<html xmlns:tei="http://www.tei-c.org/ns/1.0"><body><h1 align="center" class="head">The Jewish Conscript</h1><p class="inline-note" xmlns:html="http://www.w3.org/TR/REC-html40">(There are nearly a quarter of a million Jews in the Czar's army alone. -- <em>Newspaper clipping</em>.)</p><div class="stanza"><p class="line"><span class="smallcaps">They</span> have dressed me up in a soldier's dress,</p><p class="line" style="text-indent:5%">With a rifle in my hand,</p><p class="line">And have sent me bravely forth to shoot</p><p class="line" style="text-indent:5%">My own in a foreign land.</p></div><div class="stanza"><p class="line">Oh, many shall die for the fields of their homes,</p><p class="line" style="text-indent:5%">And many in conquest wild,</p><p class="line">But I shall die for the fatherland</p><p class="line" style="text-indent:5%">That murdered my little child.</p></div><div class="stanza"><p class="line">How many hundreds of years ago --</p><p class="line" style="text-indent:5%">The nations wax and cease! --</p><p class="line">Did the God of our fathers doom us to bear</p><p class="line" style="text-indent:5%">The flaming message of peace!</p></div><div class="stanza"><p class="line">We are the mock and the sport of time!</p><p class="line" style="text-indent:5%">Yet why should I complain! --</p><p class="line">For a Jew that they hung on the bloody cross,</p><p class="line" style="text-indent:5%">He also died in vain.</p></div><p class="byline">-- Florence Kiper Frank.</p></body></html> · Great War