THE BENEFITS OF PEACE
(as they appear to be viewed by certain unofficial guardians of public morality).
When Peace superseded the strife and the stress
Which the public regard as a gift for the Press,
It was feared in the quiet that followed the storm,
With nothing to do but retrench and reform,
That the Town would be painted a colourless tint
And the printers have nothing exciting to print.
That fear was unfounded, I'm happy to say,
And red is the dominant tone of to-day;
So far from incurring a shortage of news
While the place is made fit for our heroes to use,
We cannot remember a rosier time;
We have rarely enjoyed such an orgy of crime.
There are scandals as nice for the reader to nose
As any old garbage of carrion crows;
Our mystery-mongers are full of resource;
There's a bigamy boom and a vogue of divorce;
To the licence of flappers we freely allude,
And we do what we can with the cult of the nude.
No, the War isn't missed; there's a murrain of strikes
Where a paper can take any side that it likes;
We are done with denouncing the filth of the Bosch,
But we still have our own dirty linen to wash;
Though we trade with the brute as a man and a brother,
Our Warriors still can abuse one another.
And if spicier features incline to be slack
There is always the Chief of the State to attack;
We have standing instructions to cake him with mud
And a couple of columns reserved for his blood.
Oh, yes, there is Peace, but our property thrives—
We are having, I tell you, the time of our lives.
O.S.
