16                              Miriam J. Benkovitz

British line at Vimy, the Ancre, Thiepval Wood, Ypres, and the
Somine. Through it all, the heat and the cold, the mud and the wet,
the filth, the vermin, the hunger and noise and exhaustion, is the
recurrent danger of death underlined by the slaughter of compan¬
ions. Blunden's account is matter-of-fact, dispassionate. He did
not hate tliose whom he fought or love unduly those whom he
guarded.

Blunden's "elders and berters" received the book well and thus
affirmed his faith in England despite "signs of a decline" which
he saw in the "newer habits of life." Nevertheless, he was uneasy.
He feared "the debt of the war must be paid in a subtle coinage
still"; but if another war could be avoided, another day must come
"when the sky is what it used to be." That depended on the "rising
generation." Blunden was convinced that they could "save them¬
selves trouble" by attending to him.

So Blunden went on worrying his tale. Less than a year after
publication, that is, at the end of July 1929, he "embellished" a
copy of Undertones of War for its publisher, Richard Cobden-
Sanderson. That copy is a part of the Rare Book Collection of the
Columbia University Libraries. Blunden began his embellishment
on the free end-paper with these verses:

Richard, had presiding Fate

Sweetened our Battalion's state

By posting you to us, how soon

Would you & I have reached Bethune;

With a hundred francs to spare

Lorry-jumped to St Omer;

Seen the harvest looking well

While we ambled to Cassel,

And made the midnight echoes ring

With Cheerfulness at Poperinghe,

Even the line and its long nights

Of wiring, digging, bombs and lights.

Would have tried to entertain

While Richard cursed the rats and rain.