BATTLE IN THE MUD 285

"Why did we join the Army, boys?
Why did we join the Army ?
Why did we come to Salisbury Plain ?
We must have been ruddy well balmy!"

One young officer, himself soon to fall in action, who shared
the comradeship and common purpose of that great and gallant
company, left behind him the picture of those wintry marches
across the English countryside:

"All the hills and vales along
Earth is bursting into song,
And the singers are the chaps
Who are going to die perhaps.
O sing, marching men,
Till the valleys ring again.
Give your gladness to earth's keeping,
So be glad, when you are sleeping.

Cast away regret and rue,
Think what you are marching to.
Little live, great pass.
Jesus Christ and Barabbas
Were found the same day.
This died, that went his way.
So sing with joyful breath.
For why, you are going to death.
Teeming earth will surely store
All the gladness that you pour."1

Among those who in those early months of the war chose
death for their bride were thousands of young men who had
seemingly been born to the happiest lot ever enjoyed by man.
Nursed in a traditional culture that had not yet quite lost its
hold on the well-to-do classes, yet admitted to the greater freedom
of a wider and more liberal educational ideal than the past had
known, they inherited the best of both worlds.

Of this generation one man in particular became identified in
the public mind. Rupert Brooke was in reality only one of

1CL H. Sorley, Marlborough, and other Poems,