Chapter I: Preface

On a fateful day in 1914, without a warning flash or tremor, there fell upon the world such a blast of war as human reason could not have foreglimpsed, nor Apocalyptic vision raised, to appall the souls of men. Twenty-seven nations took the shock and were rocked to their foundations. Eleven were caught and knotted in the maddest agony of conflict that ever was known. Through four years the winds of destruction swirled and roared around the monstrous welter, before the evil forces failed and their exhaustion brought a breathing space such as lies at the heart of a typhoon. Around the widening edges of that space they still muttered for a while in gusts of blood and fire, slowly receding, slowly dying. But the great storm is gone; the long night that seemed the night of doom is over.

Its epic has not been written. The time is too near us, the motive too deep, the theme too vast. But out of the dark came many voices, voices of lamentation, of home and love and hope and heroism and loftiest ideality, of romance, of strange comedy. These had their inspiration from a gigantic spectacle of elemental passions in cross-play, from the thoughts and emotions not of a single people, but of all that were fighting for the life and light of civilization. Poets great and poets minor followed the war or fought in it, and expressed its spirit with a personal, passionate fidelity impossible to historians.

It would not be well were all these voices lost. Many are worth fixation where they may be heard again at will, and that is the reason for and purpose of this book. The finest and truest of them are given here.

In making selection, availability for recitation has been considered. There is no better way to stir the mind or fix the memory than by spoken words of beauty in rhythmic cadence, especially in schools. It is hoped they will be effective in such uses.

Readers will find in the captain notes many helpful sidelights upon topics and personalities. These will commend themselves for their own sake.

W. D. EATON.

_The Press Club, Chicago._

CONTENTS

ABRAHAM LINCOLN WALKS AT MIDNIGHT _Vachel Lindsay_ 144

ACELDAMA _Dr. George F. Butler_ 117

AFTERWARD _Charles Hanson Towne_ 133

ALAN SEEGER _Washington Van Dusen_ 14

AMBULANCE DRIVER’S PRAYER, AN _Chaplain Thomas F. Coakley_ 74

AMERICAN CREED, AN _Everard Jack Appleton_ 57

ANXIOUS ANTHEMIST, THE _Guy Forrester Lee_ 169

ANXIOUS DEAD, THE _Lieut. Col. John McCrae_ 109

APRIL SONG, AN _George C. Michael_ 189

ARMED LINER, THE _H. Smalley Sarson_ 183

“AS SHE IS SPOKE” 113

AS THE TRUCKS GO ROLLIN’ BY _Lieut. L. W. Suckert_ 26

AUSTRALIA’S MEN _Dorothea Mackellar_ 96

BATTLE LINE, THE _J. B. Dollard_ 65

BATTLE OF BELLEAU WOOD _Edgar A. Guest_ 29

BEFORE ACTION _Lieut. William Noel Hodgson_ 13

BLIGHTY _Lieut. Siegfried Sassoon, M. C._ 121

BLUE AND THE GRAY IN FRANCE _George M. Mayo_ 41

BOY NEXT DOOR, THE _S. E. Kiser_ 172

BRITISH ARMY OF 1914, THE _Alfred W. Pollard_ 119

BULLINGTON _C. Fox Smith_ 34

BUT A SHORT TIME TO LIVE _Sergt. Leslie Coulson_ 103

CALL, THE _Robert W. Service_ 106

CHANT OF ARMY COOKS, A 66

CHRIST IN FLANDERS _L. W._ 55

CLERK, THE _B. H. M. Hetherington_ 94

COLUMBIA’S PRAYER _Thomas P. Bashaw_ 82

CORP’RAL’S CHEVRONS 37

CRIMSON CROSS, THE _Elizabeth Brown Du Bridge_ 48

CROSS AND THE FLAG, THE _William Henry, Cardinal O’Connell_ 45

CROWN, THE _Helen Combes_ 193

CRUTCHES’ TUNE, THE _Elizabeth R. Stoner_ 108

DESTROYERS “_Klaxon_” 84

DIRGE, A _Victor Perowne_ 90

DO YOUR ALL _Edgar A. Guest_ 152

DRUM, THE _Joseph Lee_ 67

EASTER-EGGS _Reginald Wright Kauffman_ 89

EDITH CAVELL _McLandburgh Wilson_ 178

EPITAPH FOR THE UNKNOWN SOLDIER _Annette Kohn_ 202

EVENING STAR, THE _Harold Seton_ 81

FLAG EVERLASTING _A. G. Riddoch_ 40

FLAG OF THE FREE _Francis T. Smith_ 153

FLAG SPEAKS, THE _Walter E. Peck_ 105

FLAG, THE _Edward A. Horton_ 173

FLEMISH VILLAGE, A _H. A._ 92

FRANCE _Capt. Joseph Medill Patterson_ 93

FRENCH IN THE TRENCHES _William J. Robinson_ 19

GENTLEMEN OF OXFORD, THE _Norah M. Holland_ 115

GOING WEST _Eleanor Jewett_ 123

GOLDENROD, THE “_Anchusa_” 129

GOLD STAR, THE _Edgar A. Guest_ 17

GRAVES OF GALLIPOLI, THE _L. L. (A. N. Z. A. C.)_ 27

GREAT ADVENTURE, THE _Major Kendall Banning_ 68

“HEARTS ARE TOUCHING” 159

HERE AT VERDUN _Chester M. Wright_ 167

HOME _Reginald Wright Kauffman_ 110

HOMECOMING, THE _Leroy Folge_ 192

HYMN OF FREEDOM, A _Mary Perry King_ 98