Rupert Brook's reputation during the war worked on the principle that the poet-soldier fitted within a cultural and literary continuum, and a common English heritage. This could be read as intensely nationalist or even localist in expression, but in practice those promoting the ideals associated with the poet-soldier did so in a manner designed to appeal to broad audiences. The nature of Brooke's reputation, and the near universal allure of the ideals associated with the myth that emerged during the war, made him relatively easy to ‘sell’ – literally and figuratively – to would-be patrons, critics, and readers abroad.

He was already recognised by figures with international reputations, from Emile Verhaeren to Henry James. In 1916, Edith Wharton chose to include Brooke's poem ‘The Dance, A Song’ in her Book of the Homeless, which was designed to raise money for hostels for Belgian refugees. This was not a war poem, but instead conjured up memories of a dusky pre-war world: ‘Following where your feet have gone, / Stirs dust of old dreams there’. It appeared on page four of the volume, well ahead of more established figures including Maurice Barrès, John Galsworthy, Edmund Gosse, Thomas Hardy, General Joffre, and Henry James. Theodore Roosevelt, furious at United States neutrality in the war, provided the Introduction to the volume, including the following lines, which attacked the apathy of many who ignored the ‘cause of humanity’: ‘Nothing that can now be done by the civilized world, even if the neutral nations of the civilized world should at last wake up to the performance of the duty they have so shamefully failed to perform, can undo the dreadful wrong of which these unhappy children, these old men and women, have been the victims’. Wherever he was introduced, and in whatever context, Brooke was offered as one he had given his all in a common cause.

The manner in which different national presses chose to report on Rupert Brooke as ‘England's Poet-Soldier’ responded to particular local contexts; however, the language deployed, and the themes identified, remained largely consistent with their English counterparts. The exporting of Brooke relied on existing infrastructure that supported the sharing of information between individuals and governments, which became even more important in times of war as the belligerent nations worked to influence international opinion.