"These have I loved :

White plates and cups, clean-gleaming,

Ringed with blue lines; and feathery, faery dust;
Wet roofs, beneath the lamp-light; the strong crust
Of friendly bread; and many-tasting food;
Rainbows; and the blue bitter smoke of wood;
And radiant raindrops couching in cool flowers;

O dear my loves, O faithless, once again

This one last gift I give; that after men

Shall know, and later lovers, far-removed,

Praise you, All these were lovely '; say, 'He loved.'

Walt Whitman himself never exulted in so sustained an anthem; it is the "Benedicite" of all lovers of Nature. How instantly and surely does Brooke show us the captivation of the sudden flowering miracle of the ordinary.

We, too, go out after reading this, and for a moment gaze spellbound in ecstasy with new eyes at the beauty of boys bathing in a pool, of the lighted cottage window at dusk, the dim religious light of an abbey crowned by the crescent moon; we, too, have our immortal moment in lilac and laburnum time, when we picture some old song's lady, a snatch of a forgotten tune, the echoing laughter of our best beloved who may be far away or dead; we, too, stand on the heights unpinion'd and gaze out over the empurpled hills, razor-like in their majestic nakedness, and for a million years enraptured, god-like, appreciative; we, too, can see visions of Arthur setting out for that distant vale of Avilion, where falls not hail, or rain, or any snow, nor ever wind blows loudly; we, too, can hear the voice of many waters, of the breeze, of the lark; the scent of sweet-brier and of peach has the power to drive even us almost mad with infinite longings

but for the

most part we are content to crawl homewards with downcast eye, oblivious of beauty, forgetful of love; it is in these arid, neverending, viewless deserts that we need most of all the poets, our soul's tin-openers, that we may open our eyes to see, our ears to hear; to see in the long melancholic train of clouds our dead friends hovering, to hear in the joyous trilling of birds our loved one's happy laughter. We, too, need to have something of that magnificent unpreparedness for the long littleness of life which is only to be learnt of poets. Rupert Brooke, perhaps more than any poet of our era, is able to teach us something of the things that matter. It was not for nothing that Ben Jonson styled Donne the first poet in the world for some things. So is his disciple, Brooke. If you require a corrective for lazy thinking and facile writing, turn to Donne or Brooke; if that kind of wit which is one long succession of disconcerting surprises refreshes you and inspires you, you will find it in each of these; if you are willing or able

to let beauty come to you as it comes to the Alchemist who "Glorifies his pregnant pot, If by the way to him befall, Some odoriferous thing or medicinal," you will be helped again by reading these two men, you will forgive the frequently bizarre, the sometimes even repellent tone that creeps in almost unconsciously, because of that rare intensity of feeling which pervades their whole outlook on life. If you love Browning, but are too troubled to acquiesce without question in his too comfortable "God's in His Heaven; all's right with the world," or his non-proven optimism about reunion, "I shall clasp thee again, Ở thou soul of my soul, and with God be the rest," turn to Brooke and you will find the same erudition, the same packed intricacies, the same multitudinous beauties and whimsical phraseology, but none of his annoying sophistry. There is always latent that surest of all foundations, a perfect blend of reason and imagination, each restraining the other so that reason does not become unsympathetic hardness nor imagination degenerate into what Wordsworth so well called mere fancy.

If your criterion of a poet be that he should possess fire, a joy in life, a classical taste, an Hellenic eye for beauty and grace, a sense of the lovely, and be able to differentiate that best of all things, Love, from that worst travesty, Sentimentalism, you will be among those who will turn for solace and true enjoyment to Rupert Brooke.

There has passed away through his death a glory from the earth; each of us is the poorer by the loss of a man whom all his friends idolised and his readers revered. He died as he had lived; as England had lavished on him all the gifts in superabundance that mortal man can desire, so he was willing to renounce them all as a sacrifice on the altar of honour. "Proud then, clear-eyed and laughing, go to great Death as a friend." Of him it can truly be said as of few others :

"Nothing is here for tears, nothing to wail

Or knock the breast; no weakness, no contempt,
Dispraise or blame; nothing but well and fair,
And what may quiet us in a death so noble."

"A young Apollo, golden-haired,

Stands dreaming on the verge of strife,
Magnificently unprepared

For the long littleness of life."

I wish to express my deep gratitude to Mr. Frank Sidgwick for his courtesy in permitting me to reproduce the extracts quoted above.-S. P. B. M.

RECRUITING AND ORGANISATION FOR WAR. (II.)

THE article under the above heading which appeared in THE FORTNIGHTLY REVIEW for May was written in the early days of March. I write again in the middle of June, after the lapse of more than two months. Good things and bad have happened in the interim. To deal first with those that are untoward, the campaign of the Allies on the East has suffered a serious reverse. Przemysl has been recaptured by the enemy, and Lemberg, which fell to the Russians as long ago as September 3rd, is in some danger. When all allowance is made for enemy exaggeration, there appears to be not the slightest doubt that the Russians have lost in captured over half a million men since early in May-the greatest loss of its kind which has ever been recorded in the history of war. The campaign on the East is thus in a substantially worse position than it was in last September, when the war was less than two months old. On the West there has been a little successful nibbling at the German lines, but for all practical purposes the advanced frontier of Germany is where it was last October, when the war was three months old. For some unexplained reason the British forces are holding no more than about thirty miles of front on the West, and their nibbling has of late been less successful than that of the French. The Dardanelles campaign proceeds very slowly at enormous sacrifice. The Prime Minister has informed us that the casualties on land to the end of May amounted to 258,069, being 50,342 killed, 153,980 wounded, and 53,747 missing, and that losses at sea to the end of May, including the losses of seamen operating ashore, amounted to 8,245 killed, 2,443 wounded, and 2,859 missing, figures which furnish their own commentary upon Lord Kitchener's call for "300,000 more men."

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On the other hand, Italy entered the war on May 23rd, and has been apparently acting with some energy, although it is regrettable to see so many newspapers treating initial advances as 'great successes," very much in the style of the days of the early Russian movements, a reference to the records of which in the columns of any daily newspaper of that time makes salutary reading in the eleventh month of the war. We have also to remember that, however stubborn the resistance of the Turks in the Gallipoli Peninsula, it can only be a matter of sooner or later before their defence fails through sheer lack of essential supplies, if for no other reason, and as Mr. Churchill said at Dundee, the

passage of the Dardanelles would be "a victory in the sense of a brilliant and formidable fact, shaping the destinies of nations and shortening the duration of the war." The destruction of the Lusitania has moved President Woodrow Wilson to the dispatch of a formal Note to Germany, and Mr. Bryan has resigned upon the dispatch of a second Note as firm in language as the first. The rupture of diplomatic relations between America and Germany may, therefore, become an accomplished fact, and it would become possible for the United States to play a most effective part in the war without firing a shot by cutting off all supplies to Germany and by provisioning, supplying, and in part financing the Allies.

On the whole it can hardly be said that the position has improved since I wrote in March. That is not to express doubt as to the final issue. The Central Empires are besieged by foes who are stronger than themselves in point of both numbers and wealth, and they are very largely cut off from sea communications. The United Kingdom, France, Russia, and Italy have (to neglect Russia-in-Asia), a population of over 270,000,000 people, while Germany and Austria-Hungary between them have a population of about 118,000,000 people. In wealth the Allies are greatly superior to their enemies. At the outbreak of war the 46,000,000 British people had an aggregate income of, approximately, the same dimensions as the 67,000,000 German people, and the conditions of the war have preserved a large part of British commerce and production while they have seriously crippled the wealthproducing powers of Germany. There is, of course, a far greater disparity of wealth between France, Russia, and Italy considered as an aggregate on the one hand, and Austria-Hungary on the other.

The power of resistance of the enemy, therefore, rests not upon wealth or numbers, but upon a splendid organisation-an organisation not for war alone but for all purposes. Our scientific foe has shown under siege a most remarkable ability to produce the essential materials of war. With free access to the world's materials and to the world's nitrates, we are short of shells, while besieged Germany, with imported nitrates and copper almost entirely cut off, overwhelms the Russians with an amazing prodigality of high explosive. Nevertheless, in spite of the absence of prevision and provision, in spite of the neglect of the greater part of a year, it is true in the month of June, 1915, that it is the Allies who have the cards if they care to play them, and it is difficult to believe that they will neglect to play them when they realise the essentials of the case. One great danger might develop beyond control if the nation were content to muddle through. I

refer to the fact that if it were possible for Germany to protract the war for several years, and to devote her magnificent engineering establishment to the construction of submarines, she would be able seriously to menace our mercantile marine, our sea communications, our supplies, and therefore our power to continue in the war. This special danger lends the utmost importance to the speeding-up of our operations. Never in the history of the world was there a case in which the dangers of delay stood out more clearly.

It is too late for counsels of perfection. Every party in the State must take its share of blame in different degrees for the position in which we find ourselves. It is a great consolation to those who fought in recent years the campaign on behalf of the Navy that British soil at least is free from the invader. Those also who lost no opportunity of pointing out that our manufacturing equipment was in many important respects falling far short of the modern German standard, and who protested against the craze for foreign investing (as I did in the columns of this REVIEW in the month before the war), may be absolved from blame in respect of our neglect of essential industries valuable alike in peace and in war. Few, however, and certainly not the present writer, can say that they are blameless in respect of our neglect of what is now so obvious to everyone, that a great Navy cannot alone secure the safety of the British Empire.

Of the three essential things that we have to call to our aid at this time-Naval Power, Military Power, Industrial Poweronly one was in readiness. We had neither an Army nor an industrial organisation fit for the hour of trial which was upon us. Therefore it is that we have to pour out money in deliberate waste which no present wisdom can avoid. Therefore it is that we are recruiting the most extravagant Army that the world has ever seen. Therefore it is that we are driven to economic expedients of the most extraordinary character. Therefore it is that we are building up future liabilities for the State which will remain long after those who read these lines have passed away.

That there is an intimate and vital connection between methods of recruiting and national organisation for war is now widely recognised. Two months ago I was able to prove that there had already taken place too much recruiting amongst the producers of essential commodities, and I expressed the fear that such recruiting was still proceeding. In spite of many warnings upon the subject, the evil has continued and still continues. I have had many instances brought to my notice, both by employers and by workmen who have become soldiers, of the continuance of recruiting amongst the very men who, in the best interests of the nation,