And cackle at the Show, while prancing ranks
Of harlots shrill the chorus, drunk with din;
“We’re sure the Kaiser loves the dear old Tanks!”
I’d like to see a Tank come down the stalls,
Lurching to rag-time tunes, or “Home, sweet Home,”—
And there’d be no more jokes in Music-halls
To mock the riddled corpses round Bapaume.
Mr. Sassoon himself laughs on occasion, but it is the laughter of a man being driven insane by an insane world. The spectacle of lives being thrown away by the hundred thousand by statesmen and generals without the capacity to run a village flower-show, makes him find relief now and then in a hysteria of mirth, as in The General:
“Good-morning; good-morning!” the General said
When we met him last week on our way to the Line,