Page:Fifes and Drums, Poems of America at War, Vigilantes, 1917.djvu/130



raise my boy to be a soldier—

The nations ought to arbitrate, I say—

But I couldn't face my son if I made him leave undone

His bit to help America to-day.

Though I couldn't bear to think of him in battle,

And it's terrible to trust him to the sea,

I'll give him with a will where he doesn't have to kill

Is there nothing for my boy and me?"

There's a call for him that's louder every minute;

There's a hungry world that he can help to feed.

There's a fight without a gun that is waiting for your son

Where the enemy's the vermin and the weed.