Our children will sing with delight for all time
Of the Briton, the French, and the Russian,
But most of the man who with humour sublime
Pulled the goose-stepping leg of the Prussian.
NEWS FROM THE FRONT
[Sidenote: C.E.B. in the "Evening News"]
This so-remarkable letter on-a-battlefield-up-picked the real feeling of the British private soldier demonstrates. Its publication by the Berlin Official News Bureau is authorised. The words parenthesised are of some obscurity, but apparently are exclamations of a disgustful kind.
Our sojers they was weepin'
The night we went away
For some one whispered we was off
The Germans for to slay.
To shoot them cultured Bosches
Would make a Briton shrink
And so our 'earts was sad to go
(I don't think).
An' when we met them blighters
Of course we turned and ran,
An' Tubby French 'e shouted out
"All save theirselves as can";
An' when the big Jack Johnsons banged
We didn't cheer and larf
An' pump the Bosches full o' lead
(No, not 'arf).
An' w'en our foes retreated
We knowed we couldn't win
For they was out, that artful like,
To lure us to Berlin.
But touch that 'ome of culture?
We'd rather far be shot;
We simply worship Kaiser Bill
(P'raps, p'raps not).
FALL IN!
[Sidenote: H.B.]
What will you lack, sonny, what will you lack
When the girls line up the street,
Shouting their love to the lads come back
From the foe they rushed to beat?
Will you send a strangled cheer to the sky
And grin till your cheeks are red?
But what will you lack when your mates go by
With a girl who cuts you dead?
Where will you look, sonny, where will you look
When your children yet to be
Clamour to learn of the part you took
In the War that kept men free?
Will you say it was naught to you if France
Stood up to her foe or bunked?
But where will you look when they give the glance
That tells you they know you funked?
How will you fare, sonny, how will you fare
In the far-off winter night,
When you sit by the fire in an old man's chair
And your neighbours talk of the fight?
Will you slink away, as it were from a blow,
Your old head shamed and bent?
Or say—I was not with the first to go,
But I went, thank God, I went!