You helped us pass the jest along the trenches—
Where, in cold blood, we waited in the trenches—
You touched its ribaldry and made it fine.
You stood beside us in our pain and weakness—
We’re glad to think You understand our weakness—
Somehow it seems to help us not to whine.
We think about You kneeling in the Garden—
Ah! God! the agony of that dread Garden—
We know You prayed for us upon the Cross.
If anything could make us glad to bear it—
’Twould be the knowledge that You willed to bear it—
Pain—death—the uttermost of human loss.
Though we forgot You—You will not forget us—
We feel so sure that You will not forget us—
But stay with us until this dream is past.
And so we ask for courage, strength, and pardon—
Especially, I think, we ask for pardon—
And that You’ll stand beside us to the last.
AN AMERICAN CREED
EVERARD JACK APPLETON
By permission of Stewart & Kidd Company, Cincinnati, Publishers of “With the Colors,” by Everard Jack Appleton. Copyright, 1918.
STRAIGHT thinking,
Straight talking,
Straight doing,
And a firm belief in the might of right.
Patience linked with patriotism,
Justice added to kindliness,
Uncompromising devotion to this country,
And active, not passive, Americanism.
To talk less, to mean more,
To complain less, to accomplish more,
And to so live that every one of us is ready to look
Eternity in the face at any moment, and be unafraid!