoWe lived, felt dawn, saw sunset glow,Loved and were loved, and now we lie,In Flanders fields. Take up our quarrel with the foe:To you from failing hands we throwThe torch; be yours... more...

THE RED FLOWER June 1914 In the pleasant time of Pentecost,  By the little river Kyll,I followed the angler's winding path  Or waded the stream at will.And the friendly fertile German land  Lay round me green and still. But all day long on the eastern bank  Of the river cool and clear,Where the curving track of the double rails  Was hardly seen though near,The endless trains of German... more...

INTRODUCTION Because man is both militant and pacific, he has expressed in literature, as indeed in the other forms of art, his pacific and militant moods. Nor are these moods, of necessity, incompatible. War may become the price of peace, and peace may so decay as inevitably to bring about war. Of the dully unresponsive pacificist and the jingo patriot, quick to anger, the latter no doubt is the more... more...