CA^ 
 
 lu2jU 
 
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 a
 
 Of this Edition, printed on Pure Rag Paper, 
 only 200 copies have been prifitcd.
 
 The 
 Highway of Hades 
 
 4- 
 
 iii 
 
 a 2
 
 By the Same Writer. 
 
 Richard Holt Hutton of The Spec- 
 
 tator : A Monograph. 
 
 Shakspere's Master Passages : A 
 
 Guide in Miniature. 
 
 Wordsworth's Master Passages : A 
 
 Guide in Miniature. 
 
 Ground Flowers : Ventures in Verse. 
 
 Revised Versions : First Series. 
 
 Revised Versions : Second Series. 
 
 The Golf Craze.
 
 The 
 
 ^Highway of Hades 
 
 War Verses : With some Prose 
 
 By 
 
 John Hogben 
 
 // 
 
 Edinburgh 
 
 Oliver and Boyd, Tweeddale Court 
 
 London: 33 Paternoster Row, E.G. 
 
 1919
 
 To 
 "Jack in Khaki 
 
 tU
 
 These Rhymes and Sketches, 
 with one or two exceptions, 
 are reprinted from The 
 Spectator^ Westminster Gazette^ 
 Truth, The World, Glasgow 
 Herald, Diinedin Magazine, 
 Craigleith Hospital Chronicle, 
 Searchlight, Boys' Own Paper, 
 and other periodicals.
 
 Contents 
 
 
 PAGE 
 
 Lord Kitchener ...... 
 
 I 
 
 " Somewhere in France " . . . . 
 
 2 
 
 Content to Die ...... 
 
 4 
 
 Under the Shadow .... 
 
 5 
 
 ♦'A Student in Arms" . . . . . 
 
 12 
 
 Lord Roberts ...... 
 
 13 
 
 The Mother ...... 
 
 IS 
 
 A Gay Gordon ..... 
 
 i6 
 
 " The Moonlight Sonata " . . . . 
 
 i8 
 
 Still in France ..... 
 
 26 
 
 Below ...... 
 
 27 
 
 Second Lieutenant John Hogben Hislop 
 
 29 
 
 The Transport ..... 
 
 30 
 
 War and Music ...... 
 
 31 
 
 Jack in Khaki ..... 
 
 42 
 
 "A Ministering Angel Thou" . 
 
 43 
 
 The Flyer ..... 
 
 45 
 
 The Invisible in War .... 
 
 46 
 
 The Woman of Two Fields 
 
 51 
 
 Neutral ...... 
 
 52 
 
 The Call 
 
 53 
 
 Louvain ...... 
 
 54 
 
 Scottish Poets on War .... 
 
 55 
 
 The Unhappy Warrior .... 
 
 62 
 
 Second Lieutenant Walter Balmer Hislop 
 
 . 63 
 
 The Great Transgression 
 
 . 65 
 
 The Tod and the Lambs, and the Spy Peril . 
 
 66
 
 Contents 
 
 Back to the Brute 
 
 De Wet Once More 
 
 The Dining-room Dado 
 
 The Sportsman in War-time 
 
 A Dog of Flanders 
 
 The Invincible Hope 
 
 Manhood's Beauty 
 
 " Content with Flies " — in War 
 
 "The Day" 
 
 Zeppelins 
 
 The Heroic Dead 
 
 The Pity of It . 
 
 Peace 
 
 time 
 
 70 
 
 72 
 
 75 
 82 
 
 84 
 
 8s 
 86 
 
 93 
 94 
 95 
 97 
 
 99 
 
 The year placed below each 
 
 title indicates the original 
 
 date of publication
 
 Lord Kitche7ier 
 (1916) 
 
 H 
 
 IS travail no man knows ; 
 
 'Tis but the mighty issue that one sees ; 
 And not the moulding hand from which it flows : 
 Our later Hercules ! 
 
 Duty, in woe or weal, 
 Held his vast powers in thrall beyond our ken : 
 Quenched in wild waters that blue eye of steel 
 
 That looked through time and men !
 
 ^^ Somewhere in France^'' 
 (1915) 
 
 "COMEWHERE in France"— we know not where- 
 
 ^^ he lies, 
 'Mid shuddering earth and under anguished skies ! 
 We may not visit him, but this we say : 
 Though our steps err, his shall not miss their way. 
 From the exhaustion of War's fierce embrace 
 He, nothing doubting, went to his own place. 
 To him has come, if not the crown and palm. 
 The kiss of Peace, — a vast, sufficing calm ! 
 
 So fine a spirit, daring, yet serene, — 
 
 He may not, surely, lapse from what has been : 
 
 Greater, not less, his wondering mind must be ; 
 
 Ampler the splendid vision he must see. 
 
 'Tis unbelievable he fades away, — 
 
 An exhalation at the dawn of day ! 
 
 Nor dare we deem that he has but returned 
 Into the Oversoul, to be discerned 
 Hereafter in the bosom of the rose, 
 In petal of the lily, or in those 
 Far jewelled sunset skies that glow and pale, 
 Or in the rich note of the nightingale. 
 Nay, though all beauty may recall to mind 
 What we in his fair life were wont to find, — 
 
 2
 
 '* Somezvhere in Frmice " 
 
 In sun his nature, and in morn his fire, 
 In sea his force, in love his pure desire ; 
 He shall escape absorption, and shall still 
 Preserve a faculty to know and will. 
 
 Such is my hope, slow climbing to a faith : 
 
 (We know not Life, how should we then know Death?) 
 
 From our small limits and withholdings free. 
 
 Somewhere he dwells and keeps high company ; 
 
 Yet tainted not with so supreme a bliss 
 
 As to forget he knew a world like this.
 
 Content to Die 
 (1915) 
 
 Rex and Wilfred Winslow were the first men who died on the 
 field of German South-west Africa. The epitaph on the cross 
 on the grave runs thus : — 
 
 " Tell England, ye that pass this monument, 
 That we who rest here died content." 
 
 — Daily Newspaper. 
 
 T^AR the horizon of our best desires 
 
 ■*■ Stretches into the sunset of our hves : 
 
 The wavering taper of the achieved expires, 
 
 And only the irrevocable will survives. 
 Content to die for England ! How the words 
 
 Thrill those who live for England, knowing not 
 The stern, heroic passion that upgirds 
 
 The loins of such as, ardent, for her fought. 
 Content ! It is a word that brooks no bounds, 
 
 If from the heights and depths it takes its name : 
 Upon the proud lips of great men it sounds 
 
 As if the clear note from the Heavens came, — 
 A word that, sea-like, shrinks and grows again ; 
 A little word on lips of little men !
 
 Under the Shadow 
 (1914) 
 
 I HOSE of us who have made our way to the 
 hills or the sea, during the summer that is gone, 
 have found Nature to be exactly as before in the 
 ordinary sense of the words. The hills have taken 
 on one by one the well-known varying hues of the 
 seasons, and the sea has been, in turn, as full, as 
 furious, and as placid as ever. It is true the guns have 
 been heard less frequently on the hills, but the hills 
 themselves were there, and they lured us to their 
 summits as in days past. Nevertheless, no matter 
 where we have gone, we have been all too conscious 
 that our term of holiday has been spent Under the 
 Shadow. We have no doubt dwelt secure. We have 
 again and again probably echoed their feeling, if we 
 have not used the lines themselves, — lines in which 
 our literary grandfathers rejoiced, and even so fastidious 
 a critic as Gray particularly delighted in : 
 
 If bleak and barren Scotia's hills arise ; 
 
 There plague and poison, lust and rapine grow ; 
 Here peaceful are the vales, and pure the skies ; 
 
 And Freedom fires the soul, and sparkles in the eyes. 
 
 The word "there" can have only one possible meaning 
 for us to-day. We have comforted one another with 
 these words. Just so we have felt ; so we have 
 
 5 A 2
 
 The Highway of Hades 
 
 congratulated ourselves in our island home. But the 
 shadow has remained. 
 
 It is marvellous how much shadow there is in our 
 lives. The word itself may be said to stand for well- 
 known experiences so far as the actors themselves are 
 concerned, and for well-defined outlines and character 
 so far as point of view may affect the critic and historian 
 of life. Nature, as she appears, is alternately under 
 light and shadow. What an old-fashioned, and even 
 severely-abandoned word, by the way, " Nature " has 
 become ! The scientific spirit has so broken up the 
 world and all that therein is that it is only by a brave 
 effort of will that we return to the use of the sweet 
 old word, — the word whereby writers of no meaner, if 
 less pretentious, ability than the moderns signified 
 the earth as it presents itself, apart from the often 
 disturbing presence and influence of man. 
 
 We are often severe critics of our climate. Whatever 
 glories these islands possess, we are apt to forget these 
 and to consider that we have been hardly dealt with 
 as regards the fickle moods of our seasons here. We 
 hear often of rich sunshine filling the days elsewhere. 
 We look complainingly on the weather-table which 
 gives the hours of sunshine here and there, over the 
 face of Europe, and we sigh when we find our country 
 at the foot of the list, confessing, with a smile — or 
 it may be a frown — in the midst of such brittle days, 
 that the Frenchman spoke no more than the truth 
 when he said Britons experienced only samples of 
 weather. With us the rapid changes make prophecy 
 impossible, for the morning breaking in gold may 
 foreshadow a noon loud with thunder, and an evening 
 silent with frost. No doubt we have become somewhat 
 
 6
 
 Under the Shadow 
 
 accustomed to our treatment; and, remember, our 
 treatment has had a large share in making us the 
 men and women we are to-day. Our artists will tell 
 you, too, that they would not barter our changing skies, 
 our lights and shadows, for the brilliant blue of Italy, 
 or the fierce, blinding brightness of Egypt or Morocco. 
 It is quite true that the stronger the light, the darker the 
 shadow is, but black and white give us only a barren 
 monotony of contrast, and not the shades that blend or 
 harmonise in the infinite gradation of russets, greens, 
 and greys we are so familiar with here. 
 
 But it is, after all, impossible to separate Nature, as 
 we call it, from humafi nature, — the earth from the mind 
 that surveys, and measures, and enjoys it : 
 
 The Clouds that gather round the setting sun 
 Do take a sober colouring from an eye 
 That hath kept watch o'er man's mortality. 
 
 Doubly sober has seemed the setting sun in these days 
 of destiny, when the eye is apt to be blood-shot. It is 
 not " Lest we forget " with us to-day ; rather is it that 
 we cannot cease to remember, and that there slips 
 behind everything joyous in itself a sudden background 
 of remembered sorrow and shame, mixed, no doubt, 
 with heroic yet not altogether victorious thoughts. The 
 shadow remains. Take life, however, when there is no 
 such dominating, all-pervading shadows : in ordinary 
 days, when we are neither overjoyed, nor overborne by 
 grief, light and shadow — which are, after all, relative 
 terms — relieve us in relieving each other. With what a 
 quick appreciation of the difference do we take the 
 shady side when the sun is high and merciless, or the 
 sunny side when the north wind hurries the dead leaves 
 
 7
 
 The Highway of Hades 
 
 along their whispering way. Something, however, 
 belongs to the heart and the mind. It is under a sense 
 of loss that we feel shadow to be filled with a solemn 
 fitness. The woodland path, even if it be all shadow, 
 "accords with the soul's sadness" — to quote forgotten 
 Home. Burns's song, " My Nannie's Awa'," is as good 
 and forcible an illustration as any we can find of the 
 heart's impatience with something in Nature which seems 
 to be at war with the inner feeling and experience of 
 men. The mood of mind will assuredly make the 
 shadow graver, and it may be more grateful, as well as 
 render, in turn, the light more garish and vexing. " I' 
 faith, I am too much i' the sun," cried Hamlet, and 
 too much of the sun is good for no one, not even 
 the "cultured" Germans, although it is that for which 
 they cry to-day. On the other hand, the shadow must 
 not be chosen for a home. We are creatures of a day 
 so far as mere time is concerned, but creatures of a 
 day so far also as that day consists of dawn, noon, 
 and twilight. Fortunately there is a Greater than 
 choice, and we are not abandoned wholly to our moods. 
 The brightest of lives has known its shadowed hours ; 
 the saddest has felt the sunshine fall warmly for a time. 
 There is a bitter-sweet in life better than sweetness 
 alone, less harmful than bitterness alone, and it is not 
 without warrant that it has been said, "Our sweetest 
 songs are those that tell of saddest thought." 
 
 If we consider Art for a moment, here, too, we find 
 that light and shadow are of the inmost nature of the 
 thing itself. It matters nothing whether Art be 
 regarded as including Music, Poetry, and Painting, or 
 has the restricted, but usual, reference only to Painting 
 and Sculpture. Beauty is the quest of all Art, surely, 
 
 8
 
 Under the Shadoiv 
 
 and if Beauty be that which all the Arts strive to 
 express, it requires no argument to show how much 
 light and shadow have to do with attaining the object 
 in view. Men may use other words if they will (the 
 technical word is often the least self-interpretative), but 
 the simple words light and shadow are good enough to 
 employ in describing the difference between a Scherzo 
 and an Andante in a Beethoven symphony (although, of 
 course, in a second analysis light and shade play their 
 part in each), or to describe the changes in a Nocturne 
 by Chopin, or an Impromptu by Schubert. The 
 fathomless depths are never felt to be near while we are 
 under the gay reign of what we call Light Opera. The 
 shadow falls, and we are near the invisible when the 
 master lifts his hand. 
 
 In poetry how imperative is the demand for light 
 and shadow ! First, probably, a demand for chequered 
 sun and shade in descriptive verse — it may be in Cowper, 
 Scott, Goldsmith, Crabbe, or others. But this is not 
 all. " The light that never was on sea or land " comes 
 from its own sun, and, in the world of mind, emotion, 
 and imagination, the words light and shadow reappear 
 as signifying deeper things. We cannot do without 
 them. They are as inseparable from reflective poetry as 
 they are, under simpler conditions, from merely descrip- 
 tive verse. It is not only that there is a kind of variety — 
 a brightness and darkness that appear alternately, say, 
 in the poetry of Wordsworth — but there is besides a 
 sense of a vast neighbourhood into which we are only 
 permitted, and that rarely, to peep when — 
 
 This Light that strikes our eyeball is not light — 
 This Light that smites our forehead is not air 
 But viiion. 
 
 9
 
 The Highway of Hades 
 
 We may have our preference for this artist or that, 
 but, do not forget, light and shadow are more than 
 mass or outline ; are of the very essence, indeed, of the 
 artist's endeavour. The pearly beauty of colour, and 
 the sweetness of contour that strike us in much of the 
 work of the old masters — the indescribable charm, for 
 example, that draws us again and again through the 
 long, magnificent, tiresome galleries of Dresden to 
 the little room which Raphael's Madonna consecrates 
 and makes quiet — while they, admittedly, satisfy much 
 in us, leave a sense of something missing. It is in 
 Rembrandt's work that the miracle of light and shadow 
 is wrought out, and all subsequent painters have taken 
 something of his lesson to heart. Here, or nowhere, 
 has the art of painting found its depths and shallows. 
 At this fount the artistic sense of the moderns has 
 drunk its fill, and the draught bids fair to last for 
 all time. 
 
 It is thus seen that shadows accompany and make 
 richer Nature, Life, and Art alike. It is, moreover, 
 eminently true, as William Watson sings, in apparent 
 paradox, that they who see everything clear have not 
 the best vision — 
 
 Think not thy wisdom can illume away 
 The ancient tanglement of night and day. 
 Enough to acknowledge both, and both revere : 
 They see not clearliest who see all things clear. 
 
 It is surely the near view that is generally clear. The 
 mist is on hills, and in the realm of thought, being 
 ourselves *' such stuff as dreams are made on," the 
 noblest vision is his who sees all that is clear, but who 
 also sees and knows that all that is is not clear. Such 
 a one sees beyond the clearness the mystical uplands 
 
 lO
 
 Under the Shadow 
 
 that half reveal and half conceal themselves. Mean- 
 time, the earth as it is, is ours, and we who feel that 
 it is covered to-day by a darkness that can be felt 
 must resolutely trust that there will at length — may 
 it be soon — come to our ardent and waiting vision 
 " a rose of Dawn " beyond. 
 
 II
 
 ^*- A Student in Arms'''' 
 
 2nd Lieutenant Donald Hankey, ist Royal Warwickshire 
 Regiment, killed in action on the Somme, I2th October 1916. 
 
 (1917) 
 
 Q TRONG soul was his, purged of the meaner things- 
 
 The lust of fame, the petty pride of birth ; 
 Nought of unworthy round his record clings ; 
 
 Heaven's gold enclasped his passing share of earth. 
 No braggart warrior he, though brave his words — 
 
 How brave, none but the very wise may tell ; 
 Heedless of morrows as the simple birds ; 
 
 Careless of consequence at the gates of Hell. 
 His deeds were as his words, surcharged with strength. 
 
 And, when those deep and glowing eyes grew dim. 
 When the supreme surrender came at length. 
 His comrades knew it was no end for him : 
 
 Like "The Beloved Captain " — Nature's child — 
 He looked into the face of Death, and smiled !
 
 Lord Roberts 
 
 St Paul's, 19th Nov. 19 14 
 
 T AY the small form to rest, — 
 ■*— ' Straight as his soul ; 
 Place it among the best 
 
 On valour's roll : 
 There, where the tide of men 
 
 Foams to the brim 
 Round the proud fane of Wren, 
 
 Let us leave him. 
 
 There is no need for tear. 
 
 Nor room for sigh: 
 He saw his duty clear. 
 
 And went to die ; 
 His last act not the least 
 
 That won him fame — 
 To cheer the sons of th' East, 
 
 Who loved his name. 
 
 He came not back to us, 
 
 Dapper and wise ; 
 And in such lack to us 
 
 His greatness lies. 
 We may not fill his place, 
 
 But this we know : 
 The death he came to face 
 
 Was scarce a foe. 
 13
 
 The Highway of Hades 
 
 We leave him there in trust, 
 
 With our Well Done ! 
 Near the heroic dust 
 
 Of Wellington. 
 The clean path of his days 
 
 He firmly trod, 
 And, warm with all men's praise. 
 
 Went to his God ! 
 
 14
 
 The Mother 
 (1917) 
 
 Tn the fell fight she has not any share ; 
 
 Free from the shock of war her hours are spent ; 
 She breathes the safe, sweet, quiet English air, 
 
 With home's mild joys and industries content ! 
 Ah, say not so ! Her hair is wearing grey, 
 
 While still she lingers on the threshold of 
 Meridian age : she lives but as she may. 
 
 The silence gnawing at her suffering love. 
 She starts in sleep ; scans each maimed warrior's face ; 
 
 Her heart is with her boy on Flanders' dunes ; 
 All that enfolds him not is empty space, 
 
 And nought to her, nor yet the passing moons : 
 One only wish pierces her soul with pain — 
 To clasp him in her aching arms again ! 
 
 15
 
 A Gay Gordo7i 
 (1914) 
 
 I N the morning train for Aberdeen from Waverley 
 Station every seat was occupied. I found myself 
 facing a man with singularly frank and attractive grey 
 eyes, grey moustache, and regular, handsome features — 
 a man with whom many a woman would fall in love at 
 first sight. One, at least, had done so. His wife stood 
 by the carriage door with brave, yet wistful, face. As 
 we passed northwards he told me that he was, after 
 twenty-two years' service, volunteering for the front 
 once more. Had he seen any fighting, I asked. 
 " Rather,'"' he replied, pulling out of his pocket the 
 silken bar, from which four medals, left at home, used 
 to hang. I said it was a manly thing to do at his age. 
 He shrugged his shoulders and said, " I'm as fit as 
 a fiddle yet, my place is kept open for me, and my 
 wife sits rent free." A little later he remarked, "I'm 
 smiling to myself at what my youngest brother, a recruit, 
 will say when he sees me at Aberdeen. I could have 
 gone in on immediate promotion elsewhere, but I'd 
 rather be with the old regiment as a private than any- 
 where else higher up, and it won't be long before I 
 get promotion. Never a bullet has hit me yet," he 
 continued, and the grey eyes kindled with pride, which 
 in a moment gave place to a humorous expression 
 
 16
 
 A Gay Gordon 
 
 that made its way to his lips and left his broad, cleft 
 chin alone unrelaxed. I looked at him with undisguised 
 admiration. Hours afterwards, when he was at Aber- 
 deen making ready for the front, and I was sitting at 
 Braemar smoking an old man's pipe amid the fading 
 heather and the broom-pods that *' snapped their fingers 
 in the sun," my mind failed to concentrate itself on 
 a patriotic article I was reading. I thought rather of 
 him — the Gay Gordon, the concrete example of the 
 patriotism that is sweeping over the country. I thought 
 of how, ere he stepped out at Aberdeen, I had grasped 
 his hand and said, "It's a hellish war, but for that 
 very reason I can the better wish you God-speed and 
 a safe return." I remembered, too, how his wife had 
 turned to some one on the platform and said, " I've 
 let him go three times before, and I'm not going to 
 keep him back now." But I thought also of the low, 
 tremulous voice that reached no other ears but his and 
 mine after the last lingering kiss — "Be sure, darling, 
 and come back to me ! " 
 
 17
 
 " The Moo7ilight Sonata " 
 (1918) 
 
 I "HOSE who know Dunbar well will remember 
 •*- the narrow pathway that succeeds the broad one 
 under the great wall that fights the heavy seas that 
 occasionally pour their waters over it into the harbour. 
 Where the east harbour wall ends, this track across 
 the rocks runs down to a point that here and 
 there holds high places filled with blue-green grass 
 and sea-pinks. But we are not on climbing bent, but 
 keep lower down, close to the water; not, however, 
 so near as to reach the point of danger where the spray 
 rises and drenches everything within its range. 
 
 On a shelving rock just above the danger-point 
 mentioned, yet near enough to the sea's level to find 
 interest in watching the onrush of the waves and the 
 backwash roaring through the honeycombed rocks, 
 there sat two figures one bright September afternoon. 
 One was that of a sun-browned, wavy-haired youth, who 
 had taken his straw hat from his head to enjoy the 
 breeze that seemed to finger the hair that a mother's 
 hand had never caressed. His brown eyes were looking 
 .steadily at the sea below him, and his lips met tightly 
 above a well-turned and rather prominent chin. His 
 companion was a dark-haired girl in a light blue dress 
 that spread itself over the rock on which she sat. She 
 
 r8
 
 " The Moonlight Sonata'' 
 
 kept tapping alternately her little brown shoes with 
 her white parasol. Considering their years, the pair 
 were singularly silent. Now and again the youth said 
 something of little moment with a serious air that 
 told of deeper thoughts within. At length he said : — 
 
 "I wonder where I shall be a year hence?" 
 
 The girl looked at him for a moment and replied : — 
 
 "Who can answer a question like that, Fred? Where 
 shall 7 be?" 
 
 " O, you ! You will be going about the same 
 garden in the same way, in the same — no, not in the 
 same dress, for you will have had one or two new ones 
 before then ; you will be playing the same piano, to 
 some one else, no doubt, but" — after a pause — 
 " to no one who will love to hear better than I have 
 done." 
 
 " I don't care much to look into the future." 
 
 " I do," he said, with sudden gravity. 
 
 Passing his hand into his breast-pocket, he took 
 out a straw-coloured circular, which he unfolded in 
 a leisurely fashion and placed in her hands. Its contents 
 seemed unusual, for she bit her under-lip and looked 
 instantly into the brown eyes that looked down at her. 
 
 " So soon ! " she ejaculated. 
 
 "Yes, May. You won't forget me when I'm gone, 
 will you?" 
 
 "Of course not. How can you ask such a 
 question ? " 
 
 "Had not this come I should not have spoken 
 to-day ; but it has, and — I can't help myself." 
 
 He laid his hand over the little restless one that 
 now trifled still more nervously with the parasol, and, 
 without lifting his eyes, went on in a low voice : 
 
 19
 
 The Highway of Hades 
 
 '* We know each other through and through. We are 
 as brother and sister, but in a time hke this one suddenly 
 seems to get keener vision. O, May, you must be as 
 you are when I return — if I do return. I want you to 
 be mine, wholly mine, in years to come. Can you 
 not see that we belong to each other ? " 
 
 " I have never thought otherwise, Fred, although 
 sometimes I have felt that our lives were simply to go 
 on for ever — just as they are ; only sometimes though, 
 for now and again I have stood still because the 
 thought rushed through me, saying distinctly : ' This 
 is not enough,' and, then, Fred, I knew we — well, 
 as you say, belonged to each other. If I have to wait 
 for you for ever — I can wait." 
 
 He glanced up at the camel-shaped fragment of 
 the castle to which Bothwell bore Mary Queen of Scots, 
 then quietly lifted the little hand and kissed it twice — 
 deliberately. 
 
 "Then there is no more to be said," he cried, 
 with a new thrill in his voice; and, leaping up, he 
 stretched out both hands, helped her to rise, and 
 took her arm as he guided her over the uneven rocks. 
 They passed through the town into the country. A 
 strange liberation of speech had come upon the two. 
 They talked as they never before had done, and it was 
 only too evident that, in spite of what she had said an 
 hour ago, she did look into the future. It coloured all 
 her thoughts and filled her heart to the full. After 
 a long walk that seemed all too short they came to 
 a large farmhouse. Affluence and good taste were 
 written legibly everywhere, from the broad flower- 
 bordered avenue that led to it, the trim lawn that 
 fronted it, up to the handsome bow-windowed rooms on 
 
 20
 
 " The Moonlight Sonata " 
 
 each side of the spacious hall. The two entered one of 
 the rooms, and, sitting down just as she was, May 
 ran her fingers over the keys of the boudoir-grand piano 
 that filled a recess, then played — exactly as it should be 
 — MacDowell's "A Wild Rose." By this time the sun 
 had sunk low in the west, and a broad moon was 
 rising, very slowly to all appearance. But May needed 
 little light ; what music she learned she had the gift to 
 remember, no matter what it was. As for Fred, he had 
 an intense appreciation of all she played. Not that he 
 was what is technically called a musician. He was 
 rather one who, in Wordsworth's language, was " Con- 
 tented if he might enjoy The things which others under- 
 stand." When she had finished the exquisite little 
 piece he came and stood over the piano and said, softly, 
 " Play ' The Moonlight Sonata.' You know how I love 
 it." And she did. 
 
 Having left our young people on excellent terms with 
 each other, it is more than time to tell the reader 
 something about how they came together. More than 
 twenty years before the time of which we write Fred 
 Vernon's father and May Henderland's were the closest 
 of friends. They had studied together, the one engineer- 
 ing and the other agriculture. In course of time Vernon 
 accepted a lucrative appointment in the great steel 
 district of Pennsylvania, and Henderland went back to 
 East Lothian to look after the " red soil " farm that had 
 been tilled by his family for three generations. Vernon 
 went to the United States not without trepidation, 
 which was increased by the fact that he took with him 
 his young wife, a slender, beautiful girl from Devonshire. 
 Before going, his friend took his hand in both of his 
 own and said : " My future is secure ; yours is scarcely 
 
 21 B^
 
 The Highway of Hades 
 
 so ; remember that, whatever comes to you, if I can do 
 anything for you, count on me to do so. I don't mean 
 make myself useful to you in little things, but literally 
 anything : you must rely on my doing it." 
 
 In giving birth to Fred a year later the young mother 
 died, and the husband tried to drown his acute sorrow 
 in hard work. It was not to seek, for though money 
 is flowing as freely as the Ohio hard by, and all workers 
 in the Pittsburg district may finger it plentifully, the 
 labour makes a fell demand on every worker. His 
 appointment was a good one to start with, and he was 
 promoted rapidly, but he withered visibly in the grime 
 and smoke and heat of M'Keesport. Some few years 
 later he followed his wife to the grave, leaving his 
 little son to the care of the best friend he had on earth 
 — the farmer, who had no son of his own, and only one 
 daughter. Henderland was as good as his word, and 
 the boy was as much one of the family as if he had 
 been born under the broad roof of Mains farmhouse. 
 
 Fred was now eighteen, and he was "called up." He 
 need not be followed through his course of training. 
 Suffice it to say that after a course at one of the Oxford 
 colleges — strangely enough called after the Prince of 
 Peace — and practical courses at two schools of flying, 
 he appeared suddenly in East Lothian one October 
 morning. He strode up the avenue proudly, to find 
 May and the greeve in the garden, relieving the trees of 
 their burden of rosy and yellow apples. 
 
 " Good morning, James ! " he cried to the greeve. 
 
 May's colour heightened as she straightened herself 
 over her well-filled basket. Going up to him with a wel- 
 coming smile she kissed him, and then held him back 
 from her. Looking over his tunic, she cried out gaily : 
 
 22
 
 The Moonlizht Sonata' 
 
 v> 
 
 " O, Fred, and you've got your wings ! " 
 
 " Yes, to bear me away from you too soon, May ; for 
 I'm on short leave and will be in France next week." 
 
 She caught her breath a little at this announcement, 
 but looked, nevertheless, proud and happy. The two 
 had turned along a pathway between high box borders. 
 When they found themselves quite alone Fred said, 
 in his manly, simple way : 
 
 " But I've got something more than my wings. These 
 bear me away ; this brings me to mind." 
 
 Taking out a little parcel from his pocket, he unrolled 
 the tissue paper in which a tiny box was wrapped up. 
 Lifting her left hand, he drew off her gardening- 
 glove and slipped a ring on her finger. Two diamonds 
 mounted guard over the central ruby that made May's 
 finger look whiter than before. 
 
 A few days and he was gone. 
 
 One night, ten months later. May stole into the 
 drawing-room, lured by she knew not what. She had 
 been at a distant farm, and had returned much later 
 than she had intended. Something strange awoke 
 within her. Nothing seemed to matter but one thing — 
 the safety of her lover ; and that night she felt curiously 
 near him. She opened the piano and played "The 
 Moonlight Sonata" as she felt she never had before, 
 remembering how he loved it. Then she sat a moment 
 quite still, till her father, who sat with a book in his 
 hand, awoke her from her trance by saying, " You never 
 played better in your life. May." 
 
 At that very hour in France a pilot was some dozen 
 miles over the German lines on a night-bombing raid. 
 
 23
 
 The Highway of Hades 
 
 He had discharged his fateful cargo, and was making 
 for home. Suddenly he was caught in the glare of 
 a flashlight, then in another, and yet another. It was 
 blinding. He tried to evade them, one by one, in all 
 manner of ways, only, however, to be caught again, first 
 by one and then by the others. Do what he could, 
 diving and twisting, he found it impossible to escape 
 from them. All the time the "Archies" were going 
 strong. Despairing of escape, he at length shut off his 
 engine and fell a few thousand feet. Giving up all 
 hope, he was preparing to crash. When about five 
 hundred feet above ground he suddenly became aware 
 that he was once more in darkness. Glancing up, sure 
 enough the searchlights were far above him, moving 
 quickly to and fro, seeking their prey. A gleam of 
 hope came to him. Turning his plane's nose up, he 
 made off at a somewhat low altitude, alighting in 
 due time where the flares welcomed him back to the 
 aerodrome. On stepping out he could scarcely stand. 
 He was long in sleeping that night, but when he dozed 
 off at last certain beautiful strains kept sauntering along 
 the confines of his consciousness, and his last thought 
 was, " Perhaps she is playing // now." 
 
 A week later May received a letter in which he told 
 her something of his latest peril, and ended by saying 
 he would be home in three days. Great is the power of 
 the East Lothian farmer, for the London train known as 
 "The Fly" stopped one evening at Dunbar, although 
 the time-tables were silent on the subject. She was 
 there to meet him, and she herself drove him home — 
 the happiest of men. The following evening, when the 
 two found themselves alone, he said — 
 
 "The best of it is, May, that I'm home for six 
 24
 
 •' The Moonlight Sonata " 
 
 months at least — that is to say, I'll be sent to some 
 school to teach others to fly and to shoot." 
 " O, Fred ! You didn't tell us last night." 
 "No; I wished to tell you all by yourself. May, 
 don't you think we've waited long enough ? " 
 
 She made no answer, but rose and looked at the 
 setting sun ; then she went to the piano, and played 
 "The Moonlight Sonata" — yes, the sonata in all its 
 fullness and beauty, passing from the dreamy glamour 
 of the first movement to the subdued gaiety of the 
 second, and on to the insistent, questioning, rebellious 
 third, coming to a close, as it does, on what sounds like 
 a great note of interrogation. It was a curious thing to 
 do — more curious still that she did not at the moment 
 consider it so. After a pause, she looked over her 
 shoulder, and said, " The answer, Fred, is ' Yes ! ' " 
 But much had come between question and answer, for 
 Fred was now standing where she had been at the 
 window, looking into the west. Quoting the haunting 
 line of John of Gaunt, he said, slowly — 
 
 " The setting sun and music at the close" 
 
 As he turned round he said : 
 " The close of what, May ? " 
 "Of my waiting," she said, flying towards him. 
 " And of the hunger of my love. May." 
 
 25
 
 Still m France 
 ( 191 7) 
 
 A ND is he still in France? 
 ''■ -^ Yes, still in France ; 
 And will be as the years advance 
 Still, still in France ! 
 
 Not in the green land of his birth, 
 But in the grey, shell-bitten earth 
 He lies, — his bravery done. 
 And all his traffic underneath the sun ; 
 
 On his now quiet breast, 
 
 Hallowing his rest — 
 Symbol of his undying gain — 
 Enriching our poor human pain, 
 
 And making nobler our transfigured loss, 
 
 A wooden Cross ! 
 
 26
 
 Below 
 (1915) 
 
 "Great credit is due to the encine-room staff." 
 
 — Admiral Beattv. 
 
 I HE man who's down below 
 ■*• Sees nothing of the show ; 
 He's only got to do his bit and wait : 
 With his eye upon the dial, 
 It's a devil of a trial 
 Blindly to bear the onsets of his fate. 
 
 Yes, he's buried in the deep, 
 
 And he can't have even a peep 
 At the things that make the blood run fast and proud 
 
 His prison walls are thick, 
 
 And a lesser man were sick 
 To know he could not mingle with the crov/d. 
 
 So his colour comes and goes, 
 
 As he gives a thought to those 
 Who are trusting to his skill and honour bright ; 
 
 He reckons he is there, 
 
 And he doesn't turn a hair. 
 Though he knows he's in the bowels of the fight. 
 
 By the churning of the screw 
 
 He gets a kind o' clew 
 That they're jinking all they can the submarines ; 
 
 For, beneath the water-line, 
 
 He can tap the secret sign, 
 And he has a pretty inkling what it means.
 
 The Highway of Hades 
 
 He trusts the Bridge above, 
 
 And he thinks but little of 
 The dangers that beset him in his den ; 
 
 The signals tell him some, 
 
 And he's sure there's more to come — 
 What, the worst ? Well, it happens to all men ! 
 
 And so, within his cage. 
 
 Oil-spray and pressure-gauge, 
 And drone of turbine occupy his mind: 
 
 He doesn't see the show, 
 
 But this we surely know, 
 He's the bravest man of any you can find. 
 
 28
 
 Seco7td Lieut, Joh?? Hogbe72 Hisiop 
 
 15th Royal Scots. Died of wounds 
 received in France, nth April 1917. 
 
 (191 7) 
 
 I HE measure of his life 
 
 ■*■ With heavenly vintage filled he to the brim ; 
 Dying a soldier's death though hating strife, 
 We dare not mourn for him ; 
 
 But list, while memory tells 
 How love enriched his gay and radiant powers — 
 All yearning towards the Kingdom where he dwells — 
 
 And try to make it ours. 
 
 29
 
 The Transport 
 (1915) 
 
 I NTO the void, we know not whence nor where, 
 
 Moves the vast ship along its liquid way ; 
 But the great heart and arms of England care 
 
 For all its perilous goings night and day. 
 Go with it all our prayers, for the decks 
 
 Carry a freight of brave and loyal hearts : 
 No Huns are these whose lust the world may vex. 
 
 But such as, righting wrong, must play their parts. 
 The stars watch over them, and women's sighs 
 
 Follow them close ; and thrilling through their dreams, 
 To them, and for them, come the children's cries ; 
 And all their future dim an exile seems : 
 Yet proud they go, with eyes heroic lit. 
 Knowing no way but this, nor fearing it. 
 
 30
 
 Wa7^ a7id Music 
 (1915) 
 
 AX/ HEN Lord Roberts died in France on nth 
 ^ " November 19 14, more than one journalist 
 announced the fact that our great soldier passed, as he 
 himself would have desired, within hearing of what they 
 called "the music of the guns." It is quite true that 
 it has been brought home to us, in the fierce conflict 
 under which the earth is now shuddering, that there 
 is a larger and more dreadful appeal to the ear than to 
 the eye. Europe to-day is "full of sound and fury 
 signifying" — everything! But it is little better than 
 a figure of speech, after all, to refer to guns giving forth 
 music. Music, properly so called, has an immense deal 
 to do with war. It sinks into the warrior's heart and 
 awakes tumultuous emotions. From the simple bugle- 
 call upwards it has to do with war's beginning, middle, 
 and end ; and it penetrates far, not only because of 
 its harmony with the heroic, but because, in other 
 moods, it affords a violent contrast to things seen and 
 heard in battle. It awakes memories ; it raises hopes ; 
 it begets physical and spiritual passion. It is perhaps 
 impossible for one who has not been actually on the 
 stricken field to realise how much music means to the 
 soldier. If the "adamantine lips" of the guns are 
 
 31
 
 The Highway of Hades 
 
 to be regarded as uttering the authentic voice of war, 
 surely music is its finer breath and inspiration. 
 
 Consider how close the association is. At Reveille, 
 music comes upon the sleeper with, it may be, "Hey, 
 Johnnie Cope, are ye wauking yet"; at the close of 
 the day, "Lights out" puts Tommy to sleep with, it 
 may be, "Over the sea to Skye." The intervening 
 day hears other strains. "The Trumpets call Hot 
 Mars to the harvest of Death's field" are Crashaw's 
 words. The bugle-calls are, no doubt, the simplest 
 forms of martial music, but what other calling is so 
 effectual? In the long tiresome march, "when the 
 band begins to play " heads rise higher and limbs beget 
 fresh vigour. It matters not how willing men may be, 
 without music, after a time, the step slackens. Music 
 revives the spirits like nothing else. If there be no 
 band there may be a piper, if no piper the steady beat 
 of a drum will work miracles. If there be no band, 
 no piper, no drum, the men will swing along to their 
 own singing — be it only of the "Long, long way to 
 Tipperary." 
 
 At Loos the other day a Cameron Highlander 
 showed how, in the absence of better things, he and 
 his companions could hearten themselves in very 
 simple fashion. "We got into line," he writes, "near 
 the foot of Hill 70. For miles there was open country, 
 and we advanced in a long line and up the hill. It 
 was an irresistible line, and two chaps alongside me 
 out with mouth-organs and played 'The March of the 
 Cameron Men,' and nearly all of us lit cigarettes and 
 pushed on." We see that music gives the fillip required, 
 which nothing else perhaps could do. No doubt one 
 requires to be a Celt to appreciate fully the Scots 
 
 32
 
 War and Ahisic 
 
 bagpipes, but men of the blood would dare anything 
 under its strains. You remember Byron's lines on 
 Waterloo : — 
 
 And wild and high the " Cameron's Gathering " rose ! 
 The war-note of Locliiel, which Albyn's hills 
 Have heard, and heard, too, have her Saxon foes : — 
 How in the noon of night that pibroch thrills, 
 Savage and shrill ! But with the breath which fills 
 Their mountain pipe, so fill the mountaineers 
 With the fierce native daring which instils 
 The stirring memory of a thousand years. 
 And Evan's — Donald's — fame rings in each clansman's ears ! 
 
 We are all thinking of Loos at present, and who can 
 forget the Buckhaven piper laddie — let him be named — 
 David Simpson, 2nd Battalion, Black Watch? "All 
 through the battle roar," it is written, "the pip of the 
 machine guns, the frenzied cries of men, rang the soul- 
 stirring notes of the charge by the piper, at once a 
 stimulus and a rallying call to every man wearing the 
 red hackle. Three lines of German trenches fell to that 
 fierce assault. The ranks had a breather. Men were 
 busy putting the trench in order for defence when the 
 command came down the line to have a try for a fourth. 
 Piper Simpson at once got his pipes in position, turned 
 to his company with the cry, ' Come on, boys ! ' and 
 striking up the battle tune of the Black Watch, again 
 ran playing towards the foe. He took ten or twelve 
 paces, a bullet through the breast brought him down, 
 and with the exultant yell of his triumphant comrades in 
 his ears he died." One of the enemy at least knew 
 that there was no more deadly weapon in war than the 
 pipes. Then there was Piper Laidlaw, whose winning 
 of the Victoria Cross has been commemorated in song 
 
 33 c
 
 The Highway of Hades 
 
 by Canon Rawnsley. Neil Munro, too, has told us 
 how, somewhere near Arras, "no fewer than half a 
 hundred pipers played the retreat." There is a place 
 even for the banjo in war-music, as Kipling reminds us : — 
 
 You couldn't pack a Broadwood half a mile — 
 
 You mustn't leave a fiddle in the damp — 
 You couldn't raft an organ up the Nile, 
 
 And play it in an Equatorial swamp. 
 / travel with the cooking-pots and pails — 
 
 rm sandwiched 'tween the coffee and the pork — 
 And when the dusty column checks and tails, 
 
 You should hear me spur the rearguard to a walk ! 
 
 Such is music, then, which stirs as well as soothes 
 a savage breast — a thing it is, in Milton's words, to 
 "create a soul under the ribs of death." Elsewhere, 
 not mincing his words, Milton speaks of harmony 
 " suspending Hell." Montaigne uses the right adjective 
 assuredly when he speaks of "the encouraging ha.Tmony 
 of martial music." 
 
 The subject is a very wide one and can only be 
 touched upon. Every nation worthy of the name has 
 its national anthem — some strain begotten, more or 
 less, in a fury of emotion — and these anthems have 
 a place in War. One need but think of Za Marseillaise 
 (1792) as perhaps the most outstanding example. Here 
 we have words and music rushing together, and coming 
 rapidly and at white heat from the heart of the young 
 Strasburg garrison officer, Claude Joseph Rouget de 
 Lisle. The music of our own national anthem is stately 
 rather than fiery, and La Brabanconne (1830), the 
 Belgian anthem, by Francois van Campenhout, thougli 
 by no means in the grand manner, is full of gay bravery ; 
 while Boshe Zaria C/zrani (18$;^), the Russian anthem, 
 
 34
 
 War and Music 
 
 by General Alexis Livoff, has a sombre grandeur which 
 alone among the great National Anthems conveys any- 
 thing like an adequate sense of the tragedy of war as 
 well as the aspirations of a long-suffering people. These 
 are the strains from which some of our Allies gather 
 their inspiration and daring. "Scots wha hae," of 
 course, occupies a high place among calls to battle. 
 
 To return to the subject of march-music, we can 
 readily see that time counts for more than beauty. We 
 need not be musical to feel that the throb of the drum 
 determines the length of our step, whether that throb be 
 heard in " March, march, Ettrick and Teviotdale," 
 "The March of the Men of Harlech," or "The 
 Hundred Pipers." Lord Macaulay was probably not 
 so "fit for treasons, stratagems, and spoils" as Dr 
 Johnson, who considered music to be only the least 
 disagreeable of all noises, but the historian's biographer, 
 speaking of Macaulay's recognition of " The Campbells 
 are Coming " when played at a dinner-party at Windsor, 
 declares this to be the solitary instance on which it 
 is recorded he knew one tune from another ; yet think 
 of the stately march of his own verse. 
 
 ^ In dealing with the place of music in war, or indeed 
 in anything else, it is difficult to dissociate word and 
 sound. What kind of farewell would the mere words 
 (heard for the first time) of "Auld Lang Syne," or 
 "The Girl I left behind me," or "Will ye no come 
 back again " be to the majority of our boys when the 
 trains at many a railway station in these days are drawing 
 them from our vision, but not from our prayers and 
 love? It is because the words have been associated, 
 alike with the well-known strains and with all the years 
 we have known, that they embody so passionate a Fare- 
 
 35
 
 The Highway of Hades 
 
 well — "a word that must be and hath been," as the 
 poet need not have reminded us. The airs of childhood 
 fall with a strange thrill of pathos on dying ears, or on 
 living ears that hear Death calling, calling everywhere 
 around them ; and if we are tempted to think that an 
 air is an air in spite of words we have but to remind our- 
 selves that "Hey tutti taiti" served both Burns and 
 Lady Nairne in "Scots wha hae" and "The Land o' 
 the Leal " — songs profoundly far apart from each other. 
 
 In considering this subject we think, too, of days 
 long gone, when Moses was commanded to make 
 " trumpets of silver for the journeyings of the camp " ; 
 when words and music welled forth together from the 
 lips of Deborah in her war-song of thanksgiving, which 
 has one of the finest touches in all literature in it : 
 "The Mother of Sisera looked out at a window, and 
 cried through the lattice, 'Why is his chariot so long 
 in coming ? Why tarry the wheels of his chariots ? ' " 
 Surely this is one of poetry's " Magic casements " ! 
 Through the thousands of years, as in clear shining 
 after rain, we see Miriam, timbrel in hand, singing her 
 song of victory. It was at a time of perplexity that 
 Elisha said, " Bring me a minstrel," and it was while 
 the music was sounding that the prophecy of victory 
 in war came to him. The Bible is full of instances. 
 These are but a few that will readily occur to everyone. 
 
 The glories of martial music have been sung in stately 
 fashion by Collins, Dryden, and Pope, and many others 
 in days nearer our own have added to the chorus of praise. 
 
 Mark how the soldier's eye 
 Looks proud defiance ! How his heart beats high, 
 With glorious expectation ! What inspires. 
 
 What fans his martia.1 fires ? 
 
 36
 
 Wa7' mid Music 
 
 What but the power of sound ! 
 The clam'rous drums his anxious ardor raise, 
 
 His blood flows quicker round, 
 At once he hears, he feels, enjoys, obeys. 
 
 A phrase in these lines by Samuel Bishop served 
 Wordsworth as a title for a fine but little-read poem 
 which demonstrates the fact that there are occasions 
 when words give the higher place to sounds : 
 
 When civic renovation 
 
 Dawns on a Kingdom, and for needful haste 
 Best eloquence avails not. Inspiration 
 Mounts with a tune that travels like a blast, 
 Piping through cave and battlemented tower ! 
 Then starts the sluggard, pleased to meet 
 That voice of Freedom. 
 
 A notable example of this is to be found in the com- 
 mand Berlioz received from the French Government to 
 celebrate the loth anniversary of the Revolution of 
 July (1830) — to give the event "a musical expression." 
 " If music be the food of love " we have seen that 
 it is the food of war too. Martial music must have a 
 tongue of fire. "Write how you like," said Ibsen to 
 Grieg, "only put devilry into the music." War 
 assuredly requires such a spice in its music. 
 
 It may be said, in view of what has been written here, 
 that War appropriates rather than creates a fitting music 
 for itself, but this is not wholly so, as we shall presently 
 see. "Where words leave off music begins," Heine 
 said — a dictum Mendelssohn reduced to practice in his 
 Lieder ohtie Worte. It is, of course, with war music, 
 not martial poetry, that we are now concerned, although 
 it has been pointed out how thin is the line between 
 them oftentimes. It is often difficult to determine, 
 
 37 c 2
 
 The Highway of Hades 
 
 where words and music both appear, which is the 
 predominant factor. In the realm of higher music — 
 that is to say, mere bugle-notes and drum-taps aside — 
 it can be easily shown that War has occupied an 
 important place and function. Much of Wagner's 
 music vibrates with the ardours of the fight. Is it, by 
 the way, as well known as it might be that Wagner pro- 
 duced, in his early years, an Overture "Rule Britannia" 
 to propitiate the British people ? From " Rienzi " 
 onwards martial music was a thing in which he revelled. 
 Who can forget "The Ride of the Valkyries," for 
 example, and many other things that make the blood 
 run fast and furious. Schumann spoke of his Symphony 
 in C as "more or less clad in armour." Beethoven's 
 "Eroica" Symphony shared the fate of Wordsworth's 
 " Happy Warrior." The latter, as is well known, was 
 inspired by the thought of Nelson, but the hero was not 
 named by the poet because of the Lady Hamilton affair. 
 The " Eroica," according to Ries, bore the word 
 " Bonaparte " on its title-page originally, but for this 
 tremendous single word there was finally substituted 
 the chastened title : " Heroic symphony composed to 
 celebrate the memory of a great man " — Beethoven 
 changing his mind when Bonaparte declared himself 
 Emperor, so making himself, as the master-musician 
 put it, "nothing but an ordinary man." Beethoven 
 often found inspiration in martial heroes. Not only is 
 the " Eroica " full of it, but Coriolanus and Egmont 
 wrought in him a passion which issued in splendid 
 strains. In 1813 he wrote a symphony on Wellington's 
 victory ; in 1814 a martial chorus, "Germany's Re-birth " 
 (what, one wonders, would he have written in 1914?), 
 and many other war pieces too numerous to mention, — 
 
 38
 
 Wa7' and Music 
 
 complaining, as he did, after Jena : " How unfortunate 
 that I do not know as much about warfare as music." 
 How music — music without words, remember — can 
 speak to the martial spirit is well illustrated by the story 
 that is told of Berlioz's version of the "Rak6czy 
 March " — the finest thing of its kind in existence. The 
 "Marseillaise" of Hungary, as it has been called, 
 originally composed by a gipsy named Michael Barna, 
 never fails to make the heart respond. After hearing 
 Berlioz's version played, a man came up to him and 
 said : " Ah, sir, sir ! I am a Hungarian — poor devil — 
 cannot speak French — a little Italian. Pardon my 
 ecstasy. Yes, yes — the great battle — dogs of Germany. 
 Ah ! Frenchman — revolutionary — to know how to 
 make music of revolution." Rossini's "William Tell" 
 march will also occur to many, as also Schubert's 
 " Grande Marche Heroique." Verdi and Tschaikowsky 
 both found inspiration in the prowess of Jeanne d'Arc. 
 Handel drew much of his magic from wars and tumults 
 of war, to which his massive and magnificent powers so 
 well lent themselves. Arthur Somervell has actually a 
 movement " Killed in Action " in his Symphony in I) ; 
 Hamish MacCunn has composed "The Masque of War 
 and Peace " ; Mackenzie has written a " Pibroch " suite 
 for violin and orchestra ; M'Ewen has given us a 
 "Coronach" for orchestra; Stanford's "Revenge" and 
 " The Battle of the Baltic " must not be forgotten, nor 
 " War and Peace," by Parry ; while Elgar found inspira- 
 tion in the present war for his " Carillon " and 
 "Polonia." 
 
 Scotland has had its full share in the production of 
 martial music. Many marches and songs of battle have 
 already been mentioned, but one may recall anew how 
 
 39
 
 The Highway of Hades 
 
 much of war is at the root of our Jacobite airs, and how 
 largely these airs have been employed in war-time. 
 The following deserve mention : " Is your War-pipe 
 asleep, MacCrimmon?" "The Pibroch of Donuil 
 Dhu"; "The Foray"; " Wha daur meddle wi' me "3 
 "Wha wadna fecht for Charlie"; "Galium o' Glen"; 
 "MacGregor's Gathering"; "Hail to the Chief"; 
 "Bonnie Dundee"; "Go fetch to me a Pint o' Wine," 
 and "The Flowers of the Forest" (old air) — considered 
 by Sir Hubert Parry as among the very finest, if not 
 the finest, of folk tunes. These are but a few, and in 
 all of them the music (as well as the language) pertains 
 to war. 
 
 When it is desired to remember our heroic dead by 
 the aid of music, it is mainly to the greater among the 
 composers that we turn for adequate expression of our 
 overwrought emotions, and we do not turn in vain. We 
 have the great Funeral Marches of Beethoven, Handel, 
 Chopin, and Mendelssohn. 
 
 Enough has been written to show how close is 
 the connection between War and Music, and how much 
 war would be like a dumb creature, with eloquent eyes 
 and outstretched hands, panting for means of adequate 
 expression, were it not for Music. Once more — it 
 comes never amiss — let us remind ourselves that in the 
 Quatrain, which seems to have burst from the soldier- 
 heart of Scott like a shell from a gun, it is upon the 
 fife and the clarion, not upon words, that he calls to 
 make his heroic announcement: "Sound, sound the 
 clarion, fill the fife!" 
 
 This article has told, in a somewhat faltering way, 
 how there is no department in war where the voice of 
 
 40
 
 lVa7^ and Music 
 
 music is not heard. From the morning call to arms 
 to the evening laying down of the same the command 
 is given in music. And when the days of fighting are 
 over, what but music should give an added grandeur 
 to the supreme moment ? Keats desired to pass on the 
 wings of a nightingale's song, but a soldier thinks of 
 sterner stuff. If he comes from the battlefield victorious, 
 it is the trumpets that thunder "See, the Conquering 
 Hero comes." If it is only the casquet of the brave 
 soul that returns, it is the pipers' wail of "The Flowers 
 of the Forest" that accompanies it. If the soldier 
 returns — well ! if he returns no more, we are learning in 
 these times to say — It is still well ! Whether to the 
 Abbey, in the last scene of all, or to the simple village 
 graveyard the body is borne, fittingly with music the 
 end comes: — "The setting sun, and music at the close." 
 
 41
 
 Jack in Khaki 
 
 (1916) 
 
 I ^HE Champion of his school he stands, 
 "*■ With brave, brown, ardent eyes ; 
 He leapt at Kitchener's commands, 
 And donned the drab disguise. 
 
 He was the Captain in the field. 
 
 When raged the mimic war ; 
 The first to dare, the last to yield, 
 
 When helping up the score. 
 
 The tug-of-war, long jump or high, 
 
 Cricket, or race, or gym.. 
 Or making golf-ball climb the sky — 
 
 'Twas all the same to him ! 
 
 Now these are ended, one and all, 
 
 And to a sterner game, 
 Obedient to his country's call. 
 
 He lingered not, but came. 
 
 To him, O never fear, shall come 
 
 A happy warrior's joy ; 
 He shall return (God willing) home, 
 
 But nevermore — a boy ! 
 
 42
 
 "^ Ministering Angel Thou'' 
 
 Mrs Jessie F. Dixon fell in action — in combat 
 with Suffering, under the Red Cross Flag. 
 
 (191 7) 
 
 I^WICE hath Death called. Now, when the snow- 
 ■*• drops come, 
 
 Luring our thoughts to Resurrection morn, 
 Thou goest forth from us : our lips are dumb, 
 
 And all our sorrow is again new-born. 
 It is not that thy ministry is gone, — 
 
 A burden that was all too great to bear, — 
 I see thee a celestial livery don. 
 
 In consort with blue eyes and raven hair : 
 'Tis that the earth so needs thee at this hour, 
 
 Brave soul, with arms about the helpless cast. 
 Fulfilling Love's behest, and yet Love's Power — 
 So seems it to us — lays thee low at last, 
 
 And, leaving myriad idlers in the land, 
 Bereaves it of thy tender heart and hand ! 
 
 Long dwell our souls in shadow : will the dawn 
 
 Come soon and tarry ? Shall we see at last 
 That true it is, as saith her favourite Vaughan, 
 
 " Man blossoms at Thy touch," and all the past 
 Take on a radiance it has never known ? 
 
 Shall we be sure that everlasting are 
 The arms that fold us when we sigh or moan, 
 
 That sorrows come to perfect, not to mar ? 
 43
 
 The Highway of Hades 
 
 Ah ! could we soar to this felicity, 
 
 And feel these to be friends, not cruel foes. 
 With such a lovesome faith our lives might be 
 Sweet to the end as is a fading rose. 
 
 Is not this why, when losing what Heaven gave, 
 We build an altar when we dig a grave? 
 
 44
 
 The Flyer 
 (191 7) 
 
 " A DRAGON-FLY up in the blue ! " 
 
 ^ I say to you : 
 
 But you, with arched hands over eyes, 
 Gazing into the sunlit sky, surprise 
 Me with these words : 
 " O king of all the birds, 
 Though raucous be thy voice, 
 I, fearfully, rejoice 
 
 To see thee near the enfolding cloud, 
 With wings spread wide and proud. 
 Lifting thy shining car. 
 While others lightly glance, and care not what you are ! 
 
 If lonely be the hill, 
 
 And lonelier the sea. 
 How much more lonely still 
 
 His lot must surely be 
 Who ventures forth alone. 
 
 Beyond earth's outposts cast. 
 Soaring through dim unknown, 
 
 And shoreless regions vast ! 
 Yet there's a chain 'twixt thee and me — a chain 
 
 With links of love, and pride, and courage rare, 
 As I survey thee with mixed joy and pain, 
 
 For — voyaging through the golden air — 
 
 A son of mine is there ! " 
 45
 
 The Invisible /;; If^ar 
 (1916) 
 
 " 1 HE power of Armies is a visible thing." No one 
 knew better than the writer of these words how 
 incomplete the statement is. Yet the child — and the 
 child is in us all — makes much of the outer display, the 
 "plumed troops," the "neighing steeds," the "royal 
 banner," and all the " Pride, pomp, and circumstance 
 of glorious war" to which Othello — who was no child 
 in the common sense — found it so difficult to say 
 Farewell. 
 
 War, as it is fought in these days, is much less of a 
 pageant than it was. It is, of course, still a visible 
 thing in spite of all, but every effort is made to reduce 
 or destroy all that is visible. In the old words of 
 Habbukuk : "There was the hiding of his power." 
 Neither on land nor at sea is war so spectacular as of 
 yore. It has indeed become largely a process and 
 problem of concealment. Colour has gone from it. 
 Red coats have been discarded, busbies and feathers 
 are no more, except on parade ; and as for sea-fights, 
 the terraced ships with which Nelson won his victories 
 have given place to low-lying craft of dingy hue, and 
 in the case of submarines — those wasps of the sea — to 
 such engines of war as disappear from vision altogether. 
 As for the extended Hne, it is apt to be one that digs 
 itself into trenches, leaving only the charges and 
 
 46
 
 The Invisible in War 
 
 countercharges (often, however, made in the night-time) 
 with any heroic beauty in them. The sniper is painted 
 green or arrayed in vestments of leaves. Smokeless 
 powder, too, has made havoc of the painter's art in war, 
 for without the rolling smoke the military picture, 
 whether in pigments or words, loses much. In short, 
 modern science has all but killed display in war. But 
 if it has robbed the eye of a great deal it has left much 
 for the ear to hear. " Battles in this war," writes 
 Mr John Buchan, " are not pictures for the eye. They 
 are assaults on the ear, and that never-ending growl of 
 artillery conveys a grimmer impression to the brain 
 than any spectacle." If to-day we were to place words 
 in the warrior's mouth, they would be something like 
 these : "I fear no foe in shining armour, but I fear the 
 dust-coloured man out of sight." "The mud-hued 
 man " would not, it is true, be a taking or heroic title 
 for a baritone song suitable for singing in sheltered 
 drawing-rooms, but it is as answering to such a designa- 
 tion that our braves go forth to fight for King and 
 Country — dressed usefully and cunningly, if not showily. 
 Khaki has ruined no end of colour-schemes — so dear to 
 the artist. We see, then, that we have made the 
 activities of war as invisible as possible, yet a battle 
 remains a tremendously visible thing when all is said 
 and done; so visible, indeed, that we are apt, in 
 Shakspere's words, to " Esteem no act but that of 
 hand," and to forget 
 
 The still and mental parts 
 That do contrive how many hands shall strike, 
 When fitness calls them on ; and know by measure 
 Of their observant toil, the enemies' weight. 
 
 All this the thoughtless are prone to regard as having 
 
 47
 
 The Highway of Hades 
 
 not "a finger's dignity," calling it "bed-work, mappery, 
 closet-war." There are invisible forces as truly as there 
 are visible — the will behind the deed, the brain behind 
 the battle array. The war that the eye sees or the ear 
 hears is the outcome of the invisible that gives it birth 
 and continued being. In older and better words : " The 
 things which are seen were not made of things which 
 do appear"; they are the embodiment of the unseen. 
 But there is a subtler thing still than the silent, 
 invisible thinking out of battles, or the great war-game 
 tabulated out of sight at the Headquarters of armies. 
 There is an invisible sword of the spirit as well as that 
 of the visible right hand. There is the vital force that 
 resides in the hearts of soldiers, and there are the 
 great ideals for which the fight stands : 
 
 O'erweening statesmen have full long relied 
 On fleets and armies and external wealth, 
 But from within proceeds a Nation's health ; 
 
 and without health — physical, mental, moral — what 
 hope is there of victory? Fleets, armies, wealth, are 
 great factors, but behind these there must be the 
 driving power and the vision which are of the spirit. 
 In Franz Adam Beyerlein's much read novel Jena or 
 Sedan, it is said of those who were drastically dealing 
 with the Socialists : " They could Confiscate red rosettes 
 and pamphlets ; but how could they control transient, 
 intangible thoughts?" The conqueror's power is 
 limited : he can take a country or a people captive but 
 he cannot kill " the hereditary will." 
 
 Vain mightiest fleets of iron framed ; 
 
 Vain those all-shattering guns ; 
 Unless proud England keeps, untamed, 
 
 The strong heart of her sons. 
 48
 
 The Invisible in War 
 
 In the present war it is not too much to say that it is 
 the invisible things that will win. " One invisible ally," 
 says a writer in the Nation (American), "has all along 
 fought against Germany, and still presses her back. 
 This is the adverse moral judgment of impartial men." 
 The Huns may go on their way, to use Shelley's 
 wonderfully apt words, 
 
 Blotting the glowing footsteps of old glory ; 
 
 Trampling our columned cities into dust ; 
 
 Their dull and savage lust 
 On beauty's corse to sickness satiating ; 
 
 but beside these words, those of Kipling must find a 
 
 place : 
 
 Ultimate issues, primal springs 
 
 Demands, abasements, penalties, 
 The imperishable plinth of things, 
 
 Seen and unseen, that touch our peace. 
 
 And that base is not material but spiritual and undying 
 — changing it may be, in outer form and development, 
 but in its essence and inmost strength the same and 
 indestructible, for in Wordsworth's phrase, " Virtue and 
 the faculties within are vital." We British are no saints, 
 God knows, and we cannot claim success because we 
 are saints, yet we are aware strongly and overwhelmingly, 
 that what lies at the root of this war of aggression 
 is alien to our best selves, and that we fight for some- 
 thing that we feel rather than know, some supreme 
 ideal hidden deep in mind and heart from common 
 sight, in touch not so much with us as with that Invisible 
 Hand at work in ways beyond our understanding. As 
 General Smuts so well expressed it in one of his 
 speeches : " Silent and invisible forces are fighting on 
 our side. Our cause is greater than ourselves." We 
 
 49 D
 
 The Highvoay of Hades 
 
 think, too, at such a time of Mark Rutherford's 
 profound words : " The Hope which is support is 
 based on something below anything which can be 
 brought to visibility." 
 
 In closing one of his Guildhall speeches Mr Asquith 
 used these impressive words : " We have noble com- 
 rades in arms, but we have other great allies ; none the 
 less potent because they are invisible, among them 
 man's unconquerable mind." In none of the newspaper 
 reports did the last three words appear within inverted 
 commas, but the Prime Minister had probably in mind 
 when he uttered them Wordsworth's superb sonnet, 
 "To Toussaint L'Ouverture," written in 1802, rather 
 than the passage in Gray's " Progress of Poesy " in 
 which the same words occur. The sonnet concludes 
 
 thus : — 
 
 Thou has left behind 
 Powers that will work for thee ; air, earth and skies ; 
 There's not a breathing of the common wind 
 That will forget thee ; thou hast great allies ; 
 Thy friends are exaltations, agonies. 
 And Love, and man's unconquerable mind. 
 
 Can the matter be better put than it is in Swinburne's 
 "A Year's Burden"?— 
 
 Are ye so strong, O Kings, O strong men ? Nay, 
 Waste all ye will, and gather all ye may : 
 Yet one thing is there that ye shall not slay — 
 Even thought, that fire nor iron can affright. 
 The woundless and invisible thought that goes 
 Free throughout time as north and south wind blows, 
 Far throughout space as east and west sea flows, 
 And all dark things before it are made light. 
 
 50
 
 The Woma7i of Two Fields 
 
 (1917) 
 
 " I found her wringing the hands of some of our stolid chaps 
 in 13, and couldn't make it out. Then she told me, half sobbing, 
 how she owned a couple of fields just beyond our old front line, 
 and how she wanted to thank us for getting them back. Think 
 of it ! Think what those fields must have been in the Spring 
 of 1914, and what they are to-day — every yard of 'em torn by shells, 
 burrowed through and through by old trenches and dug-outs ; 
 think of the hundreds of tons of wire, sandbags, timber, galvanized 
 iron, duckboards ... all in the old lady's two little fields." — 
 Letter from an English officer to a brother officer invalided home, 
 Scotsman, 29th July 1916. 
 
 I "WO little fair green fields she once had known, 
 -*- Perhaps since childhood, as her very own ; 
 Beset with herbage and with poplar trees, 
 And irised o'er with myriad memories : — 
 
 What joy the prospect yields ! 
 Spring came and clothed them with new verdure lush, 
 While mating birds sang in the evening's hush. 
 Summer and Autumn, when her work was done, 
 She sat beside her door at set of sun, — 
 
 The Woman of Two Fields ! 
 
 To-morrow brought the damned blight of war — 
 And what was left to thank the victors for ? 
 "These are her fields no more," the passers say, 
 " Nought but a tortured, leafless heap of clay ! " 
 
 What a grim flail Death wields ! 
 Yet through the abandoned battle-ground again, 
 She scents the earth renewed and sweet with rain : 
 For you will rise straight blade, and corn once more 
 Will fill your needed, modest Winter's store, 
 
 O Woman of Two Fields ! 
 51
 
 Neutral 
 
 Spoken in the name of the Allies. 
 (1916) 
 
 T-J ER spawn of spies — forerunners — filled the world ; 
 
 "■■ ^ Right from its ancient pedestal was hurled ; 
 
 Rapine and lust, twin-sisters, followed fast 
 
 Upon her cloven footprints as she passed 
 
 From fury unto fury, demon-driven, 
 
 Vaunting the while her kinship still with Heaven ; 
 
 She broke on every hand the laws of war ; 
 
 Fair chivalry forsook her evermore : 
 
 She turned and smote each gallant little land 
 
 That to the death took up its valorous stand 
 
 In front of her amazing march of Hell, 
 
 Till, loyal to the last, each, fighting, fell. 
 
 To stay her course, — was it not Freedom's task ? 
 
 " How shall I help?" surely the thing to ask. 
 
 We fought the whole world's battle, yet there stood 
 
 Her future victims in a doubting mood, — 
 
 Faint calling on the god of war to cease, 
 
 While smoking their war-gilded pipes of peace : 
 
 Some were too proud to fight; too timid some; 
 
 Much cried for protest — but their lips were dumb : 
 
 As if, forsooth, morality were dead, 
 
 And devil-worship reigned alone instead ; 
 
 As if — and this the years to come will show — 
 
 To save their own our braver blood must flow. 
 
 On Europe's chart, as it is known to-day, 
 
 Satanic fingers hellish pigments lay : 
 
 'Tis monstrous, surely, crimson crimes' imprint 
 
 Should neighbour be to any neutral tint ! 
 
 52
 
 The Call 
 (1914) 
 
 WEE, on upholding waves of willing seas 
 
 ^■^ That circle us, the valiant ones stream forth ; 
 
 Leaving their homes of industry or ease. 
 
 From farthest West and East, from South and North ! 
 The aged Mother needs you ; hear her call : 
 Her children leap and answer — one and all ! 
 
 Not ours the choice. We go where duty leads, 
 
 White-handed and clean-hearted to the fight, — 
 The happy warriors in a realm that bleeds, — 
 To cleave out Morning from the perilous Night. 
 Think you we falter as we meet the Hun ? 
 Not till the day dawn and the work is done ! 
 
 53
 
 Louvain 
 (1914) 
 
 The Kaiser is alleged to have addressed a communica- 
 tion to President Wilson, of the United States, which con- 
 tained the remarkable words : " My heart bleeds for 
 Louvain." 
 
 T) YRON, 'twas said, paraded passing well 
 ■^ The moving pageant of his bleeding heart ; 
 But from base metal in profounder Hell 
 This man forged pity with a demon's art ! 
 
 54
 
 Scottish Poets 07t War 
 (1915) 
 
 A PLEASANTLY discursive writer recently remarked 
 '^ ^ on what he called the "interesting fact that 
 the greatest war -songs in the English language were 
 composed by three Scottish poets — Burns, Thomson, 
 and Campbell." The writer had obviously in view 
 "Scots wha hae," "Rule Britannia," and "Ye Mariners 
 of England." 
 
 It is not the intention here and now to discuss the 
 truth, or otherwise, of the statement made. Much less 
 can room be afforded or inclination fostered, for debate 
 over Henley's verdict on Burns's virile version of Bruce's 
 address at Bannockburn ; or for the revival of the old con- 
 troversy concerning the authorship of " Rule Britannia." 
 As for Campbell's place as a writer of war ballads, it is, 
 of course, high and secure. The more general question 
 of how far Scottish poets have been able to contribute 
 to the poetry of war is one too wide to obtain in these 
 pages anything like the notice it deserves. A few 
 remarks, however, on the subject may not be out of 
 place. 
 
 One is disposed in a midsummer-day mood, sur- 
 rounded by beauty and peace, to feel that poetry and 
 war are wide apart, and that there is some vital principle 
 underlying the words of a recent writer in the Times 
 who declares that "the top notes of human life and 
 
 55
 
 The Highway of Hades 
 
 conduct can be but sparingly sung, or they grate on 
 the nerves, and jar the hearing of the singer, no less 
 than his listener . . , and that frontal attacks to capture 
 heroism and imprison it in art are almost always failures." 
 But if we wait, the mood changes, slowly, surely, and 
 we see behind the outer heroism, the ideals and the 
 sacrifices and all that these mean to, and can legitimately 
 claim from art. So, too, we see, or rather feel, the 
 truth that is at work in that exquisite yet terrible passage 
 in Ruskin's Modern Painters in which it is written : 
 "I ask their witness, to whom war has changed the 
 aspect of the earth, and imagery of heaven, whose 
 hopes it has cut off like a spider's web, whose treasure 
 it has placed, in a moment, under the seals of clay. 
 Those who can never more see sunrise, nor watch the 
 climbing light gild the Eastern clouds without thinking 
 what graves it has gilded first, far beneath the dark 
 earth-line — who never more shall see the crocus bloom 
 in spring without thinking what dust it is that feeds 
 the wild flowers of Balaclava. Ask their witness, and 
 see if they will not reply that it is well with them and 
 with theirs ; that they would have it no otherwise ; 
 would not, if they might, receive back their gifts of love 
 and life, nor take again the purple of their blood out of 
 the cross on the breastplate of England." No doubt 
 this is a hard saying to many, and it may seem to flow 
 all too easily from the lips of those who have them- 
 selves never been tested. Nevertheless is it spoken 
 in sad sincerity by Ruskin, and it will find a brave 
 response in many stricken hearts. 
 
 The heroic poetry of Scotland was, for the most part, 
 cradled on the dark waters of the deathless ballads. 
 J. B. Selkirk has described them as born of "that 
 
 56
 
 Scottish Poets on War 
 
 divine breath which passed over the Borderland, awoke 
 the Silent Memnon of her muse and passed into 
 silence again." But there is too much mere magic 
 implied in all this. Nevertheless, while the ballads, 
 doubtless, passed through many minds, receiving here 
 a little and there a little, there is a very real sense 
 in which Andrew Lang's words may be accepted as 
 true — "The heart of humanity is their maker," They 
 are the lingering, haunting voice in our ears of "old, 
 unhappy, far-off things and battles long ago." It may 
 be that many poets have shared the opinion of Keats — 
 who himself was no coward— in holding that — 
 
 The silver flow 
 Of Hero's tears, the swoon of Imogen, 
 Fair Pastorella in the bandit's den 
 Are things to brood on with more ardency 
 Than the death-day of empires. 
 
 Yet much of the poetry of the world has been due to 
 conflict dire and long, and the blood quickens as we 
 read the record in song. 
 
 If we have nothing written by a Scotsman on the 
 subject of war, and those who engage therein, equal 
 to Wordsworth's " Happy Warrior," we have, none the 
 less, much of which we may well feel proud. Let us 
 look for a moment at some of the war-poetry of the 
 three Scottish poets named — Burns, Thomson, and 
 Campbell. In Burns's poetry, which, by the way, has 
 much in it to show the poet's dislike to war as war, 
 there are abundant sympathetic references to what he 
 calls the "poor but honest sodjer." We have, among 
 other pieces too numerous to mention, his hearty 
 rally, "The Dumfries Volunteers" — with its stanza so 
 applicable to those days in which we live — when the 
 
 57
 
 The Highway of Hades 
 
 enemy began war by counting among his allies British 
 Home quarrels and Colonial disruption : 
 
 O let us not like snarling tykes 
 
 In wrangling be divided, 
 Till slap ! come in an unco' loon, 
 
 An' wi' a rung decide it. 
 Be Britain still to Britain true, 
 
 Amang oursels united ; 
 For never but by British hands 
 
 Maun British wrangs be righted ! 
 
 There are also " Farewell, thou fair day," " I am a Son 
 of Mars," and "The Soldier's Return." There is, too, 
 the inevitable remembrance of the girl left behind in 
 " Go fetch to me a pint of wine," while " the shouts o' 
 war are heard afar." But, after all, "Scots wha hae" 
 overtops all else in this direction. 
 
 The muse of James Thomson was not chiefly of a 
 heroic type. In his "Nuptial Song" he laments that 
 " the furious god of war " has so long " crushed us with 
 his iron car." VVe must not forget, however, his 
 panegyrics on Liberty in Italy, Greece, Rome, and 
 Britain, and his " Britannia,'' in which he describes the 
 war with Spain in 1727; but nowhere in these verses 
 does he rise to white-heat. As in Burns's case, so in 
 Thomson's ; there is one overpowering claim to 
 remembrance as a war-poet — "Rule Britannia," which 
 is, no doubt, an easier thing to criticise adversely than 
 "Scots wha hae." 
 
 The claim of Campbell — the last of the three — has 
 a base of adamant. He had in him not only unmistak- 
 ably high patriotism, but he felt acutely for the peoples 
 of all countries who were in thrall. The latest of 
 noteworthy editions of Campbell's poems is that which 
 was issued by the Oxford University Press in 1907, 
 
 58
 
 Scottish Poets on War 
 
 edited by Mr J. Logic Robertson. In the preface to 
 that admirable volume the editor writes : " I rise from a 
 careful perusal of Campbell's poetry with a feeling of 
 surprise and indignation that he is at present so much 
 neglected." The rebuke is well deserved. Everyone, 
 whose opinion is worth anything, admires "Ye Mariners 
 of England," "The Battle of the Baltic," and 
 " Hohenlinden," but the rest of the poet's work is apt 
 to be forgotten. Yet even in "The Pleasures of Hope" 
 there is much deserving of remembrance. It is certainly 
 an extraordinary production for a youth of twenty-one', 
 years of age. Campbell, like Byron, had his heavy 
 lapses, but, when all is said, he is on the whole the 
 best war-poet Scotland has yet produced. Besides the 
 poems mentioned, we are bound to recall " Lochiel's 
 Warning," and "The Soldier's Dream." Among much 
 else there are the scathing lines (not only in "The 
 Pleasures of Hope") on the treatment of Poland and, no 
 less so, on Britain's inaction. These lines, for example, 
 one would wish to see more frequently quoted : 
 
 All ills have bounds — plague, whirlwind, fire and flood : 
 
 E'en power can spill but bounded sums of blood. 
 
 States caring not what Freedom's price may be 
 
 May late or soon, but must at last be free ; 
 
 For body-killing tyrants cannot kill 
 
 The public soul — the hereditary will 
 
 That, downward as from sire to sire it goes, 
 
 By shifting bosoms more intensely glows : 
 
 Its heirloom is the heart, and slaughtered men 
 
 Fight fiercer in their orphans o'er again. 
 
 Well might a guard of Polish nobles stand round 
 Campbell's open tomb at Westminster Abbey ; well 
 might a handful of earth, taken from the grave of 
 Kosciusko, find its last resting-place there! An 
 
 59
 
 The Highway of Hades 
 
 interesting reference to Campbell's war-poetry has 
 recently come to light. Mr Edmund Gosse, in an 
 article in the Edinburgh Review for January 1915, 
 quotes from an unpublished letter he received from 
 Swinburne, commenting on an article he had written 
 on Campbell. Swinburne referred to Campbell as 
 "our great (if not only) national lyric poet." He 
 continued : " Of his two masterpieces I should have 
 spoken even more passionately than yourself; for the 
 simple fact is that I know nothing like them at all — 
 simile aiit secundum — in their own line, which is one 
 of the very highest in the highest range of poetry." 
 This will, perhaps, more than satisfy the most ardent 
 admirer of Thomas Campbell's work as a poet. 
 
 Among Scottish poets of war Scott occupies a 
 unique position. In sheer mass — and very brave stuff 
 it is — his war-poetry equals that of all the rest put 
 together. This is easily apparent if we consider what 
 is to be found in "The Lay of the Last Minstrel," 
 "The Lord of the Isles," and in "Marmion," with the 
 incidental songs "Soldiers, wake, the day is Peeping," 
 " Soldier rest ! thy warfare o'er, Sleep the sleep that 
 knows not breaking," and others. There are his 
 " Pibroch of Donuil Dhu," " War song of the Royal 
 Edinburgh Light Dragoons," " Vision of Don Roderick," 
 and "The Charge of Waterloo." His songs "Macgregor's 
 Gathering " and " March, march, Ettrick and Teviotdale " 
 still hold the field against all comers. Then, as if sum- 
 ming up a world in little, we have his immortal quatrain : 
 
 Sovtnd, sound the clarion, fill the fife ! 
 
 To all the sensual world proclaim, 
 One crowded hour of glorious life 
 
 Is worth an age without a name. 
 60
 
 Scottish Poets on War 
 
 To these lines, however, liberal applications may 
 be given. 
 
 Many other Scottish contributors to the poetry of 
 war are worth remembering, but this little survey must 
 come to a close. To name only a few (and no mention 
 is made of living writers) there are James Hogg, 
 William Edmonstone Aytoun, the Jacobite song- 
 writers — among whom Lady Nairne overshadows the 
 rest — into whose work there is almost invariably woven 
 the red thread of war. There is Jean Elliot who sang 
 '' The Flowers of the Forest." Out of the mist comes 
 the voice of Ossian (Macpherson, another, or others) 
 bringing air thick with battle. One might pick one's 
 steps back to Barbour's " Bruce " and beyond it, and 
 find that the battle-cry has been the poet's call to sing. 
 But it may be asked : Why should the poet only sing 
 and not also himself go forth to war? Well, many 
 poets have been soldiers. Chaucer served in Edward 
 Third's French Campaign in 1359; Sir Philip Sidney, 
 the soul of chivalry, was a soldier ; Sir Walter Raleigh, 
 Ben Jonson, George Wither, Richard Lovelace, and, for 
 a short time, Samuel Taylor Coleridge, were soldiers. 
 In our own day their name is legion. Whether they 
 fight or sing, it is well to remember Tennyson's words : 
 
 The song that nerves a nation's heart 
 Is in itself a deed. 
 
 61
 
 The Unhappy Warrior 
 ( 1915) 
 
 T TnHAPPY they who, when the world's aflame, 
 ^^ List not their country's caUing, though for us 
 All that makes living worthy of the name 
 Hangs in the fateful balance tremulous. 
 Two are unhappy : he who feels his age 
 
 Fail in its service to his longing blood ; 
 And he who, craven, all his generous rage 
 
 Represses, — stemming still the youthful flood. 
 It cannot be that happiness awaits 
 
 Him who the kingdom of sweet ease prefers 
 To such a realm as England, and who prates 
 Of other lures beside a love like hers ! 
 How can he conquer others who, within. 
 Has yet his own disordered self to win ? 
 
 62
 
 Second Lieut, Walter Balmer Hislop 
 
 5th Royal Scots, an artist by profession, fell in 
 action at the Dardanelles on 28th April 1915. 
 
 ( 1915) 
 
 I. 
 
 A MONG so many just the one we loved ! 
 "*• ■*■ The humorous soul who still loved honour 
 
 best ; 
 Who, while he fared where war's red footsteps moved, 
 
 Had yet a wistful heart for Beauty's quest, — 
 Beauty, the airy sprite that lures us all, 
 
 On hill or field, in feature or in mind ; 
 So fickle that she comes not when we call, 
 
 So fleet that she escapes us like the wind : 
 Not so the call that caught his answering breath ; 
 
 Not his it was slowly to wait the gaze 
 Of the enlarging, nearing eyes of Death ; 
 
 Swiftly he passed, nor knew the weary days : 
 I heard one lightly say the words " He died" ; 
 " He lives and loves," a wiser voice replied. 
 
 II. 
 
 Beauty his quest ! What did he, then, do here — 
 The home of cruelty, and blood, and shame; 
 Where murder stalks, and every demon-aim 
 
 Is to awaken horror, grisly fear, — 
 63
 
 The Highivay of Hades 
 
 All, all that empties Beauty of its name, 
 And rends the earth and heaven far and near, 
 Till out of agony of eye and ear 
 
 There issues that which erring men call Fame ? 
 Nay, 'twas not so : far otherwise the part 
 
 He played so well, — to make the felon bow 
 To Freedom's call, and good from evil start : 
 No death of luxury his hero's goal ; 
 But his the inalienable thrill of soul, 
 
 And the white star of honour on his brow. 
 
 64
 
 The Great Transgressioii 
 
 (1914) 
 
 WE may not plead : *' They know not what they 
 do"! 
 Although they live in darkness — love it too : 
 Well do they know, and make their boastful claim 
 That " frightfulness " is theirs and feeds the flame 
 Wherewith they slay as with a dragon's breath, 
 And hurry all things on the way to Death : 
 Murder and lust, their canticle of hate — 
 The virtues that upon their honour wait ! 
 The fatal contrast still they fail to see, 
 And think the Lord is of their company, 
 Making — to such high heresy they climb — 
 Of Hell a plaything, and of Heaven a crime ! 
 
 65
 
 The Tod and the Lambs^ a7id the 
 Spy Peril 
 
 (1915) 
 
 I ^HOSE who have passed their meridian will 
 recall the "dambrod" game known in cities 
 as "The Fox and the Geese," and in country places 
 as "The Tod and the Lambs." The manner of the 
 game itself need not concern us now. The word 
 "tod" is, of course, Scots for "fox" — known to Burns 
 by the name of " slee Tod Lowrie." In "The death 
 and dying words of poor Mailie," it was part of the 
 "pet yowe's" prayer that her lambs might be spared 
 " Frae dogs, an' tods, an' butchers' knives." But the 
 word " tod " is not only Scottish ; it is old English 
 as well. Ben Jonson, in his "Paris Anniversary," uses 
 the words : — 
 
 Driv'st hence the wolf, the tod, the brock, 
 Or other vermin from the flock. 
 
 The word " tod " is to be found in Shakspere's " Winter's 
 Tale" (IV. 2). The clown says to Autolycus : — 
 " Every tod yields — pound and odd shillings," but 
 although the passage has frequently been quoted as 
 referring to the fox there can be no doubt it is a " tod 
 
 66
 
 The Tod and the Lambs, and the Spy Peril 
 
 of wool" (which equals 28 lb. or quarter of a hundred- 
 weight) to which allusion is made. 
 
 But to leave the title and come to the subject. The 
 writer of this article found himself one lovely twilight, 
 in the early summer of this most momentous year, 
 traversing a miniature glen with a romantic name. It 
 was the time, as the song goes, "When the thorn is 
 white with blossom." The evening was still, without 
 sound except the occasional crackling of a withered 
 twig under the feet that instinctively sought the grassy 
 border of the rough road that followed the curves of a 
 burn which a spell of dry weather had all but silenced. 
 All at once I became aware of what seemed to me a 
 strange procedure. An old, bent, and bearded figure, 
 like a gnome or brownie out of fairyland, was engaged, 
 in the adjoining field, in lighting, with evident difficulty, 
 a small farm lamp fixed on a wooden post. Out it 
 went, in it came, and out it went again, while a collie, 
 lying close by, eyed the proceedings, if not with the 
 same curiosity as I did myself, at least with a certain 
 mild interest. 
 
 I stood still, and, parting the prickly thorn branches, 
 peered through at the unusual sight. A wood skirted 
 the little field whose acres rose gradually to the mound 
 on which the mysterious old man was seen at his work. 
 To what end was this uncertain flame set twinkling? 
 I had read only a few days before of enemy-spies using 
 lanterns for signalling, and I thought to myself: "Here 
 is some mischief." I looked at the man's slow move- 
 ments, which I now saw were accounted for by 
 rheumatism. I looked at his dog — a common 
 Borderlander — at his stick, at the sheep in the field, 
 and the thought passed rapidly through my mind that 
 
 67
 
 The Highway of Hades 
 
 he was not in any case a German who could make off 
 very nimbly. Yet, who knows ? Spies have proved 
 to be of all sorts, and of sorts, too, little in keeping 
 with appearances. So I continued to watch. 
 
 By and by, the flame bidding fair to hold on, he 
 lifted his stick, and hobbled down-hill, after counting 
 his sheep and lambs. " I wonder what it is all about," 
 I said to myself, and, retracing my steps, I kept my eye 
 on him till our paths converged, and we met at a gate 
 which he opened and closed with suspicious quietness. 
 I found him gruff of manner, as if he, in his turn, had 
 been watching me through the spaces framed by snow- 
 white thorns, and had not only grudged me the view 
 but the suspicions which had crossed my mind as to his 
 being other than a most loyal Scot. 
 
 I asked him why the lantern was placed just there. 
 He growled out : " It is placed there for the foxes, which 
 the day before yesterday carried off four of my lambs." 
 " Then they fear the light," I said. " They don't like 
 it," he mumbled, and disappeared into his cottage 
 without returning the " Good-night " I wished him. 
 Fearing a reply similar to that which was given to 
 Lord Braxfield, I had not asked why the light was 
 placed at the highest point in the field. The story 
 runs : — Lord Braxfield, noticing some sheep on the 
 Pentlands climbing up on the open hill one winter 
 evening to rest for the night, turned to the shepherd 
 with the remark that if he had been a sheep he would 
 have sought shelter from the frost down in the comfort- 
 able hollow. The shepherd, looking at the speaker 
 with some contempt, replied that had his lordship 
 been a sheep he would, doubtless, have had "mair 
 sense." 
 
 68
 
 The Tod and the Lambs, and the Spy Peril 
 
 And so our little old, decrepit, long-bearded friend 
 was no alien spy after all. He was actually doing his 
 " bit " also against a cunning and unscrupulous enemy, 
 as many a more spry lad from over the hills and far 
 away is doing in Turkey and in France to-day. 
 
 69 E 2
 
 Back to the Brute 
 (1914) 
 
 [ACK to the Land ! It was a wholesome cry : 
 Would that the teeming city listened well, 
 Sought the green earth beneath the arched, blue sky, 
 And sent its puny children there to dwell : 
 
 Then might health blossom on the pallid cheek, 
 And strength subdue the kingdom of the weak. 
 
 Back to the Christ 1 So sighed the longing heart, 
 
 That, — fed too long on dogma passionless, — 
 With its whole being chose the better part, — 
 
 The Life that throbbed, and not the lifeless dress 
 Of woven words — the fashion of the crowd 
 That missed Heaven's music as they cried aloud. 
 
 Back to the Brute ! This is To-day's decree : 
 
 'Tis heard in thunder from the cannon's lips; 
 In serpent's hiss of whispered treachery ; 
 Seen in the tragedy of life's eclipse 
 
 By death and darkness in each ravished land 
 That knows no light save of the felon's brand. 
 
 No foe like this these islands yet have known, — 
 
 Cruel, and arrogant, and blasphemous ; 
 Hungry to hear child cry and woman moan ; 
 
 (Earth's mountain-tumour, rank and cancerous !) 
 What of his braggart " Kultur " — what of it ? 
 Let Belgium answer — " Kultur " of the Pit ! 
 70
 
 Back to the Brute 
 
 Proud spawn of Hell, helmeted with deceit ; 
 
 Breast-plated with unrighteousness and crime ; 
 Clothed with red Murder's cloak from head to feet ; 
 Spurred with foul lusts unnameable in rhyme : 
 How can he prosper, even if he prevail, 
 Since, in his triumph, truth and freedom fail? 
 
 Four years after the above lines were published, Mr A. J. 
 Balfour said : " Brutes they were when they began the war, 
 and, as far as we can judge, brutes they remain at the present 
 moment." — Times, I2th Oct. 1918. 
 
 71
 
 De Wet Once More 
 (1915) 
 
 W AID De Wet to three Yeomanry scouts he had 
 *^ caught : 
 
 "You may purchase your freedom from me; 
 But only on my terms may freedom be bought — 
 
 And these the conditions will be : 
 You will carry this message to General Rundle ! " — 
 (All smiles) they agree, and forthwith out they trundle. 
 
 But De Wet he is slim, for the message ran thus : 
 
 " Be so good, my dear sir, as to lay 
 These three devils up ; they're a burden to us, 
 
 And I collar some every day." 
 The General read the note with a nod, 
 And winked to one who put them in quod ! 
 
 72
 
 The Dining-room Dado 
 
 " The Dorsets, we are told, have nicknamed their body 
 belts 'the dado round the dining-room.'" — Punch, 
 
 Air—''' The tight little Island" 
 
 (1915) 
 
 C\ 'TWERE well to be wary, and keep Little Mary 
 ^^ Surrounded with warmth in the winter ; 
 For the vitals are there, and we must take care 
 Not of woollens or flannels to stint her. 
 
 O the Dining-room Dado ; 
 
 See that it's properly made, O ; 
 Search every stall, from Jenner * to Maule,* 
 And purchase a Dining-room Dado ! 
 
 Or, should you have time, it will not be a crime 
 
 If your oivn fingers fly o'er the knitting : 
 You may talk as you go of our barbarous foe. 
 And our boys at the war while you're sitting. 
 O the Dining-room Dado ; 
 To happiness 'tis a great aid, O ; 
 If you've no time for that, go to Renton * or Pat,* 
 And purchase a Dining-room Dado ! 
 
 For feet in the trench are in a sad drench, 
 And the snow it falls thick on the Khaki ; 
 
 But we're all out to aid, and many a maid 
 Sends chocolate to Tommy, — or baccy ! 
 
 * Large departmental stores in Edinburgh. 
 73
 
 The Highway of Hades 
 
 But, O the Dining-room Dado ; 
 
 The right Httle, tight Uttle Dado ; 
 AVe all know 'tis true, there's nothing like you, 
 O comforting Dining-room Dado ! 
 
 It's far, Little Mary, to sweet Tipperary, 
 
 And much will depend upon you, lass ; 
 Sock, helmet, and mitten should clothe every Briton, 
 But the Dado's the pick of the brew, lass ! 
 O the Dining-room Dado ; 
 With one you need not be afraid, O ; 
 Facing the blast, you'll win through at last, 
 If you're wearing a Dining-room Dado 1 
 
 74
 
 The Sports77ian in War-time 
 
 (191 7) 
 
 T lEUT.-COL. EDWARD HENRY TROTTER, 
 -*--' D.S.O., of the Grenadier Guards, who himself fell 
 in action, left a will which contained a handsome 
 compliment to sport as a handmaid to war. In leaving 
 to the Grenadier Guards the regimental cup which he 
 won in the first year he joined, "in the hope that 
 sport of all sorts will long flourish in the regiment," 
 he used these words : " It having been my experience 
 in all the wars I have been in that the best sportsman 
 makes the best soldier, I should like this fact to be 
 inscribed on the cup." During the present war there 
 have indeed been many such tributes to sport ; and it 
 is to be specially observed that these have not been the 
 expression of mere self-laudation among the British 
 themselves, but even matter of comment, and indeed 
 of grievance, on the part of our enemies, who affirm 
 that we do not go to battle in the proper way, as they 
 do, but as if we were taking sides in a game. But 
 there it is; and the spirit which has inspired much 
 of the bravery in action has been, doubtless, bred and 
 fostered by sport — the mimic war associated with games 
 played at school and college. From the mild joy 
 Wordsworth found in rapid skating, the delight Swin- 
 burne felt in swimming in a fresh and open sea, or 
 
 75
 
 The Highway of Hades 
 
 the pleasure with which the curler hears the music 
 of the stones, to the ecstasy of the chase, and the 
 rough-and-tumble exhilaration of football, the thing that 
 moulds the soldier is there. To go farther, it is not 
 too much to say that not only the prowess but the 
 cleanness of the fight has the same root-cause. A boy 
 who has imbibed Sir Henry Newbolt's lesson that no 
 matter how he "plays up" he must also at the same 
 time always "play the game," is not likely to forget 
 such bracing and wholesome advice in later and more 
 strenuous days. 
 
 The qualities of the sportsman have been everywhere 
 largely in evidence in the present struggle, and it is 
 not only the cheerfully-accepted individual burden, but 
 the deep-rooted sportsmanlike quality which plays, not 
 for one's own hand, but for the good of the "side," 
 that has had so enormous an effect on the fortunes 
 of the war. While it has been proved over and over 
 again that in personal initiative the British soldier is 
 superior to his machine-made enemy, it has also been 
 abundantly shown that in corporate capacity he is no 
 less equal to his task, ready to give and take for the 
 well-being of his comrades as a whole. 
 
 In no department in the service, perhaps, has sport 
 shown a larger influence than in the numerous squadrons 
 of the Royal Flying Corps, whose members are, for 
 the most part, boys just from school. The courageous 
 and ready way in which they have taken upon themselves 
 the great risks of the service, the eagerness with which 
 they have rushed through their training and taken their 
 "wings," has been the admiration of all of us. So 
 much so, indeed, that an old veteran officer of high 
 rank recently said that while he fully understood war, 
 
 76
 
 The Sportsman in War-thne 
 
 and was willing to praise every deed of valour in the 
 field, what he could not understand was the calm 
 courage of what he called "these blue-eyed, cigarette- 
 smoking boys " who took upon themselves inconceivable 
 risks at a moment's notice in the gayest fashion possible. 
 Well may a writer in The Outlook say : "One thing we 
 may be sure of, they have earned a thousand honours 
 for every one which they have received; and no 
 decoration on earth can carry more glory with it than 
 the plain white wings they wear upon their breast. 
 Every pilot, before he has earned the right to wear 
 his double wings, has performed a score of feats which 
 demand as great a courage and nerve as any man has 
 had to win the Victoria Cross." Yet von Richthofen, 
 Germany's greatest flyer, could say with some truth, 
 " Englishmen see in flying nothing but a sport." It 
 is, of course, a new branch in war — "grappling in the 
 central blue " having been hitherto only a poet's dream. 
 But the dream has come true, and these air-heroes are 
 youths from our public schools, nearly all of them, 
 and most of them, it is safe to say, distinguished for 
 their proficiency in various games. " For a special job 
 specialists," truly writes Mr Kipling, "but for all jobs 
 youth above everything." It is said that the Duke of 
 Wellington once remarked that " the battle of Waterloo 
 was won upon the playing fields of Eton." With the 
 mention of Eton one remembers that when Lord Rose- 
 bery presided, not many months ago, over a large 
 gathering of old Etonians at Lansdowne House, 
 London, he commented on the fact that over 5200 
 Etonians were on active service, and that many of them 
 had given their lives for their country. Other schools 
 have like "Rolls of Honour." As for the Universities, 
 
 77
 
 The Highway of Hades 
 
 they have also played a noble part. It is interesting 
 to remember, in this connection, that it was a band 
 from Oxford, "the oldest of whom was twenty," that 
 furnished Browning with a text for his sermon on sport 
 in his poem entitled " Donald." The first speaker gave 
 it as his opinion that 
 
 Good sportsman means good fellow, 
 
 Sound-hearted he to the centre ; 
 Your mealy-mouthed, mild milk-sops — 
 
 There's where the rot can enter. 
 
 Still, tastes are tastes, allow me ! 
 
 Allow, too, where there's keenness 
 For sport, there's little likelihood 
 
 Of a man's displaying meanness. 
 
 It were an interesting study to follow up the question 
 of what may be called the psychology of the various 
 games. Each game has, without doubt, its own lesson 
 for the larger game of life and death, but whether it be 
 the calm " carry through " in golf, the quick perception 
 and rapid action in tennis, the alertness of the "all 
 together" in cricket, the furious assault, and summing 
 up of results before they come, in football, the ready 
 eye and hand in yachting, or the skill and self-effacement 
 in deer-stalking — somewhere the qualities emerge and 
 make the man — the man, who is, as we believe, the best 
 of soldiers. There is nothing like sport for hardening 
 the muscles, training the vision, giving poise and nerve, 
 elasticity and endurance to the bodily framework, and 
 health, without which all things fail. It is true Andrew 
 Lang sings in his "Ballade of Cricket" of "the end 
 of every man's desire" as something that comes 
 inevitably to grief, as the saying is, falling far short 
 
 78
 
 The Sportsinan in War-time 
 
 of the ideal ; but if we are to eschew the task because 
 we fail, where shall we find a motive for effort, sustained 
 and educative? It is in the search that the reward 
 lies, as Lessing tells us, not in the actual achievement. 
 Rather, then, should we adopt R. L. Stevenson's brave 
 and wholesome view (half-truth though it be): "The 
 business of life is not to succeed, but to continue to 
 fail in good spirits." In short, it cannot be doubted 
 that in the Anglo-Celtic race especially, character has 
 largely been wrought out on the fields of sport, and 
 it is on the field of battle that it is now put to the 
 supreme test. This it is, doubtless, that justifies Hankey 
 in saying, in A Student in Arms, that he found sure 
 evidence that it was not philosophy, or even religion, 
 that bore the soldier up, but that sporting instinct, deep 
 and active, in every British schoolboy. As Walt Whit- 
 man rapturously exclaims : " It is life, all life, and 
 the rowing in the winning boat is life, and the rowing 
 in the boat that loses is life also — life, vigorous, 
 impetuous, earnest." 
 
 It is indeed this same " sporting instinct " that even 
 amid the appalling miseries of war has retained some- 
 thing of romance, so called. "Which is the more 
 romantic," asks a reviewer in the Times Literary Supple- 
 ment, " the brutal melee of a medieval battle, in which 
 
 Men were wetshod 
 
 All of braine and blode, 
 
 or those wonderful combats above the clouds which 
 our day has witnessed, in which heroic boys on either 
 side display qualities of combined skill and courage 
 such as earlier ages had not dreamed of? Surely the 
 romance of war is not dead, though we may well think 
 that its cost is prohibitive." 
 
 79
 
 The Highway of Hades 
 
 The abiding place which sport has made its own 
 in the hearts of a large number of men in the Army 
 is fully reflected in the literary matter that has come 
 from the trenches — letters, records of fighting, and, 
 most of all, perhaps, in the astonishingly large quantity 
 of good verse published by soldiers. No school is 
 forgotten in these brave and pathetic remembrances. 
 To the heart and mind come back sunny days on 
 which the playing fields were gay and thronged, and 
 nothing escapes the memory. As one of these soldier- 
 poets sings : 
 
 And Eton still enshrined among remembered trees. 
 
 One cannot read without a touch of emotion the 
 account given of the last days of the Kaiser's nephew. 
 Prince Karl Friedrich, the Royal airman who died of 
 his wounds in France. "If I am anything," said the 
 dying man, " I am a sport. I have played tennis with 
 Wilding and other first-class players. I shall never 
 forget the jolly time I had in England, where I played 
 them all. The kindness which has surrounded me 
 since I became a prisoner has brought back the memory 
 of those days. The Australians were good to me. The 
 officers and soldiers who attended me coming down the 
 line were very considerate, and the whole atmosphere 
 of this hospital is kindness." " It is curious," writes 
 Shane Leslie in his fascinating volume The End of 
 a Chapter, "how the English mind reduces even 
 militarism to terms of sport. In the Boer War 
 ambulance-wagons came to be called 'game-carts.' 
 Replacing a General was 'changing the bowling.' 
 Firing on the Red Cross was contemptuously summed 
 up as 'not playing cricket.'" Elsewhere in the same 
 
 80
 
 The Sportsman in War-time 
 
 book he says, "Sport is the key to English rule and 
 character. Fair-play is the pith and fibre of the 
 empire." 
 
 Not very long before the stupendous armed struggle 
 began, Prince Lichnowsky, the Kaiser's Ambassador 
 at Saint James's, stood up at the Oxford Literary 
 Society's Banquet, after having received his honorary 
 degree of D.C.L., and used these memorable words: 
 " The people who cultivated sports governed the world, 
 and wo^ild do so more and more." It was a prophecy 
 that is now being slowly, painfully, but victoriously 
 fulfilled. 
 
 8i
 
 A Dog of Flanders 
 (1915) 
 
 T |0G of the milk-cart, patient, wise, 
 "'^-^ We know you very well ; 
 Deserved you this austere disguise, 
 That makes you hard to recognise 
 As myrmidon of Hell ? 
 
 Ah, yet this Hell's no work of ours ; 
 
 And you, too, take a part. 
 Beneath the cloud of doom that lowers 
 Upon the weary, haggard hours 
 
 That crush the gentle heart. 
 
 No way but this : To face the foe. 
 
 And strike him to the dust : 
 With steadfast eye, and counter-blow, 
 Feeling the while, though blood may flow, 
 
 We fight because we must. 
 
 Beneath the bellowing skies you've stood, 
 
 Eager to serve or wait ; 
 To aid in wringing soul of good 
 Out of things horrid, dark, and rude, 
 
 And unregenerate. 
 82
 
 A Dog of Flanders 
 
 Now 'tis the " maxim " you have drawn, 
 
 Paired, in your harness strong ; 
 Now you're a watch, and then anon 
 A scout — straining your wiUing brawn 
 To help your King along. 
 
 Highest of all your services, 
 
 Wearing the linen band 
 On which the Red Cross blazoned is ; 
 Then is your errand like to His 
 
 Who bears a pierced hand. 
 
 Faithful and swift, firm to endure, 
 
 Your virtues myriad are ; 
 Certes, 'twas no voice immature 
 That cried in accents stern and sure, 
 
 " Let slip the dogs of war ! " 
 
 83 F 2
 
 The Invi7icible Hope 
 (1916) 
 
 " I've just heard Kenneth is dead. Kenneth 
 was a good boy, and I'm sure he died just as he 
 lived, and no one could better that. I've written 
 to his people. This is the first time the war has 
 hit me hard. Cheer up, my very dears ! Kenneth's 
 all right. He'll carry on. It would take more 
 than that to stop him." — Lieut. Denis Oliver 
 Barnett, of the Leinster Regiment, in In Happy 
 Memory : His Letters from France and Flanders, 
 October 1914-1915." (He was himself killed in 
 action.) 
 
 C\ HAPPY heart,— so lightly spoken 
 ^^ Thy words of cheer and trust, 
 Even when the withered spirit's broken. 
 
 The head bowed in the dust ! 
 To thee there was no final day, 
 
 Sunrise was sunset's friend ; 
 Grey eve, long night, that 'twixt them lay, 
 
 Foreshadowed not the end. 
 
 And as of Kenneth, so of thee, 
 
 We say, " He'll carry on ! " 
 No break in that brave life may be. 
 
 Although his rest is won : 
 Others may know him as we knew. 
 
 And bid him welcome there ; 
 Strength from the wings of faith he drew, 
 
 And leapt the barriere ! 
 84
 
 Ma72hood^s Beauty 
 (1917) 
 
 " This is the beauty of manhood, to die for a 
 good cause. There is no fairer thing in all God's 
 world." — A Student in Arms (Second Series). 
 
 II NOT in soft and silken guise 
 
 ^^ Comes Beauty always from the skies 
 
 Not only gentle and serene 
 
 She ventures on earth's troubled scene, 
 
 Lifting our fevered spirits up, 
 
 By filling high her jewelled cup, 
 
 Whence the elixir we may gain, 
 
 That ends not but transfigures pain : 
 
 She comes in storm and sudden death, 
 
 Sweetens the last, reluctant breath. 
 
 Bestows on mind and heart her light, 
 
 Beckons her hero to the fight : 
 
 Not from without alone her aid 
 
 Renders the strained soul unafraid : 
 
 Her glory lightens from within. 
 
 Makes music of the battle's din, 
 
 Till man in her proud splendour glows, 
 
 As, sure of foot, to death he goes ! 
 
 85
 
 *' Content t with Flies^^ — in 
 IVar-time 
 (1916) 
 
 Contented wi' little, and cantie wi' mair. — BURNS. 
 
 A^/ HEN one finds — and in the kitchen, too — a 
 ^ ' pile of recent Spectators in a diminutive 
 country cottage, usually let for summer quarters, one is 
 apt to ask silent questions. It is quite usual, of course, 
 to come upon old illustrated papers in such places ; but 
 The Spectator — here is metal more attractive to the kind 
 of man that loves the moorlands for other reasons than 
 those noisily announced every 12th of August. One 
 questions, I say, and, like Brutus, pauses for a reply. 
 The reply has come in the form of a book, delightful in 
 every way, if we except the title. That title is Content 
 'ivith Flies (Smith, Elder, & Co.), and the authors 
 are Mary and Jane Findlater. The title is taken from 
 the badly-rhymed couplet : — 
 
 As cats when they can get no mice, 
 Content themselves with catching flies. 
 
 The book is written to show how war economies may 
 be carried out, without loss to the holiday-makers — nay, 
 with a real gain to such. This is how it is done. You 
 leave Bridget and Flora at home, or send them off on a 
 holiday of their own, and set out yourselves to live the 
 
 86
 
 " Content ivith Flies'' — in }Var-tinie 
 
 simple life. The Misses Findlater — three in number — 
 concluded (rashly, perhaps) that novels were not wanted 
 in war-time, left London for the Highlands, and were 
 fortunate in their adventure — finding two such cottages 
 as they sought. The ladies bravely acknowledge "an 
 early graduation in the school of poverty," which made 
 their change of life easier for them than it might be for 
 others. There is an amusing account of their prepara- 
 tions, particularly their search for a " fireless cooker " — 
 which did not, in fact, arrive until near the end of their 
 sojourn in the north. It is probably at this moment 
 
 couched in heather on the banks of the ; but no, 
 
 I must not give the show away. In London the vendor 
 had said : " If you take my advice, if you want to do 
 your own work, you'll leave labour-saving appliances 
 alone" The advice was not taken, otherwise a con- 
 siderable portion of the book would have remained 
 unwritten. June was the month chosen — perhaps best 
 of all, for, as Lowell sings: "What is so rare as a 
 day in June?" Besides, country quarters are cheap 
 then. Five long miles lay between the railway station 
 and the cottage, "which faced towards the mountains 
 at the mouth of a deep-wooded gorge. Between the 
 black pine-covered sides of the pass there rose in the 
 distance a violet mountain still covered with snow. To 
 see it there, above all that flowering world, sent a 
 positive shock of pleasure to the heart." I know the 
 spot well (although it was not there I found the 
 Spectators')^ and cannot wonder to find the Misses 
 Findlater crying aloud, with Emily Dickinson, "O 
 matchless earth ! we underrate the chance to dwell in 
 thee." Yet, when the chance was absent, how much 
 could this same magic writer find solace in : — " I never 
 
 87 F 3
 
 The Highway of Hades 
 
 saw a moor, I never saw the sea ; Yet know I how the 
 heather looks, And what a wave must be." How 
 the ladies fared will interest many a thrifty house- 
 keeper, as well as amuse many a mere man who looks 
 at such things, pipe in mouth, and at ease with himself. 
 But it does not do to depend wholly on the "general 
 mairchant " at the village, or even on what the travelling 
 vans may bring you, so boxes of stores from Edinburgh 
 grocers (including Melrose's tea) formed part of the 
 luggage. 
 
 Admission is made that the "ploughman's wife" lit 
 the morning fire and cleaned the pots. Meals were 
 taken in the kitchen. With plenty of milk, cream, 
 butter, and honey from " our own bees," the ladies 
 were not to be pitied. P'or my part I think they fell 
 too much back on butcher meat. Beef steaks, at any 
 rate, are out of place and, possibly, season in such 
 quarters. Lack of vegetables is a drawback, no doubt ; 
 and as for " nuts," they are spoken of contemptuously. 
 Why? Is it their questionable companionship? 
 
 Fastened by some mystic tether, 
 Nuts and New Thought go together. 
 
 The real mauvais quart dlieure came, it is confessed, 
 "after dinner, cleaning the greasy dishes." Yet they 
 had visitors, too, who were, properly enough, "roped 
 in " to do their part. The experience of housekeeping 
 on this small scale, without servants, begat a set of 
 proverbs : " Every muddle makes another " ; " Let 
 sleeping dust lie " ; " It's not lost what a hen gets " ; 
 and so forth. Lamps were a trouble, and many other 
 little things, but on the whole they had very good 
 food, "and the cats grew steadily fatter during our 
 
 88
 
 " Content zvitk Flies " — in War-time 
 
 stay." The economy, it is plain, was not strained to 
 the uttermost. I am not a cook, but I fancy something 
 might be done with the oil that "remains in the sardine 
 tin." Why "remains"? Eggs, sardines (oil and all), 
 and breadcrumbs make a delightful dish. Let me 
 respectfully recommend it to the Miss Findlater who 
 acted as cook. The lady who is chiefly responsible 
 for the book (see page 57) was not "permitted to 
 come near the stove." 
 
 Although the second cottage — in which the holiday 
 was concluded — was in some ways not so romantic 
 in its surroundings, one can see that it possesses the 
 warmer place in the hearts of its temporary occupants. 
 Both cottages are known to me, but " the Mill Cottage " 
 has a human interest that surrounds no other. This 
 is mainly due to the lady of the mill — for she is a real 
 lady, independent and dignified as royalty itself, with 
 a world of experience looking through the eyes set 
 below the broad brows, and with a heart of gold. This 
 is how she appeared to the Misses Findlater: "At the 
 same hour every morning, our landlady would appear 
 at the door of the mill. She swept out into the open 
 space in front of her house, and then, followed by the 
 animals, with her grandson trotting by her side, would 
 sail along to feed the hens ; the ducks in a gabbling 
 drove waddled in the rear of the procession. An old 
 woman now, she was gifted by nature with that curious 
 dignity of carriage, that touch of grace which long out- 
 lives the mere beauty of youth. It was a sight to 
 see her, in her plain black gown and little shawl, sweep 
 on towards the hen-house, the cow soberly pacing close 
 behind ; the pony (little beauty !) tripping on its dainty 
 unshod feet, now and then giving a caper as if to testify 
 
 89
 
 The Highway of Hades 
 
 that it found the pace rather slow." O yes ! I know 
 it all so well. I have been there with, and without, 
 servants. Great folks, too, have jammed themselves 
 into the sweet little cottage on the moor — the redoubt- 
 able Mrs Pankhurst among the rest. 
 
 It seems strange to me that so much is missed in 
 this book. Some things are said that ought not to 
 be allowed to pass. "The baker's bread was sour and 
 sandy, his scones and rolls were worse," we are told. 
 One is tempted to reply : " 'Twas plain and good, and 
 came so handy, It should not earn your curse." I fear 
 the birds of the district were not carefully, or knowingly, 
 observed. What are called bullfinches were more likely 
 to be chaffinches. The "continuous sound" in the 
 hedge was probably the wren's song, but then a wren 
 is not grey but rich brown ; and if the bird was wedge- 
 shaped the description answers to the titmouse, as does 
 also the "clingsome feet." "More like a mouse" than 
 a bird brings us back again to the wren. What was it ? 
 The riddle was not solved " that afternoon " ; nor does 
 it appear to be solved yet. The moors in the district 
 are famous, but only once does the description rise to 
 the occasion : — " One evening we left the path on the 
 ridge and followed a sheep track down and down to 
 the level of the moor, skirting the edge of the marshes 
 until we finally came to the long stretch of flat heathery 
 ground beyond them. The pool was in the middle 
 of this, farther away than we had thought, and the 
 heather gave place to dry grass for half a mile around 
 it. Giotto's O was not more perfect ; sunk deep in 
 a border of pale green and rose-coloured velvet moss, 
 it measured only some twenty yards or so from side 
 to side, and was tenanted by one wild duck. . . . The 
 
 90
 
 " Content zvitk Flies'' — in War-time 
 
 whole thing made a scene of Japanese simplicity. The 
 flat empty moor; the grey sky; the round pool with 
 its border of rose-red moss, and its solitary bird : that 
 was all." I remember just such another pool, on a 
 moor not far from the one described, but its only 
 occupant was a tiny round duckling that rushed here 
 and there with outstretched neck, "content with flies " — 
 fearing nothing from us. Why is there no mention of 
 the most beautiful thing on a moor — the cranberry in 
 bloom in June; or of the orchis, pink, yellow, and 
 white, that adorns the fairy nooks between the heather- 
 clumps; or of the butterwort and sundew in moist 
 places? What of the surpassingly sweet, low gurgle 
 of the curlew, or of the weird shudder of the snipe's 
 wings? If we leave the moor and take the short-cut 
 from the mill to the village — so contemptuously treated 
 by the ladies — why do we come upon no mention of 
 the waxen white roses, with their claret-hued leaves, 
 or the gem-like peacock-blue and green little beetles 
 that crowd on the hazels? I cannot but think the 
 explorers were unduly timid. Why should the river- 
 paths be called " uncanny " ? Up or down stream they 
 are charming. Nor can I accept as correct the descrip- 
 tion of the brown rivulet that passes the cottage windows. 
 These are a few of the things one misses in the book. 
 For the rest, the experiment (in spite of the confessed 
 inability to use the scraps and having to give away 
 the dripping) was a success, and was much to be 
 preferred to taking up quarters in one of the gruesome 
 little villas in what is (I agree) "an incredibly 
 hideous villa-village." But, pardon me, mesdames, the 
 
 bridge over the is not iron but wood. Two things 
 
 alone were, and are, serious drawbacks — middens and 
 
 91
 
 The Highivay of Hades 
 
 mosquitoes ! The latter— among the birches that 
 always suggested to Alexander Smith "woods in their 
 teens" — are a real peril. My own experience is that 
 the continental lady (it is the female only that bites) 
 is not so poisonous as the home demon. The thickest 
 of stockings are of no avail, and a holiday in the 
 paradise of which this book treats may be ruined by 
 their venomous attacks. The native, as usual, is 
 comparatively immune. A fortune is at the bidding 
 of any chemist who can, and will, prepare a real 
 antidote. There is no preparation known to me of 
 which the pests may be said to stand in awe. 
 
 Probably even after the war the experiment of those 
 who so pleasantly boast that they were "content with 
 flies" will be renewed. When they do revisit these 
 scenes, the "black velvet calf" and the "black satin 
 pony" may be gone; the apple-cheeked girl" (well 
 known to me) married; but if the figure in the "plain 
 black gown and little shawl" is still found moving 
 about, the mill cottage will be well worth retaking. 
 No, I shall not tell you where it is; and you may 
 very well guess where "Crossriggs" is, yet utterly 
 fail here. 
 
 92
 
 ''The Daf 
 
 (1914) 
 
 ''^ I IS not the fiend in man 
 
 ^ That calls us to the fight ; 
 Our hands since we began 
 Are clean in Heaven's sight : 
 Their thews may well be strong, 
 Who press to quell the wrong. 
 
 This is the whole world's war — 
 
 God grant it be the last — 
 We ask for nothing more 
 Than that this holocaust 
 May flame up and devour 
 The vast Satanic power 
 
 Whose breath is born of Hell ; 
 
 Whose pride is damned Lust : 
 Strike, strike the dragon's knell. 
 And beat it to the dust ! 
 
 Earth from her nightmare wakes ; 
 We arm for all men's sakes. 
 
 Let the war-maniac cease ! 
 
 Down heel and tramp him low : 
 Come, crowned, victorious Peace, 
 After the final blow : 
 
 And born anew and wise, 
 Let Germany arise ! 
 93
 
 Zeppelins 
 
 (1916) 
 
 I ^HEY came : the silver Dreadnoughts of the air, 
 -*- By murderers manned, and in their pregnant 
 womb 
 The fires of Hell ; but, in the focussed flare, 
 Our brave avengers caught them unaware, — 
 
 They staggered, — flamed, — fell headlong to their 
 doom ! 
 
 94
 
 The Heroic Dead 
 
 (191 7) 
 
 MOURN not overlong or loud ; 
 Wrap your grief in mantle proud ; 
 Neither dress in dismal black 
 For the brave who come not back : — 
 
 They have fought their fight and won, 
 Somewhere still they "carry on" ! 
 
 Light from their encurtained eyes 
 
 Will on you like sunshine rise, 
 
 Follow you where'er you stray. 
 
 Sacred make each common way, — 
 Light that nevermore will set : 
 Can you, if you would, forget ? 
 
 Golden hearts you may have known, 
 Now are doubly, sure, your own ; 
 Erring paths they may not tread 
 Who have gone where they have fled ; 
 Nor may their illumined thought 
 In earth's gloom again be caught. 
 
 They adventured far and high, 
 
 And though now they come not nigh, 
 
 Yet a glory o'er them lies ; 
 
 Ours the pain, but theirs the prize, — 
 
 Theirs the ampler atmosphere; 
 
 Can you, dare you, wish them here ? 
 95
 
 The Highway of Hades 
 
 Theirs is wisdom, honour too ; 
 Think what they would have thee do : 
 Turn from meaner moods aside, 
 Let the Dead thy footsteps guide ; 
 Stir thyself and worthier be 
 Of the men who died for thee ! 
 
 96
 
 The Pity of It 
 
 (191 7) 
 
 " Those of us who loved the old Germany that is dead, 
 with its Gemuthlichkeit^ its simplicity of life and manners, its 
 kindliness, and its devotion to things of the mind and spirit, may 
 deplore the change which has altered a country of philosophers 
 and poets into one of commercial travellers and drill-sergeanis. 
 But the Germans themselves do not realise the change ; they 
 realise only that whereas they were poor now they are rich, and 
 that whereas they were despised they are now a power and 
 a terror." — Times. 
 
 |)eFORE their madness came we loved them so; 
 -*^ Their country with its forests, rivers' flow \ 
 From the far Baltic to the Konig's See, 
 And all that wooed us well until " The Day " : 
 Their theatres, to our own Shakspere true ; 
 Their home-life, that our curious interest drew \ 
 Their hearty zeal for higher things of mind — 
 The granary of thought for all mankind : 
 So, so we deemed, whatever 7iotv we say ; 
 The gold we saw, but not the feet of clay. 
 A realm it seemed to us of rich renown, 
 Of man's high effort the support and crown ; 
 Where Freedom waved a brave, yet fitful hand ; 
 The land of Lessing, Herder, — Luther's land, — 
 Goethe the calm ; Schiller the earnest soul ; 
 Richter der Evizige ; Heine the droll : 
 Where harmony, the joy of Heaven, reigned, 
 And all the willing world's proud homage gained ; 
 97
 
 The Highway of Hades 
 
 The songs that thrice-beloved Schubert sang — 
 
 Like angels' murmurs 'mid earth's Sturftt und Drang, 
 
 And all the strands of music deftly woven 
 
 Into a magic fabric in IBeethoven ! 
 
 Ah, what avails it — although these remain, 
 
 And must abide when sin is purged again ? 
 
 The pity of it all ; the wound how sore ; 
 
 A noble nation poisoned to the core ! 
 
 98
 
 Peace 
 
 (September 19 15) 
 
 T^REAMING in a boat on Spey, 
 -■-^ I watched the ouzel at its play, 
 And, as its little white breast bobbed, 
 The gentle air my spirit robbed 
 Of all the dispeace of the world, — 
 As though the war-flags lay upfurled. 
 And everything was lapt in love, 
 Behind, before, below, above. 
 Two wagtails held their silver-wedding. 
 Chasing each other round the steading ; 
 The amber brooklet hurried by, 
 And o'er the moor came curlew's cry : 
 
 So, calmly, passed the hours. 
 
 In this sweet land of ours ! 
 
 The morn had been a radiant one, 
 With early mist but victor sun 
 That breathed upon the fine-spun lawn. 
 And upwards, upwards was it drawn, 
 Till, lingering long, it faded quite. 
 Like dim dream dying in the light. 
 Now all the glories morning brought 
 Were merged in memory's tranquil thought : 
 99
 
 The Highway of Hades 
 
 I called to mind the magic dew, 
 That glanced from red to golden hue ', 
 Webs that were stretching far and wide, — 
 Some faery laundry-maiden's pride, 
 Spread, as by dainty fingers thin. 
 Like lace of Limerick on the whin. 
 Of many pleasures these were some, 
 And more, I knew, were sure to come, — 
 Roses of sunset soon, 
 And by and by — the moon ! 
 
 PRINTED BY OLIVJBR AND BOYD, EDINBURGH
 
 THE LIBRARY 
 UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA 
 
 Santa Barbara 
 
 THIS BOOK IS DUE ON THE LAST DATE 
 STAMPED BELOW. 
 
 Series 9482
 
 UC SOUTHERN REGIONAL LIBRARY FACILITY 
 
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