Two books of Claudel's poetry have appeared since the beginning of the war. The one, Corona Benignitatis Anni Dei' (1915), is a cycle of religious poetry; the other a slim volume containing three war poems. Although, when the poems which compose the larger book were written, Claudel can have had no premonition of the ordeal that was impending upon the world, they are complementary. In the religious poetry he has achieved the end of his evolution; he is not only certain, but he sees face to face. In so far as the progress of his belief was concerned, he could hardly hope to be more secure this side eternity. As with his faith, so with his art; the movement towards directness and simplicity of utterance could no further go. There are many poems in the 'Corona Benignitatis' which confound by their apparent naïveté; and they confound not merely because the poet, in his newness of heart, delights in the unhesitating statement of the most enigmatic doctrines of his Church, but because he can confront the mysteries of death so simply that they are not mysterious any more. He is so familiar with the other world that he is not awed by it; he can be whimsical with his destiny. His heaven is homely to him and his God a friend.

'Et puis il n'est homme si vulgaire qui ne Vous ait gardé quelque chose de nouveau,

Et qui n'ait fabriqué pour Vous, en dehors de ses heures du bureau,

Espérant que l'idée un jour Vous viendra de le lui demander, Et que peut-être ça Vous plaira, quelque chose d'affreux et de compliqué,

Ou il a mis tout son cœur et qui ne sert à quoi que ce soit. Ainsi ma petite fille, le jour de ma fête, qui s'avance avec embarras,

Et qui m'offre, le cœur gonflé d'orgueil et de timidité, Un magnifique petit canard, œuvre de ses mains, pour y mettre des épingles, en laine rouge et en fil doré.'

Here is that 'bonhomie de Claudel' of which a recent French critic has spoken; but this super-simplicity is the crown of a long and arduous struggle. It is a new victory for French poetry; almost it awakens a new emotion, or its unfamiliarity may be so strangely sweet because the secret pulse of the religious emotion is so seldom

communicable to the profane. Claudel's triumph is that he can communicate this subtle tremor. He has cast away the obscurity which is the privilege of the adept, so that he almost persuades us that, if we should but open wide our physical eyes, from us too no secrets would be hid.

This surely is a mark of true poetry; and Claudel's 'Corona Benignitatis' is not the less true poetry because it is the pinnacle reached by a slow and deliberate ascent. He knows well what he is doing; he can look back upon the path by which he came, and calculate his position by the stars. He knows well how long and solitary has been the journey away from familiar things before he stood near to them again, as a man who circles a mountain to gain the peak whence he can look down upon the world. He knows exactly what emotions his words will

awaken in those whom he was forced to leave.

'Adieu, amis! Nous arrivions de trop loin pour mériter votre croyance.

Seulement un peu d'amusement et d'effroi. Mais voici le pays jamais quitté qui est familier et rassurant.

Il faut garder notre connaissance pour nous, comprenant, comme une chose donnée, dont l'on a tout d'un coup jouissance,

L'inutilité de l'homme pour l'homme et le mort en celui qui se croit vivant.

Tu demeures avec nous, certaine connaissance, possession dévorante et inutile!

"L'art, la science, la vie libre," . . . ô frères, qu'y a-t-il entre vous et nous?

Laissez-moi seulement m'en aller, que ne me laissiez-vous tranquille?

Nous ne reviendrons plus vers vous.'

He is in his familiar and reassuring country; his voice, borne down the wind, awakens a little smile and a little terror in those who hear it; so precisely does Claudel know the essential quality of his poetry which makes one smile like a man to whom the terrors and certainties of his childhood have suddenly been made real again.

'Corona Benignitatis' is a statement of belief; the Trois Poèmes de Guerre' (1915) are a test of its efficacy.

In a moment the war has set, to all those who have sought a solution and a certitude in life, their old problems once again, with a sudden swiftness that will admit of no delay. Claudel alone among French poets was prepared. He does not cheat himself, nor turn his eyes away from the awful truth that war is a name for the untimely death of innumerable men. His war poems are acceptable, because they satisfy the demand which the modern mind instinctively makes upon the poet whose theme is war. His words must be profoundly resonant with the sense of mortality. An army is no longer a nation within a nation; it is the nation. A war is the murder of a nation's youth. The easy gallantry and joyful adventure of the old war-songs belong to an epoch of history which was closed by the Civil War in America ; and, when Whitman and Lowell and Lincoln sounded their clarion call to the dead, they magnificently gave out the note for the grave and Dorian music of modern Claudel had these notes within his compass; and he too has sounded them nobly. He speaks fearlessly to the dead, knowing that only thus he can speak to the living. It is the blood of the innocent dead which will rise up against the people of Cain, who can never fill the silence in their hearts, left by the voice of those whom they have killed. Therefore the poet is confident in his cause, for his hope of victory is no other than his eternal hope. The fight will endure so long as Might remains in arms against the mightier, which is Justice. But of the ultimate issue there is in his heart no doubt. as the march of the seasons, for it is one progression:

war.

It is sure with that

'De nouveau après tant de sombres jours le soleil délicieux Brille dans le ciel bleu.

L'hiver bientôt va finir, bientôt le printemps commence, et le matin

S'avance dans sa robe de lin.

Après le corbeau affreux et le sifflement de la bise gemis

sante

J'entends le merle qui chante!

Sur le platane tout à l'heure j'ai vu sortir de son trou

Un insecte lent et mou.

Tout s'illumine, tout s'échauffe, tout s'ouvre, tout se dégage, Peu à peu croît et se propage

Une espèce de joie pure et simple, une espèce de sérénité, La foi dans le futur été !

Ce souffle encore incertain dont je sens ma joue caressée, C'est la France, je le sais !

Ah, qu'elle est douce, car c'est elle! naïve mais péremptoire, L'haleine de la Victoire!'

These opening lines of the elegy 'Aux Morts de la République' are a remarkable example of Claudel's poetical understanding. In the audacity of their movement, the delicate and inimitable acceleration which unites musical sense and spiritual faith into one triumphant certainty before the poet makes his unfaltering invocation to the dead, they mark the perfection of Claudel's peculiar gift.

Claudel is a great Catholic. His influence upon the religious ideal of an élite among the French youth has been already deep and may be incalculable. To some this will be a questionable title to their regard. But they cannot withhold it, if they reflect that he is a great Catholic because he is a great poet. He has held his craft so high that he has not been content by thought to become merely the master of poetical logic that he is. He has been impelled to justify his art to his own soul; and the justification he has found is one that restores to his country the true conception of a poet's dignity, and poetry to its high and fitting seat, remote from the meanness of petty rivalries and the turmoil of the market-place.

JOHN MIDDLETON MURRY.

Art. 6.-THE NAVY AND ITS WORK IN THE WAR.

RECENT changes in the supreme command of the Navy, and more especially the transfer of Sir John Jellicoe to the office of First Sea Lord, make it opportune to review briefly the services which, under his control, the Navy has rendered to the country, the Empire and the Allies, in the present war. When the pebble fell into the water on Aug. 4, 1914, no man knew how far the ripples would travel. They touched many shores, and wherever they went British Sea Power went with them. If, indeed, we look at the face of the war, and examine the forces that are at work in the prosecution of it, we see the naval factor rising paramount above all others. Sea Power is the atmosphere in which the armies move. Many times in vital directions it has shaped the course of land strategy. Open transit at sea is at the very root of all that the Allies do. The want of such transit is at the root of many things the enemy cannot do. Some, indeed, of the elements which constitute naval power seem tending to assume new relative values. But, change as they may, the truth remains beyond question that the Navy counts as the first requisite for the maintenance of our security and the exercise of our power.

Yet, strange as it may seem, people at large are for the most part forgetful of the potent influence and preponderating importance of the services of the Fleet in the war, regarding it no more than they do the atmosphere they breathe. Newspapers tell the public very little about the Navy. It is, indeed, a silent service, emerging on rare occasions to fight a battle or engage in a 'scrap,' and then going into retirement again. People are distressed and anxious when a destroyer is lost, or when the enemy issues forth to make a sudden and evasive raid. The action of every submarine is to them an enigma and a portent. Apparent inaction troubles them, and they forget the enduring character and quality of the operation of naval force. If this is true of many Englishmen, can we wonder that neutral nations, and even our Allies, do not fully appreciate the achievements of the British and the Allied fleets?

If all the manhood of the nation were trained to arms,