"Freyberg inveighed against the Georgian Poets and reproached me for holding a brief for Siegfried Sassoon. I maintained that, having fully demonstrated his personal physical courage, he had earned the right to exhibit moral courage as a pacifist without laying himself open to the charge of cloaking physical cowardice under the claim of moral courage. Freyberg is very uncompromising in his condemnation and, with some justice, says it is offensive to come back and say, "I can't lead men to their death any more"—it implies a monopoly of virtue, as if other officers liked doing it because they acquiesced in their duty. He thought the poem called "The Hero" caddish, as it might destroy every mother's faith in the report of her son's death. Certainly Siegfried Sassoon breaks the conspiracy of silence, but sometimes I strongly feel that those at home should be made to realise the full horror, even to the incidental ugliness, as much as possible."
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Lady Cynthia Asquith, diary entry (16 December 1917), quoted in Lady Cynthia Asquith, Diaries, 1915–1918 (1968), pp. 380-381
https://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Siegfried_Sassoon
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Siegfried Sassoon
Siegfried Sassoon (September 8, 1886 – September 1, 1967) was a British poet and writer, best remembered for the poems he wrote as a soldier in World War I. Decorated for bravery on the Western Front, he became one of the leading poets of the First World War.
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