I am not concerned with Poetry. My subject is War, and the pity of War. The Poetry is in the pity. Yet these elegies are to this generation in no sense conciliatory. They may be to the next. All a poet can do today is warn. That is why the true Poets must be truthful.

I find purer philosophy in a Poem than in a Conclusion of Geometry, a chemical analysis, or a physical law

All I ask is to be held above the barren wastes of want.

No-man's land under snow is like the face of the moon: chaotic, crater ridden, uninhabitable, awful, the abode of madness.

Then, when much blood had clogged their chariot-wheels I would go up and wash them from sweet wells, Even with truths that lie too deep for taint. I would have poured my spirit without stint But not through wounds; not on the cess of war.

Above all I am not concerned with Poetry. My subject is War, and the pity of War. The Poetry is in the pity.

If I have to be a soldier I must be a good one, anything else is unthinkable