They're out to show their grit,
And tackle jobs with energy and knack.
No longer caged and penned up,
They're going to keep their end up
Till the khaki soldier boys come
marching back.
This poem is actually more about women's rights and suffrage than it is about men at war; in this poem the contribution of the men is to be away, and so the women are left behind to take their places. In this passage, we see that far from being meek little things terrified by the tasks at hand, women are relishing their new roles and have felt constrained by society for a long time because they have been "caged" and prevented from doing jobs outside of the home or outside of what society believes to be "women's work". Later in the poem we read about the girls who are now drivers by profession when typically in the World War One era women were not really able to drive at all.
There is also a kind of ironic sadness to the poem; the women will do these jobs magnificently but when the men return from the war, they will be expected to relinquish them again, and return to their former lives, which many did not find particularly rewarding.
Who's for the game, the
biggest that's played,
The red crashing game of
a fight?
Who'll grip and tackle the
job unafraid?
And who thinks he'd
rather sit tight?
This poem is really an elongated, rhyming rhetorical question, that seems to taunt young men into joining up. The "game" that the poet is speaking of is World War One, and it is the "biggest ever played" because the future of the country seems to depend on it. It is also a conflict that is fought close to home, and in defense of the country, whereas previous wars were fought on other continents entirely and so did not have as much to do with actually protecting the country from invasion.
The passage also bullies a little bit; it asks young men if they are the kind of men who have courage and want to get to grips with the task in hand, or if they are the kind of men who are afraid and would rather sit back whilst others sacrifice themselves. Generally people do not want to respond to this kind of question in a negative way - who really wants to say that they are the type of person who is afraid to defend the country but they are happy to watch their neighbors do it? The "red crashing game" symbolizes the red blood on the battlefield but even this is actually glamorizing the task in a way. The men are being asked to view World War One as some kind of international game of strategy, or international game of soccer, and this deliberately minimizes what they are being told that they should do.
By bridge and battery, town and trench,
They're fighting with bull-dog pluck
This quote really encapsulates the entire theme of the poem No! as it is intended to raise the spirits of those waiting at home for the boys to return from war. It is also an insight into how the British viewed themselves during this time - the British bulldog fighting spirit was seen as something that could win a war even when the odds were firmly on the side of the opponent. It was also seen as a quality that was almost mandatory in a British person; to show anything less than "bulldog pluck" was to be cowardly and somehow distinctly un-British.
The lines also show the way in which the poet was trying to raise the spirits of those at home, Reports were filtering back to the country that the war was not going well; men were not trained and not correctly equipped; generals had no idea what they were doing. However, by reassuring those at home that good old British gumption could overcome any difficulties was intended to inspire and keep spirits up.
