ABSTRACT
During the years immediately preceding the First World War popular preferences in poetry among the educated middle classes in Britain were more misguided than ever before or since. In 1913 The Journal of Education held a plebiscite to try to
establish the names of the most popular poets writing at that time and the results showed Kipling as the leader with William Watson, Robert Bridges and Alfred Noyes as runners-up; and this was when Thomas Hardy was at the height of his powers as a poet, W. B. Yeats was fast approaching his maturity, Ezra Pound had published three collections of verse and the Imagist movement was well under way. Sir Henry Newbolt was regarded as a major poet and a collection of huffing patriotic verses published by him at the outbreak of the war sold 7o,ooo copies within a few months. In this literary climate it is not surprising that the first poems to be written by men who answered the call to arms bore little relation to the realities they were attempting to confront and the inadequacy of their responses to events was often increased by their political naivete and understandable ignorance of the dreadful experiences which lay before them.
