Poems | Page 9

of gasping life when
their red flood subsides.
So far back indeed as May, 1912, he had written to his mother from
Paris: "Is it not fine the way the Balkan States are triumphing? I have
been so excited over the war, it would have needed a very small
opportunity to have taken me over there." It is evident, then, that the
soldier's life had long been included among the possibilities which
fascinated him. But apart from this general proclivity to adventure, this
desire to "live dangerously", he was impelled by a simple sentiment of
loyalty to the country and city of his heart, which he himself explained
in a letter written from the Aisne trenches to `The New Republic' (New
York, May 22, 1915):
== I have talked with so many of the young volunteers here. Their case
is little known, even by the French, yet altogether interesting and
appealing. They are foreigners on whom the outbreak of war laid no
formal compulsion. But they had stood on the butte in springtime
perhaps, as Julian and Louise stood, and looked out over the myriad
twinkling lights of the beautiful city. Paris -- mystic, maternal,
personified, to whom they owed the happiest moments of their lives --
Paris was in peril. Were they not under a moral obligation, no less
binding than [that by which] their comrades were bound legally, to put
their breasts between her and destruction? Without renouncing their
nationality, they had yet chosen to make their homes here beyond any
other city in the world. Did not the benefits and blessings they had

received point them a duty that heart and conscience could not deny?
"Why did you enlist?" In every case the answer was the same. That
memorable day in August came. Suddenly the old haunts were desolate,
the boon companions had gone. It was unthinkable to leave the danger
to them and accept only the pleasures oneself, to go on enjoying the
sweet things of life in defence of which they were perhaps even then
shedding their blood in the north. Some day they would return, and
with honor -- not all, but some. The old order of things would have
irrevocably vanished. There would be a new companionship whose
bond would be the common danger run, the common sufferings borne,
the common glory shared. "And where have you been all the time, and
what have you been doing?" The very question would be a reproach,
though none were intended. How could they endure it?
Face to face with a situation like that, a man becomes reconciled,
justifies easily the part he is playing, and comes to understand, in a
universe where logic counts for so little and sentiment and the impulse
of the heart for so much, the inevitableness and naturalness of war.
Suddenly the world is up in arms. All mankind takes sides. The same
faith that made him surrender himself to the impulses of normal living
and of love, forces him now to make himself the instrument through
which a greater force works out its inscrutable ends through the
impulses of terror and repulsion. And with no less a sense of moving in
harmony with a universe where masses are in continual conflict and
new combinations are engendered out of eternal collisions, he
shoulders arms and marches forth with haste. ==
Already in this passage we can discern the fatalistic acceptance of war
which runs through many of his utterances on the subject, and may be
read especially in the noble conclusion of his poem, "The Hosts": There
was a stately drama writ By the hand that peopled the earth & air And
set the stars in the infinite And made night gorgeous & morning fair;
And all that had sense to reason knew That bloody drama must be gone
through. Some sat & watched how the action veered -- Waited, profited,
trembled, cheered -- We saw not clearly nor understood, But, yielding
ourselves to the master hand, Each in his part, as best he could, We
played it through as the author planned.
It was not, in his own conception, a "war against war" that he was
waging; it was simply a fight for freedom and for France. Some of us

may hope and believe that, in after years, when he was at leisure to
view history in perspective and carry his psychology a little deeper, he
would have allowed, if not more potency, at any rate more adaptability,
to the human will. In order to do so, it would not have been necessary
to abandon his fatalistic creed. He would have seen, perhaps, that even
if we only will what we have to will, the factors which shape the will --
of the individual, the nation, or the race -- are always