Interesting piece on a censored war artist by a war correspondent.
But it is an old man’s sentiment. The young are strangers to its undercurrent of regret and loss. In 1915, when the poet Rupert Brooke enlisted, he wrote to a friend that soldiering “is the only life for me now. The training is a bloody bore. But on service one has a great feeling of fellowship, and a fine thrill, like nothing else in the world. And I’d not be able to exist for torment, if I weren’t doing it. Not a bad place and time to die, Belgium in 1915? The world’ll be tame enough after the war. For those who see it. Come and die. It’ll be great fun.”