<html xmlns:tei="http://www.tei-c.org/ns/1.0"><body><h1 align="center" class="head">War Yawp</h1><div class="stanza"><p class="line" style="text-indent:%">America!</p><p class="line" style="text-indent:%">England's cheeky kid brother,</p><p class="line" style="text-indent:%">Who bloodily assaulted your august elder</p><p class="line" style="text-indent:%">At Bunker Hill and similar places</p><p class="line" style="text-indent:%">(Not mentioned in our history books),</p><p class="line" style="text-indent:%">What can I tell you of war or of peace?</p><p class="line" style="text-indent:%">Say, have you forgotten 1861?</p><p class="line" style="text-indent:%">Bull Run, Gettysburg, Fredericksburg?</p><p class="line" style="text-indent:%">Your million dead?</p><p class="line" style="text-indent:%">Tell me,</p><p class="line" style="text-indent:%">Was that the greatest time of your lives</p><p class="line" style="text-indent:%">Or the most disastrous?</p><p class="line" style="text-indent:%">Who knows? Not you; not I.</p><p class="line" style="text-indent:%">Who can tell the end of this war?</p><p class="line" style="text-indent:%">And say, brother Jonathan,</p><p class="line" style="text-indent:%">D'you know what it's all about?</p><p class="line" style="text-indent:%">Let me whisper you a secret -- we don't!</p><p class="line" style="text-indent:%">We were all too fat with peace,</p><p class="line" style="text-indent:%">Or perhaps we didn't quite know how good peace was,</p><p class="line" style="text-indent:%">And so here we are,</p><p class="line" style="text-indent:%">And we're going to win....</p></div><div class="stanza"><p class="line">It's fine to be a soldier,</p><p class="line">To get accepted by the recruiting sergeant,</p><p class="line">Be trained, fitted with a uniform and a gun,</p><p class="line">Say good-bye to your girl,</p><p class="line">And go off to the front</p><p class="line">Whistling, "It's a long way to Tipperary."</p><p class="line">It's good to march forty miles a day,</p><p class="line">Carrying ninety-one pounds on your back,</p><p class="line">To eat good coarse food, get blistered, tired out, wounded,</p><p class="line">Thirst, starve, fight like a devil</p><p class="line">(<em>i.e.</em>, like you an' me, Jonathan),</p><p class="line">With the Maxims zip-zipping</p><p class="line">And the shrapnel squealing,</p><p class="line">And the howitzers rumbling like the traffic in Piccadilly.</p></div><div class="stanza"><p class="line">Civilization? --</p><p class="line">Jonathan, if you could hear them</p><p class="line">Whistling the <em>Marseillaise</em> or <em>Marching Through Georgia</em>,</p><p class="line">You'd want to go too.</p><p class="line">Twenty thousand a day, Jonathan!</p><p class="line">Perhaps you're more civilized just now than we are,</p><p class="line">Perhaps we've only forgotten civilization for a moment,</p><p class="line">Perhaps we're really fighting for peace.</p><p class="line">And after all it will be more fun afterwards --</p><p class="line">More fun for the poets and the painters --</p><p class="line">When the cheering's all over</p><p class="line">And the dead men buried</p><p class="line">And the rest gone back to their jobs.</p><p class="line">It'll be more fun for them to make their patterns,</p><p class="line">Their word-patterns and color-patterns.</p><p class="line">And after all, there is always war and always peace,</p><p class="line">Always the war of the crowds,</p><p class="line">Always the great peace of the arts.</p></div><div class="stanza"><p class="line">Even now,</p><p class="line">With the war beating in great waves overhead,</p><p class="line">Beating and roaring like great winds and mighty waters,</p><p class="line">The sea-gods still pattern the red seaweed fronds,</p><p class="line">Still chip the amber into neck-chains</p><p class="line">For Leucothea and Thetis.</p><p class="line">Even now,</p><p class="line">When the <em>Marseillaise</em> screams like a hurt woman,</p><p class="line">And Paris -- grisette among cities -- trembles with fear,</p><p class="line">The poets still make their music</p><p class="line">Which nobody listens to,</p><p class="line">Which hardly anyone ever listened to.</p></div><div class="stanza"><p class="line">The great crowds go by,</p><p class="line">Fighting over each other's bodies in peace-time,</p><p class="line">Fighting over each other's bodies in war-time.</p><p class="line">Something of the strife comes to them</p><p class="line">In their little, high rock-citadel of art,</p><p class="line">Where they hammer their dreams in gold and copper,</p><p class="line">Where they cut them in pine-wood, in Parian stone, in wax,</p><p class="line">Where they sing them in sweet bizarre words</p><p class="line">To the sound of antiquated shrill instruments;</p><p class="line">And they are happy.</p></div><div class="stanza"><p class="line">The little rock-citadel of the artists</p><p class="line">Is always besieged;</p><p class="line">There, though they have beauty and silence,</p><p class="line">They have always tears and hunger and despair.</p><p class="line">But that little citadel has held out</p><p class="line">Against all the wars of the world</p><p class="line">Like England, brother Jonathan.</p><p class="line">It will not fall during the great war.</p></div><div class="stanza"><p class="line">There is always war and always peace;</p><p class="line">Always the war of the crowds,</p><p class="line">Always the great peace of the arts.</p></div><p> 1914. </p><p class="byline">-- Richard Aldington.<br xmlns:exist="http://exist.sourceforge.net/NS/exist" xmlns:html="http://www.w3.org/TR/REC-html40"/> (No. 24,965, "E" Company, 11th Devons.)</p></body></html> · Great War