Welsh Journals

of such a pitiful catastrophe as war. So he searched for a form of his own and found it in a powerful variation of blank verse in which im- mense strength was transferred to the end of the lines by means of assonance. His two most famous lines, used by Sassoon as Owen's own epitaph, are good examples of his style "Courage was mine, and I had mystery; Wisdom was mine and I had mastery." But mastery over technique and forceful style will never, of themselves, produce a great poet. Two other factors are of greater importance. They are the emotional depth of the poet and his ability to recreate his emotional experiences. And in these directions lie Wilfred Owen's great- est strength. More than any other poet produced by the war he had something to say, and he knew the value of saying it in the simplest forms. That does not mean that he is an easy poet to read; his thoughts are sometimes, as in "Strange Meet- THE ARMY AND WALES.A PROBLEM IN EDUCATION by Major Russell Jones, O.B.E., M.A., Army Educational Corps Success in War depends more on moral than on physical qualities.­Field Service Regula- tions, Vol. II. (i). PROBABLY no work of equal national value is so completely unknown to those who in theory control it and in practice pay for it, than the constantly repeated achievement of the Army of making the civilian into a soldier. Most of us have a background to our casual thinking in this direction barracks or huts against which are silhouetted marionettes performing strange tasks, forming fours, moving as automatons, with a brave show on occasions, but normally somewhat stupid, inclined to be brutish, and in any case not so far within our ken as to warrant further fatiguing thought. This impression is, to say the least of it, in- adequate and completely ignores the vast educa- tional endeavour which is required each year to transform a civilian mass of 30,000 men into the hundreds of specialised callings required by a modern Army. In a short service system such as our own this implies continuous training, and in any one year there are held in the Army over 600 "courses," designed to meet the demands of the various branches of the service for efficient men. These courses range over a wide field, calling for trained muscles and active minds in dozens of specialised activities, and all are based upon the assumption, that the average recruit has received and retained a modicum of elementary education. ing," extremely complex. But his expression was always direct, revealing at once the subtle work- ings of his mind. It has been said of him that his poems are fundamentally serene because he lived in a state of spiritual awareness which no earthly catastrophes could shake. At this time when the War is still so near and yet is beginning to recede from us, it is well to remember all that this young Welshman felt ten years ago. By no other means can we keep in constant touch with the emotions which were then roused. It is good to dwell on the six lovely lines which conclude "Anthem for Doomed Youth" "What candles may be held to speed them all? Not in the hands of boys, but in their eyes Shall shine the holy glimmers of goodbyes. The pallor of girls' brows shall be their pall; Their flowers the tenderness of patient minds, And each slow dusk a drawing-down of blinds." The annual intake from civilian life is for the most part homogeneous the youth of eighteen who cannot find a niche in industry is the main source of supply, since the number who enlist because they feel they have a vocation for military service form a relatively small, though valuable, and growing proportion of the whole. There is a leaven of boys who enter the Army definitely in search of a career some from military families who have been educated at the two great boys' schools-the Duke of York's School, Dover, and the Queen Victoria School, Dunblane; others who enter by competitive ex- amination for training as military tradesmen at the Boys' Technical School, Chepstow, and other small groups of specially enlisted boys. The main body, however, is derived from the working-class population, and is typical of the ordinary youth of our cities. All are certified to be of good char- acter and all must reach a physical standard. The Army is, of course, not without experience in dealing with the problems to which this mass of untrained youth gives rise. Since the days of Sir John Moore, training has followed certain ac- cepted lines, varied from time to time to meet the claims of new weapons and new tactics. In the middle of the nineteenth century changing methods required a recognition of the need of general education as an aid to training and as a test for promotion, and an elementary series of certificates was instituted to mark out the men whose knowledge warranted them as fit for re-