1. Make a Précis of following passage in about 250 words:

The essence of poetry is that it deals with events which concern a large number of people and can be grasped not as immediate personal experience but as matter known largely from heresy and presented in simplified and often abstract forms. it is thus the antithesis of all poetry which deals with the special, individual activity of the self and tries to present this as specially and as individually as it can. The poet who deals with public themes may himself be affected, even deeply, by contemporary events at some point in his own being, but to see them in their breadth and depth he must rely largely on what he hears from other men and from mass instruments of communication. From the start his impulse to write about them is different from any impulse to write about his own affairs. It may be just as strong and just as compelling, but it is not of the same kind. He has to give his own version of something which millions of others may share with him, and however individual he may wish to be, he cannot avoid relying to a large extent on much that he knows only from second hand.
Fundamentally this may not matter, for after all what else did Shakespeare do: but the political poet does not construct an imaginary past, he attempts to grasp and interpret a vast present. Between him and his subject there is a gap which he can never completely cross, and all his attempts to make events part of himself must be to some extent hampered by recalcitrant elements in them, which he does not understand or cannot assimilate or find irrelevant to his creative task. in such poetry selection which is indispensable to all art, has to be made from an unusually large field of possibilities and guided by an exacting sense of what really matters and what does not. On one side he may try to include too much and lose himself in issues where be is not imaginatively at home, on the other side he may see some huge event merely from a private angle which teed not mean much to others. Political poetry oscillates between these extremes, and its history in our time has been largely attempts to make the best of one or the other of them or to see what compromises can be made between them.
THE POLITICAL POETRY
The distinct factor of poetry is that it is influenced by outward factors. An objective poet may use his own discretion while interpreting events and write as beautiful as a subjective poet does, but impersonal elements always rule his mind. Even Shakespeare used this technique but the objective poets depict present more than the fictitious past. The objective poets should collect information carefully by analyzing different angles of an issue. The objective poets persistently hang in the inward and the outward influences, latter being the dominant ones. These influences can be seen in the political poetry over the history and in the modern times.

. Make a Précis of the following passage in about 250 words:

Up to a point the Second German War resembled the first. Each began with a German bid for power which almost succeeded in spite of the opposition of France and Great Britain. In each the United States came to the rescue after year of neutrality. Each ended with a German defeat. But the differences were easier to see than the resemblances. The powers were differently grouped: Italy and Japan were on the German side, Russia was neutral until the Germans attacked across what had been, to begin with, Poland and Baltic States. The second war lasted even longer than the other. It pressed harder on the civilian population. After a period of restraint, perhaps, intended to conciliate American opinion, both sides dropped bombs from the air, without respect for the nature of the targets, wherever the officers concerned expected to cause the greatest effect. In Great Britain 60,000 civilians were killed. Though the Island was not invaded, the population was more directly involved than it was in any former war. Children and others were evacuated from towns into the country. Food supplies ran so short that, at the worst, even potatoes were rationed. Of all the states opposed to Germany, Great Britain was the only one which fought throughout the war. The resources of the nation were concentrated in the war effort more completely than those of any other nation on either side. Labour for women as well as men, became compulsory. Nevertheless, once the war reached its full severity in the west, eight months after it was declared, there was less disunion between classes and interests than in any other five years within living memory. Fighting spread all over the world. The Pacific was as vital a theatre as Europe. Scientists, especially Physicists, made revolutionary discoveries during the war, not only in the fields of weapons and defence against them, but in supply, transport, and control in action. Strange to say the fight services suffered fewer casualties than in 1914-18: 300,000 of the armed forces and 35,000 of the navy were killed. There was nothing like the trench warfare of former war, though there was almost every other sort of warfare, from mechanized war of movement in the North African desert to hand to hand jungle fighting in Burma. Both sides experimented and built up stocks for gas warfare and biological warfare, but neither side used them. (George Clark: English History: a survey)
THE GERMAN WARS AND THE ROLE OF BRITAIN
Both 1st and 2nd world wars are similar in the sense that Germany triggered them and failed in both and the Unites States joined the party later to rescue allies. But the differences are more glaring. Italy and Japan sided with Axis-powers while Russia ended her neutrality after Germany attacked Poland and Baltic states. The world war two lasted longer and caused more civilian casualties as both sides resorted to indiscriminate bombing. Britain was not directly attacked yet people were emotionally attached with the war and eventually the nation got united. Both men and women participated in the national cause. The civilian casualties rose in Britain and people moved to rural areas. People faced the severe shortage of food. Britain fought throughout the course of war and used more resources as compared to other allies. The scientist too made many inventions to give upper hand to their respective nations. Surprisingly, the 2nd world war resulted in lesser military casualties. Both sides had chemical weapons but neither used them.