E-text prepared by Al Haines

THE AUDACIOUS WAR

CLARENCE W. BARRON

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

THIRD IMPRESSION

IF!

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.