ZERO.
("Zero-hour"—commonly known as "Zero"—is the hour fixed for the opening of an Infantry attack.)
I woke at dawn and flung the window wide.
Behind the hedge the lazy river ran;
The dusky barges idled down the tide;
In the laburnum-tree the birds began;
And it was May and half the world in flower;
I saw the sun creep over an Eastward brow,
And thought, "It may be, this is Zero-hour;
Somewhere the lads are 'going over' now."
Somewhere the guns speak sudden on the height
And build for miles their battlement of fire;
Somewhere the men that shivered all the night
Peer anxious forth and scramble through the wire,
Swarm slowly out to where the Maxims bark,
And green and red the panic rockets rise;
And Hell is loosed, and shyly sings a lark,
And the red sun climbs sadly up the skies.
Now they have won some sepulchred Gavrelle,
Some shattered homes in their own dust concealed;
Now no Bosch troubles them nor any shell,
But almost quiet holds the thankful field,
While men draw breath, and down the Arras road
Come the slow mules with battle's dreary stores,
And there is time to see the wounded stowed,
And stretcher-squads besiege the doctors' doors.
Then belches Hell anew. And all day long
The afflicted place drifts heavenward in dust;
All day the shells shriek out their devils' song;
All day men cling close to the earth's charred crust;
Till, in the dusk, the Huns come on again,
And, like some sluice, the watchers up the hill
Let loose the guns and flood the soil with slain,
And they go back, but scourge the village still.
I see it all. I see the same brave souls
To-night, to-morrow, though the half be gone,
Deafened and dazed, and hunted from their holes,
Helpless and hunger-sick, but holding on.
I shall be happy all the long day here,
But not till night shall they go up the steep,
And, nervous now because the end is near,
Totter at last to quietness and to sleep.
And men who find it easier to forget,
In England here, among the daffodils,
That there in France are fields unflowered yet,
And murderous May-days on the unlovely hills—
Let them go walking where the land is fair
And watch the breaking of a morn in May,
And think, "It may be Zero over there,
But here is Peace"—and kneel awhile, and pray.
"Surely one result of the war will be that civilised races will regard the German as an outcast unfit to associate with or to have dealings with on equal terms. If he is able to say 'tu grogue' we shall put ourselves in a false position."—Times of India.
For ourselves, we decline to do this. We shall simply call him another.
