SIEGFRIED SASSOON TO SPEAK AT UNION

At 8 o'clock this evening in the Living Room of the Union Siegfried Loraine Sassoon, the British poet, will lecture on the tendencies and changes in contemporary English poetry, and will read selections from his own poems. The meeting, which is held under the auspices of the Harvard and New England Poetry Clubs, will be open to all members of the Union. Mr. Robert S. Hillyer '17, president of the Harvard Poetry Club, will preside.

Mr. Sassoon will be entertained at luncheon this noon by the Signet Society, and will be the guest of the Advocate at a dinner held in his honor in the Trophy Room of the Union, at 7 o'clock. Besides the poet, the guests invited are Norreys J. O'Conor '07, David M. Little '18, Robert Hillyer '17, and Robert N. Cram '17.

Visiting Poet a Cambridge Man.

Mr. Sassoon, born in England in 1886, was educated at Marlborough College and Clare College, Cambridge. While there, he wrote a number of poems of an idyllic nature, which he published privately for the benefit of a limited circle of admirers.

With the advent of the war in 1914, he was one of the first to enlist, and served with the Royal Welsh Fusiliers for five years, both in France and in Palestine, and for meritorious conduct was awarded the Military Cross and advanced to the rank of captain. This long period of carnage and fighting turned his mind to the serious aspects of the struggle, and his poems and letters began to deal with "the political errors and insincerities for which the fighting men are being sacrificed," with the result that his case came up for discussion in the House of Commons in July 1917.

Satirist Still Idealist at Heart

The effect of the war in changing his view-point was so great that his "Old Huntsman" brought him into fame almost overnight. Robert Nichols, a brother poet, has described the change in the following words: "The poetry of Siegfried Sassoon tends to divide itself into two rough classes--the idyllic and the satiric. War has defiled one to produce the other. At heart Siegfried Sassoon is an idealist." "Counter Attack" and "Picture Show" the poet's latest books, have still more increased his fame.

Mr. Sassoon is now touring this country to describe to American audiences the spiritual upheaval that has taken place in the English writing of the last few years