‘The Volunteer’ by Herbert Asquith tells about how good war was and how one should die for their country; “and in that high hour he lived and died” he says that the greatest point in a man’s life is when he dies for his country. He never saw war which makes him hypocritical as he talks about an experience he never had.
In his poems, Asquith uses great images of Roman wars to glamorize war; “the gleaming eagles of the legions came”. This creates a picture in the reader’s minds of glorious times when the Roman army was the greatest power on earth. This set off young men dreaming of the romance of war and so signed their lives away.
From the poem “The Soldier” by Rupert Brookes it is possible to see that Brookes thought very highly of himself and his country. He believes that dying for his country would make up for all his sins and he would become at one with god, “a body of England breathing English air”. He wants to be remembered as part of England and says that wherever he dies that place becomes part of England because he’s there, “there is some corner of a foreign field that is forever England”. I think that Brookes believes that he should give something back to England and has beliefs that his country is beautiful and deserves to be defended by its people. He writes a lot about his deep love of England and how he regards it as the greatest place on earth, “in that rich earth a richer dust concealed”.
Wilfred Owen wrote about not how much he hated England but how much he hated the war. “they wrote his lie smiling” he makes the men who are signing up sound evil because they know that they are condemning a man who is too young to join, to death. He was an angry poet who did all he could to discourage men from enlisting. “Legless sewn short at the elbow…” he created disturbing images in the reader’s minds so that they could know a part of the horror which he and thousands of men had suffered. This made him angry at the government for not stopping the war and he did this the best way he knew how and that was to try and stop people being recruited because if there were no soldiers to fight the Germans there could be no war.
“Dulce Et Decorum Est” is one of the most famous poems about the war written by Wilfred Owen. It is also the most anger filled and graphic poem written. With lines such as “bent double like old men under sacks”. This creates even more disturbing images in the mind of the reader than his poem, “Disabled Does”. The poem makes it sound as if Owen is out to once and for all change everybody’s opinion of war once and for all. The part of the poem which is most disturbing is “… he plunges at me guttering, choking, drowning.” This part tells of one of Owens’ ‘drowning’ in gas during an attack. The poem tells us that Owen did not like the poets that used the old lie ‘Dulce et decorum est pro patria mori, which means that it is sweet and right to die for ones country, because he believed it was not sweet or right to die for any country. This gives the poem a very sarcastic title, as it is the exact opposite of what the poem describes.
Owen may have loved his country but he hated the fact that it encouraged young men to sign their lives away to be killed by the Germans. He would do all that he could to prevent it. He had opposite views to the other poets as they encouraged the death of men for their country.