Help Out a Blog Reader

I am trying to discern the historical setting for three of Chesterton's most important poems, "A Hymn," "A Hymn for the Church Militant," and "Christmas Truce." They all make reference to war, but they were all written during the early years of the 20th century, when there were no military actions involving England. So are these poems to be understood in generic terms? If so, how to account for the uncanny prescience of "The Christmas Truce," which anticipates the event that actually happened in 1914, during the first Christmas of the Great War?

Many thanks, RW

Anyone? What about the Boer War?