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      From a poem entitled "Spain: 1937" these lines by F.R. Scott are indicative of that sort of pain:
      In the spring of ideas they were, the rare spring That breaks historic winters. Street and field Stirring with hope and green with new endeavour, The cracking husks copious with sprouting seed. Here was destruction before flowering, Here freedom was cut in its first tendrils.
      Even more poignant and lyrical. I feel, xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx are the dozen or so poems of revolutionary struggle written by Leo Kennedy, one of the
      contributing editors to the magazine founded in April 1936, NEW Frontier. More
      than any other Canadian periodical of the time, its pages were devoted to
      documentary reportage from Spain, to political articles, to literary critic-
      cism and particularly to the new poetry inspired by the Spanish struggle
      and by poems from Spain itself, translated beautifully by the critic W.E. Collin. xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
      xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx New Frontier's aim was " to acquaint the Canadian public with the work of those writers who are expressing a positive reaction to the social scene; and to serve as an open forum for all shades of progressive opinion." and as such it attracted the young Kennedy who had published, in
      1933 one book of poems, The Shrouding. At the
      time of the Spanish crisis he had repudiated this poetry as decadent, filled with images of the Wasteland, "aesthetic pole-sitting". Kennedy, in the pages of Hew Frontier sought to establish a new xxxxxxxx "Direction for Canadian Poets", setting up critical standards which he was the first to follow. At this point I would like to quote from a very valuable PHD thesis written by Richard F. Hornsey for the University of Alberta, 1975. Its title is: "The Function of Poetry and the Role of the Poet in Canadian Literary Magazines from New Frontier Through Deltax" and Hornsey
      devotes a great
      deal of attention to Leo Kennedy. Of his eight poems published in New Frontier (some of them under pseudonyms) the critic says:
      They divide rather neatly into three types. Three of them--"Calling Eagles", "Advice to a Young Poet" and "Summons for This Generation" , are poetic rephrasings or the call for more vigorous social engagement on the part of the poet which he voiced in "Direction for Canadian Poets." A second group consisting of "New Comrade", "You, Spanish Comrade", "Revolutionary Greeting" and "Memorial to the Defenders" are examples of the "outward" looking poetry he hoped for....