Why We Fight

This is the thing we fight:

A cry of terror in the night;

A ship on work of mercy bent —

A carrier of the sick and maimed —

Beneath the cruel waters sent,

And those that did it, unashamed.

A woman who had tried to fill

A mother's place; had nursed the ill

And soothed the troubled brows of pain

And earned the dying's grateful prayers,

Before a wall by soldiers slain!

And such a poor pretext was theirs!

Old women pierced by bayonets grim

And babies slaughtered for a whim,

Cathedrals made the sport of shells,

No mercy, even for a child,

As though the imps of all the hells

Were crazed with drink and running wild.

All this we fight — that some day when

Good sense shall come again to men,

Our children's children may not read

This age's history thus defamed

And find we served a selfish creed

And ever be of us ashamed!