The Audacious War

E-text prepared by Al Haines
Boston and New York Houghton Mifflin Company The Riverside Press Cambridge 1915 Copyright, 1914 and 1915, by the Boston News Bureau Company Copyright, 1915, by Clarence W. Barron All Rights Reserved Published February 1915
Suppose 't were done! The lanyard pulled on every shotted gun; Into the wheeling death-clutch sent Each millioned armament, To grapple there On land, on sea and under, and in air! Suppose at last 't were come— Now, while each bourse and shop and mill is dumb And arsenals and dockyards hum,— Now all complete, supreme, That vast, Satanic dream!—
Each field were trampled, soaked, Each stream dyed, choked, Each leaguered city and blockaded port Made famine's sport; The empty wave Made reeling dreadnought's grave; Cathedral, castle, gallery, smoking fell 'Neath bomb and shell; In deathlike trance Lay industry, finance; Two thousand years' Bequest, achievement, saving, disappears In blood and tears, In widowed woe That slum and palace equal know, In civilization's suicide,— What served thereby, what satisfied? For justice, freedom, right, what wrought? Naught!—
Save, after the great cataclysm, perhap On the world's shaken map New lines, more near or far, Binding to king or czar In festering hate Some newly vassaled state; And passion, lust and pride made satiate; And just a trace Of lingering smile on Satan's face! — Boston News Bureau Poet .
This poem has been called the great poem of the war. It was written just preceding the war, and published August 1 by the Boston News Bureau. Of it, and its author, Bartholomew P. Griffin, the following was written by Rev. Francis G. Peabody: The English poets, Bridges, Kipling, Austin, and Noyes, have all tried to meet the need and all have lamentably failed. I am proud not only that an American, but that a Harvard man, should have risen to the occasion.
The Scotch have this proverb: War brings poverty. Poverty brings peace. Peace brings prosperity. Prosperity brings pride. And pride brings war again. Shall the world settle down to the faith that there is no redemption from an everlasting round of pride, war, poverty, peace, prosperity, pride, and war again?