droit commun!' Set against this contention the argument on which the 'policy of ships' timber' was based, and it crumbles away. Plank and masts, hemp and stores of all kinds were the materials with which ships were built and kept afloat; they must therefore be affected by the contraband quality of the entire ship. What is true of the whole must be true of the part; for were it otherwise, then, as Sir James Marriott said in the case of the 'Vryheid':

'If one Dutch ship carries masts, another anchors, another sails, another a ship's frame (and such there is now taken, of size for a 70-gun ship), a whole fleet may go by detail from Holland for the King of France's service.'

Here, then, is the underlying principle: that materials or ingredients of contraband articles are themselves contraband, subject only to the general rule of 'enemy destination'; in this case more precisely defined to bedestined to the construction, or manufacture, of the article of contraband.

The opposite principle, however, in part persisted up to the time of the last discussion on maritime law. The Declaration of London, adopting the list of contraband agreed to at the Second Hague Conference, included the 'distinctive component parts' of certain things themselves declared to be contraband, as of arms and projectiles, but did not include the materials of which 'powder and explosives' are composed. It is unnecessary now to examine the reasons which led the Conference to adopt this narrow view; suffice it to say that during the late war, after a few revisions of the list of contraband, this item was added on Dec. 23, 1914, 'Ingredients of explosives, viz. . . .,' altered on Oct. 14, 1915, to 'Materials used in the manufacture of explosives, including... How great a part this broad definition played in the ultimate victory need not be emphasised.

The disappearance of wooden ships probably enabled the British Government to rest content with the item

It is interesting to note that in the Memorandum of the United States it was suggested that 'munitions et explosifs de toutes sortes et les éléments dont ces corps se composent' should be included; and some other nations put forward similar suggestions.

Warships, including boats and their distinctive component parts of such a nature that they can only be used on a vessel of war'; but, though the fundamental principle of the old policy may have been temporarily overshadowed by the desire of the Government of that day to bring about the total abolition of contraband, the necessities of war almost immediately compelled a recognition of the fact that ingredients are of as much assistance to the enemy as the manufactured article.

So great, as I have traced them, through all its story, were the difficulties which the spirit of the Navy has had to contend with, so great was the spirit which overcame them, the endurance with which it triumphed over all the perils which have encompassed it; of which the peril of the enemy was not the greatest, nor the peril of the neutral the most insidious. The greater perils came from the country itself-of pilfering by all and sundry, so that whole houses were built of chips'; of peculation by dishonest purveyors, so that all made fortunes; of party, which set the incompetent in the place of the competent, and of consequent maladministration; of the weevil in the biscuit, and of salted beef blue and white mouldy,' which led to the cat; of mutiny, which led to the yard-arm; of Commissions without number, and reports that always told the same story, lack of oaktimber and stores; of spasmodic plantings urged by the student's eloquence, which succumbed to consistent pillage; of individual profit always preferred to the safety of the State-and yet, through it all, the spirit has prevailed, by its native spring and toughness which, perchance, it has borrowed from the English oak -the spirit which has given to England the command of the sea. The command does not rest merely on numbers of big ships, and numbers of their crews, but on the spirit behind them. The Navy has in its charge the Peace and Safety of the Empire. Now it has accepted the larger doctrine, which has its origin in the times when it chased the pirates from the Narrow Seas, that the command carries with it an even greater obligation, to stand for the Peace of the World.

F. T. PIGGOTT.

Art. 7.-THE 'ENGLISH' POEMS OF MAURICE HEWLETT.

1. The Song of the Plow. Being the English Chronicle. Heinemann, 1916.

2. The Village Wife's Lament. Secker, 1918.

3. Flowers in the Grass (Wiltshire Plainsong). Constable, 1920.

For many years narrative poetry in this country has been neglected for lyrical poetry, the best work of the present generation having taken quite naturally a lyric form for reasons which it would be interesting to ponder and very difficult to determine. One reason may be postulated, a reason founded in the movement and psychology of the time-that the burdens which oppress the minds of men have driven them into seeking means of escape; and hence there have been sudden aspirations and upleapings in which temporal bonds are broken or forgotten, and the imagination moves entranced in a world of its unique creation, knowing no music but that of its own voice and wings, and no constraint but that of loyalty to its own severe though uncodified law. The narrative tradition of English poetry died a lingering, certain death in the immense collection of Tennyson's verse, for Swinburne's narratives were but extravagant lyrics; and, when English poetry revived and spoke once more of obstinate questionings or questionings put by, the lyric form triumphed and narrative was reserved for the inferiorities of prose minds that hankered after verse. The sombre imaginations of Mr Thomas Hardy had for many many years found expression in prose narrative, but when the custom of prose gave place at length to the instinct of verse, it was not narrative but lyrical verse that became his best medium; for even the too-sardonic meditations and tart gibes-such as seem, in 'Satires of Circumstance,' to have little of the maturity and nothing of the serenity of art-do not fall into a patient discovery of incident and character, but are set forth nakedly as unrelated incidents. It is true that we have been asked to admire certain other brisk recitals of incident by other authors, but they are palpably inferior efforts and meant merely to please a

reader quickly tired by serious things. They hardly affect the suggestion now put forward which, in terms of scientific cacophony, may be stated as the neglect of the objective for the subjective, in the poetry of the present generation.

It is because the chief recent attempt at a narrative in verse has been overlooked that the reader is now asked to consider certain poems by Mr Maurice Hewlett; and it may seem strange to speak of any of Mr Hewlett's work as having been overlooked when it is remembered that he is one of the most widely welcomed of modern novelists, an essayist of a singular quality, and a poet whose verse on classical themes has commanded respect without winning a very prompt affection. But the very variety of interest is itself a possible hindrance to the appreciation of the rarest aspect of Mr Hewlett's genius. Other men have written admirable romances, others have achieved at least an equal intimacy in essays, and others again have recast ancient myths in modern shape; but it is Mr Hewlett's praise that he has done something better than his best in these forms. Nor is it a question of form alone, for the poems we are now to look at have another distinction ; a distinction inherent in their subject and in the manner of presenting that subject to readers ready to welcome it, if only the true character and scope of the poems be recognised.

They are poems, then, of a completely English character, presenting their theme with the frankness and urgency of a gospel or a political tract, yet never wholly denying their imaginative origin. There is a great deal of poetry, from Chaucer's to Meredith's, in which the English landscape is rendered with imaginative fondness and fidelity; and no lover of the native country, or of native poetry, can fail to perceive in greater and lesser English poets alike-in Shakespeare and Pope, Keats and Marvell, Milton and Mr Bridges-not simply the affection but also the very features of the land itself, the special quality of hills and hedge-rows and streams and woods, which these poets have mysteriously evoked, renewed and re-inspired. How large a part the English landscape has taken in forming the English spirit, we who are naturally intimate with both cannot easily decide; but the long experience of the war, with its

memories of painful exile and reverting desire, has helped us to apprehend a little consciously, perhaps, the strength of this most ancient of affinities. Keats, when he wrote 'Endymion,' was unaware of any desire but the desire to approach or create beauty, his own passion turning quite simply to the simplest and subtlest observation of the beauty of woods and meadows; but in his relation of all that he thus discovered he achieved something beyond his own intention, creating an image of the physical and spiritual character of the English landscape as surely as did Constable in another medium, or any water-colourist of the great age. And Keats is but one of a score of instances, which it would be easy and delightful to recount, of the same imaginative loyalty and creativeness.

Hitherto, however, there has been a singular deficiency in all this activity. The image thus reflected, or the landscape thus presented, has been strangely silent or solitary; it has been strangely unhistoried. Birds' voices are heard there but not men's; cattle are seen moving, but not labourers; spiritual visions sweep the hills, but visions of the human past have seldom been recorded. It is as though trees were more enduring than men, thoughts more significant than actions, dreams of the future more potent than continuous memories of the past. The physical character of their native landscape has entered deeply into the English poets, and their apprehension of it has become half mystical; until at length it might be said that their primary power is manifest in a lyrical meditation upon the beauty of the English country, and the imaginative exaltation of that beauty into a pure spiritual aura.

I do not suggest this as a fault but as a special feature of English poetry, and I pass on to another suggestionthat Mr Hewlett is the most eminent if not quite the only one of modern poets by whom this tradition has been broken, in his return to an older tradition. The Song of the Plow,' his longest and finest poem, does not lack the sudden lyricism of landscape beautifully rendered, but it is not to this that his powers are most freely given. He calls his poem the English chronicle, and himself suggests that his point of view is novel, showing it succinctly in the briefest of 'arguments':