When a former student asked Robert F. Holden if he would be interested in giving a presentation at the Main Branch of the county library in Cape May Court House, Holden was suitably impressed.

“This was his first time arranging for a speaker,” Holden said. “I had given this talk during one of my classes when he was a student, and he remembered it, and thought it would be interesting to others. That’s very gratifying.”

The talk Holden will be giving Nov. 10 at 6 p.m. is entitled, “Poets of the Great War,” and explores the horrors of World War I through the poetry of English and American poets.

More than just the ironic juxtaposition of poetry and war, Holden’s talk offers other media, including film clips, and World War I memorabilia.

“The most telling clip I have is from the old TV show, “Young Indiana Jones,” he explained. “ It depicts a gas attack on the western front, and how it affects one soldier in particular. It brings the horror and grotesqueness of this war alive, whereas many Hollywood productions of war are quite sanitized.”

Holden highlights several poets, but is especially focused on Wilfred Owen, whose poem "Dulce et Decorum Est” (It is sweet and right), did much to dispel the popular notion that war was a glorious undertaking.

The poem, written in 1917 after he witnessed a gas attack first hand, describes the agonizing effect of this weapon.
After vividly illustrating the results of a gas attack on soldiers, the short poem ends with the lines:

My friend, you would not tell with such high zest
To children ardent for some desperate glory,
The old Lie; Dulce et Decorum est
Pro patria mori.

The last line—Dulce et Decorum est Pro Patria mori—is from an ode by Horace, and translates: “it is sweet and right to die for your country.”

“England’s ‘upper crust’ went off to war at the time, feeling that way—that war was noble and glorious,” Holden said. “They wanted to defeat Germany, and they believed in what they were doing. Owen wanted to show that war was not glorious, but grotesque.

“His is a sad story,” Holden continued. “His letters home told his mother not to worry about him being killed. He was eventually killed two weeks before the Armistice.”

Holden, after spending 31 years as a teacher in Ocean City, is now a senior adjunct professor at Atlantic Cape Community College. He has given talks before, usually about Abraham Lincoln, or the Holocaust, which he aligns with World War I.
“The background of the Holocaust is found in World War I,” he said. “That goes a long way in explaining exactly how and why Hitler came to power.”

Holden explained that he was part of the curriculum team that revived the New Jersey Commission on Holocaust Studies.
“The only head of government that I know of today who denies the Holocaust is that of Iran,” he said. “In my experience, there have been very few people closed-minded enough to actually deny the existence of the Holocaust.”

Holden consequently is hopeful that more schools will invite him to speak, whereupon he can explain the root causes of the Holocaust.

“I want to explain exactly who the victims were,” he said. “And why.”