Page:Poems of the Great War - Cunliffe.djvu/29

 RICHARD ALDINGTON

��\YAR YAWP

America !

England's cheeky kid brother,

Who bloodily assaulted your august elder

At Bunker Hill and similar places

{Not mentioned in our history books),

What can I tell you of war or of peace?

Say, have yov forgotten 1861 f

Bull Run, Gettysburg, Fredericksburg?

Your million dead?

Tell me,

Was that the greatest time of your lives

Or the most disastrous ?

Who knows? Not you; not I.

Who can tell the end of this war?

And say, brother Jonathan,

D'you know what ifs all about?

Let me ivhisper you a secret — we don't !

We were all too fat with peace,

Or perhaps we didn't quite know how good peace was,

And so here we are.

And we're going to win. . ..

It's fine to be a soldier,

To get accepted by the recruiting sergeant,

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