A Humble Appeal

(The Blue Cross League, 58 Victoria Street, London, S.W., is in need of funds.)

SHE was a pretty, nicely mannered mare,

The children's pet, the master's pride and care,

Until a man in khaki came one day,

Looked at her teeth, and hurried her away.

With other horses packed into a train

She hungered for her master's voice in vain;

And later, led 'twixt planks that scare and slip,

They slung her, terrified, on board a ship.

Next came, where thumps and throbbing filled the air,

Her first experience of

mal de mare

;

And when that oscillating trip was done

They hitched her up in traces to a gun.

She worked and pulled and sweated with the best;

A stranger now her glossy coat caressed 

Till flashing thunderstorms came bursting round

And spitting leaden hail bestrewed the ground.

With quivering limbs, and silky ears laid back,

She feels a shock succeed a sharper crack,

And, whinnying her pitiful surprise,

Staggers and falls, and tries in vain to rise.

Alone, forsaken, on a foreign field

What moral does this little record yield ?

Who tends the wounded horses in the war ?

Well that is what the Blue Cross League is for.