Voices of Silence Read online

  To any Diplomatist

  Heading nought else, your subtle game you played,

  Took tricks and lost them, reckoned up the score,

  Balanced defeats with triumphs, less with more,

  And plotted how the next point might be made:

  How some sly move with counter moves to meet,

  How by some crafty stratagem to gain

  This empty point of honour, how obtain

  That barren symbol of a foe’s defeat.

  Engrossed, you never cared to realise

  The folly of the things for which you fought,

  The hideous peril which your striving brought –

  A witless struggle for a worthless prize!

  God! Were you fiends or fools, who, in your game,

  Heedless, have set the circling earth aflame?

  W.N. Ewer

  From the Youth of all Nations

  Think not, my elders, to rejoice

  When from the nations’ wreck we rise,

  With a new thunder in our voice,

  And a new lightning in our eyes.

  You called with patriotic sneers,

  And drums and sentimental songs.

  We came from out the vernal years

  Thus bloodily to right your wrongs.

  The sins of many centuries,

  Sealed by your indolence and fright,

  Have earned us these our agonies:

  The thunderous appalling night,

  When from the lurid darkness came

  The pains of poison and of shell,

  The broken heart, the world’s ill-fame,

  The lonely arrogance of hell.

  Faintly, as from a game afar,

  Your wrangles and your patronage

  Come drifting to the work of war

  Which you have made our heritage.

  Oh, chide us not. Not ours the crime.

  Oh, praise us not. It is not won,

  The fight which we shall make sublime

  Beneath an unaccustomed sun.

  The simple world of childhood fades

  Beyond the Styx that all have passed;

  This is a novel land of shades,

  Wherein no ancient glories last.

  A land of desolation, blurred

  By mists of penitence and woe,

  Where every hope must be deferred,

  And every river backward flow.

  Not on this grey and ruined plain

  Shall we obedient recall

  Your cities to rebuild again

  For their inevitable fall.

  We kneel at no ancestral shrine.

  With admirable blasphemy

  We desecrate the old divine,

  And dream a new eternity.

  Destroy the history of men,

  The weary cycle of decay.

  We shall not pass that way again,

  We tread a new untrodden way.

  Though scattered wider yet our youth,

  On every sea and continent,

  There shall come bitter with the truth

  A fraction of the sons you sent.

  When slowly with averted head,

  Some darkly, some with halting feet,

  And bowed with mourning for the dead

  We walk the cheering, fluttering street,

  A music terrible, austere

  Shall rise from our returning ranks,

  To change your merriment to fear,

  And slay upon your lips your thanks.

  And on the brooding weary brows

  Of stronger sons, close enemies,

  Are writ the ruin of your house,

  And swift usurping dynasties.

  H.C. Harwood

  Sonnet of a Son

  Because I am young, therefore I must be killed;

  Because I am strong, so must my strength be maimed;

  Because I love this life (thus it is willed)

  The joy of life from me a forfeit’s claimed.

  If I were old or weak, if foul disease

  Had robbed me of all love of living – then

  Life would be mine to use as I might please; –

  Such the all-wise arbitraments of men!

  Poor mad mankind that like some Herod calls

  For one wide holocaust of youth and strength!

  Bitter your wakening when the curtain falls

  Upon your drunken drama, and at length

  With vision uninflamed you then behold

  A world of sick and halt and weak and old.

  Eliot Crawshay Williams

  A Veteran’s View

  ‘You want to fight if you’ve a chance?

  You must be mad! You must be drunk!

  Romance!!!

  War’s run

  By a crew of damned clerks, on a set of damned stools!

  War’s won

  By a lot of damned fools

  In a damned funk!!’

  Charles T. Foxcroft

  Socialist

  (Any Nation)

  ‘Leave me alone; I do not want your war:

  War that means fools cutting each others’ throats

  While smug sleek diplomats in dulcet notes

  Prate on of God (does it not ever jar?).

  Yes, you may call me coward if you please,

  Bellow that “we” are battling for the Right,

  “We!” – you must seek some subtler sophistries,

  There’d be no wars if you had but to fight.

  Oh! that the world were not so darkly blind,

  That men would see the poor fooled things they are,

  And make that fawning dog Democracy

  Turn on its master ’stead of on its kind.

  Sirs, I’ve no quarrel – save with Some on High;

  Leave me alone; to Hell with you, and War!’

  Eliot Crawshay Williams

  The Pity of It

  When memory of Prussian foulness fails,

  One thing will keep its fame

  Of cruelty and shame –

  The strike in Wales.

  To the Nations

  Let us get on with things!

  Out of the way with this hampering war!

  This idle, senseless waste of time!

  Are there not a million evils unremedied?

  Are there not men starving?

  Women prostitute?

  Children in misery?

  Is not the mass ignorant?

  Are not the rich indolent?

  Is justice done?

  Wins merit reward?

  Has the worker the wage of his toil?

  Mankind, lives it well?

  In beautiful cities,

  In wide streets,

  Healthy houses?

  Is disease conquered?

  Are men and women strong, lovely, wise?

  And art . . .

  Music . . .

  Is there no more to do that we should kill one another?

  Come! to our work!

  Out of the way with this pestilent war!

  Let us get on with things!

  El Arish

  Eliot Crawshay Williams

  Waste

  Waste of Muscle, waste of Brain,

  Waste of Patience, waste of Pain,

  Waste of Manhood, waste of Health,

  Waste of Beauty, waste of Wealth,

  Waste of Blood, and waste of Tears,

  Waste of Youth’s most precious years,

  Waste of ways the Saints have trod,

  Waste of Glory, waste of God, –

  War!

  G.A. Studdert Kennedy

  Wails to the Mail

  (Married men of the latest armies will receive 104 pounds per annum in addition to the usual separation allowance.)

  Northcliffe, my Northcliffe,

  In days that are dead

  The bard was a scoffer

  At much that you said,

  A fervid opponent

  Of ‘Daily Mail’ Bread.

  The bard never dr
eamed

  That it mattered a jot

  If you trusted in soap

  Or put peas in your pot,

  Or how many aeroplanes

  England had not.

  And when you back Blatchford

  To bark at the Bosche,

  Or when you puffed Willett

  As wiser than Josh –

  Northcliffe, my Northcliffe,

  I own I said ‘Tosh’.

  Northcliffe, my Northcliffe,

  Now here at thy feet

  The poet craves pardon

  Tho’ vengeance be sweet

  As peas that thou prizest

  In Carmelite Street,

  Forgive me past trespasses,

  Hark to my trope,

  To my words that are softer

  Than Lever’s Soft Soap,

  For only through thee

  Has a suppliant hope!

  Northcliffe, my Northcliffe,

  Ah! greater than Mars

  Or double-faced Janus

  Whose portal unbars

  The flood-tide of battle

  Napoleon of ‘Pars’,

  Whose words are uncensored,

  Whose leader compels

  Greys, Asquiths, McKennas,

  And eke double L’s,

  With contraband cotton

  And scandal of shells,

  Who rulest the Seas,

  And the Earth and the Air

  And the manifold medals

  ‘Base’ Officers wear,

  Northcliffe, my Northcliffe,

  Now hark to my prayer!

  When the ‘Hide-the-Truth Press’

  And the ‘Slack 23’

  Have yielded sword, money,

  And trident to thee

  And K.J. and Boosey

  And Pemberton B.

  Remember, while paying

  The Derby man’s rent,

  His rates, his insurance,

  And more than he spent,

  That others SAID NOTHING,

  GOT NOTHING, BUT WENT.

  They were somewhere in France,

  While the Derby man bucked

  To his wife, and in sheets

  Was connubially tucked . . .

  But no one pays them

  For the homes that they chucked.

  They were crouching to crumps

  While he cried at a Zepp,

  He was dancing what time

  They were taught to ‘Keep step’,

  And he gets a hundred

  Per an. PLUS the Sep-

  aration allowance!

  By Carmelite House,

  If a Man be worth anything

  More than a Mouse,

  Northcliffe, my Northcliffe,

  THESE CHAPS HAVE A GROUSE.

  Gilbert Frankau

  The Only Way

  ‘Conscription will lead the way to the higher life.’ – The Dean of Exeter.

  Through the slow succeeding ages

  Priests and prophets, saints and sages

  Have waged a long, incessant strife,

  Seeking for the higher life.

  Hindus wrapt in contemplation,

  Hebrews voicing revelation,

  Greeks, Egyptians, and Chinese,

  Moslems, Christians, and Parsees,

  All have held the ancient quest,

  All have sought to find the best;

  All of them have gone astray –

  None have found the narrow way.

  Buddha lived, and preached, and died,

  Christ was scourged and crucified,

  Socrates and Plato taught,

  St Francis prayed, Mahomet fought.

  All their labour, all their pain,

  All their strivings were in vain;

  Vain the work of every master

  From Bergson back to Zoroaster,

  Vain the toil of every teacher

  From Moses down to Friedrich Nietzsche.

  No hope for many can ever be

  In faith or in Philosophy.

  Gloomy is the prospect then

  For the stricken sons of men,

  Doomed the lower life to live;

  None has any help to give.

  When, hark! there comes a voice from Devon!

  The Dean has found the keys of heaven,

  Has found the path that none could find,

  Has seen where all the saints were blind.

  Marlborough is come to bring salvation

  And Higher Life to all the nation.

  Sure and simple his prescription:

  All mankind needs is – Conscription!

  W.N. Ewer

  The Last Rally

  (Under England’s supplementary Conscription Act, the last of the married men joined her colours on June 24, 1916.)

  In the midnight, in the rain,

  That drenches every sooty roof and licks each window-pane,

  The bugles blow for the last rally

  Once again.

  Through the horror of the night,

  Where glimmers yet northwestward one ghostly strip of white,

  Squelching with heavy boots through the untrodden plough-lands

  The troops set out. Eyes right!

  These are the last who go because they must,

  Who toiled for years at something levelled now in dust;

  Men of thirty, married, settled, who had built up walls of comfort

  That crumbled at a thrust.

  Now they have naked steel,

  And the heavy, sopping rain that the clammy skin can feel,

  And the leaden weight of rifle and the pack that grinds the entrails,

  Wrestling with a half-cooked meal.

  And there are oaths and blows,

  The mud that sticks and flows,

  The bad and smoky billet, and the aching legs at morning,

  And the frost that numbs the toes;

  And the senseless, changeless grind,

  And the pettifogging mass of orders muddling every mind,

  And the dull-red smudge of mutiny half rising up and burning,

  Till they choke and stagger blind.

  But for them no bugle flares;

  No bright flags leap, no gay horizon glares;

  They are conscripts, middle-aged, rheumatic, cautious, weary,

  With slowly thinning hairs;

  Only for one to-night

  A woman weeps and moans and tries to smite

  Her head against a table, and another rocks a cradle,

  And another laughs with flashing eyes, sitting bolt upright.

  John Gould Fletcher

  Conscription and Conscience

  ‘In the meantime I would venture to appeal to the House, and to all sections in the House – whatever views they are disposed to take with regard to this matter [i.e. conscription] – to abstain from raising it here. We are at a very critical moment in the history of the war. We are watching with intense sympathy and hope the gallant and combined efforts of the Allied forces, and I do not think a greater disservice could be rendered to this country or to the Allied forces than at such a moment as this there should be any suggestion go forth to the world that there is any difference of opinion amongst us.’ – Mr Asquith in the House of Commons, September 28th.

  ‘It is with the greatest sense of responsibility that I take upon myself what may be the opprobrium of being unable to bind myself to the request made a few minutes ago by the Prime Minister. At a time like this people have got to do what they think is right, irrespective of pressure brought to bear upon them, from whatever source it may come. If I were convinced that the raising of the subject once more would in the very least degree prejudice the chances of the Allied forces in the great engagement in which we are now involved, I would not waste one minute of the time of the House in raising the subject . . . I maintain that the case which we put forward is not controversial.’ – Captain Guest, same place, same date.

  ‘Little as I know of Labour.’ – Ditto, ditto, ditto.
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br />   What, Asquith, you presume to use to me

  This trivial cry of ‘public policy’?

  Appeals of that sort are no earthly go

  Where I’m concerned; for I, the prophet, know

  A lordlier guide, and in the heavens see I

  The flaming scroll: ‘Vox Guestii, Vox Dei’.

  Yes, when my conscience shows her burning face,

  Asquiths and such must take the lower place!

  Proudly I answer to her clarion call

  (For conscience will make martyrs of us all),

  And my vast hunger for ‘opprobrium’

  Might strike an envious Von Tirpitz dumb!

  * * *

  But suppose, gallant Captain, that the State

  Adopts your view (although a trifle late),

  Suppose the sluggish powers-that-be begin

  At last by force to rope the shirkers in;

  Suppose, I put it, that you get your way

  And we attain that glad millennial day

  When your stout comrade, Colonel Arthur Lee,

  Makes soldiering a sweated industry.

  And suppose, then, some libertarian cur,

  Some wretched working-man in Manchester,

  In spite of all our peril, argues still

  He does not think men should be forced to kill.

  – What about that? . . . I am not certain, Guest,

  But still I’m strongly tempted to suggest,

  O Captain, my Captain, Captain Guest,

  You’ll find your conscience tells you it were best,

  Sometimes, that in the public interest

  The conscientious man should be suppressed.

  Freedom on the Job!

  Although our liberties are gone,

  We’ve got a war for Freedom on!

  In spite of each oppressive act,

  The war for Freedom is a FACT:

  So get it well into your head

  That wars – for Freedom – must be fed

  With conscript armies, vanish’d rights,

  And all the Censorship’s delights;

  Whilst, though the people lose their freedom,

  The profiteers are free to bleed ’em!

  For things like that, you know, must be,

  In a great war for liberty:

  For which, because it’s lost at home,

  We have to fight, across the foam!