There was Unanimism. The name is
remembered; perhaps the books are read. But it will not be found in the
books. They are childish, just as the English novels which endeavoured
to portray the soul of the generation were coarse and conceited. Behind
all the conscious manifestations of cleverness and complexity lay a
fundamental candour of which only a flickering gleam can now be
recaptured. It glints on a page of M. Romains's _Europe_; the memory of
it haunts Wilfred Owen's poems; it touches Keeling's letters; it hovers
over these letters of Charles Sorley.[14] From a hundred strange
lurking-places it must be gathered by pious and sensitive fingers and
withdrawn from under the very edge of the scythe-blade of time, for if
it wander longer without a habitation it will be lost for ever.
[Footnote 14: _The Letters of Charles Sorley_. (Cambridge University
Press.)]
Charles Sorley was the youngest fringe of the strange unity that
included him and men by ten years his senior. He had not, as they had,
plunged with fantastic hopes and unspoken fears into the world.
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