Like love, war is one of the great progenitors of poetry. And as with love, poets have, down through the centuries, been known to have differing views on the subject, some extolling the glories and others concentrating on the pain involved.

World War I produced a large number of poets who vividly portrayed the horrors of warfare. This is not surprising, given that that war witnessed the first use of poison gas, the first mass bombings of civilian targets, the first modern-day instance of genocide, and the first use of machine guns and other such weaponry to inflict mass casualties. It was a war in which some nine million combatants would lose their lives. And it was a war in which the bodies of half of those killed would never be identified or recovered from the battlefields.

Most poetry lovers are familiar with the works of such World War I poets as Siegfried Sassoon, Rupert Brooke, Wilfred Owen, John McCrae, and Allan Seeger. For some reason, few seem to remember John Lehmann's classic contribution to the register of poetry that was inspired by that terrible conflict.

This poem, which is a long time favorite of mine, was written in 1932. This was a time when the world was surveying the terrible wreckage caused by the first war in which sophisticated machines designed specifically for killing large numbers of people were used on a massive scale. It was also a time when people were beginning to realize that another European war of even greater ferocity was not only possible but likely, and that this one would utilize even more sophisticated killing machines.

The fact that "The Excellent Machine" is not a widely known poem today, should not lead anyone to think that Lehmann did not achieve fame. In fact, he is described by the Cambridge Guild to Literature in English as "one of the century's leading men of letters," having been involved in later years in many successful publishing ventures featuring the writings of a number of the century's great talents.