This contains not only war poetry but anti-war poetry - which has a very much older history than Wilfred Owen, though of course he is here, too. Southey's poem about the battle of Blenheim, for instance, is an indictment of slaughter, though you wonder if all those Victorian anthologists fully recognised the fact. This collection goes well beyond English poets; there are extracts from Homer, from Aristophanes, from Norse sagas, from Alexander Blok, even a translation of the Anglo-Saxon Battle of Brunanburbh, versions from the Chinese, extracts (in English, of course) from The Song of Roland. Particularly poignant, though hardly great poetry, are a few bitter lines, called A Dead Statesman, from Kipling, who had lost his son in the Great War and had himself at one stage been a notorious Hawk: I could not dig; I dared not rob;/ Therefore I lied to please the mob./Now all my lies are proved untrue/And I must face the men I slew./What tale shall serve me here among/Mine angry and defrauded young? B.F.