This book is not about heroes. English poetry is not yet fit to speak of them. Nor is it about deeds, or lands, nor anything about glory, honour, might, majesty, dominion, or power, except War. Above all I am not concerned with Poetry. My subject is War, and the pity of War. The Poetry is in the pity.

Numbers of the old people cannot read. Those who can seldom do

All a poet can do today is warn.

I was a boy when I first realized that the fullest life liveable was a Poet's

Those who, like the beasts, have no such Hope, pass their old age shrouded with an inward gloom.

I don't ask myself, is the life congenial to me? But, am I fitted for, am I called to, the Ministry?

After all my years of playing soldiers, and then of reading History, I have almost a mania to be in the East, to see fighting, and to serve.