Christmas ought to be brought up to date,” Maria said. “It ought to have gangsters, and aeroplanes and a lot of automatic pistols.

In 1929 Masefield broke with the contest concept and the Recitations came to an end. His father died soon after following a mental breakdown. When he returned to England he submitted a report to the British Foreign Office and suggested that he be allowed to write a book about the failure of the allied efforts in the Dardanelles which possibly could be used in the US in order to counter what he thought was German propaganda there.

John Edward Masefield OM (1 June 1878 – 12 May 1967) was an English poet and writer and Poet Laureate of the United Kingdom from 1930 until his death in 1967.