Unlike most of the ‘war poets’, J. A. Morton was not conscripted to fight in WW1. He was in his thirties and had defective eyesight. Like most of his generation, he lost many friends and sons of friends to the devastation of war. Some of his poems were published in his lifetime but others stayed handwritten in his two commonplace books. Now, with ever increasing warfare and more powerful
means of destruction, with the continuing danger to the all species human and animal, it seems appropriate to set out one man’s stand against the brutality and futility of war.