War is a very fearful thing, I'm sure you'll all agree,
But sometimes we have got to fight in order to be free.
The Germans want to slaughter us, and do not understand
We are a people famed in fight, and also good and grand.
We never were unkind to them and never turned them out
When unto England's shores they came, to trade and look about.
But all the time, I grieve to say, they only came as spies,
So that, when came the dreadful "Day," they'd take us by
surprise.
Which they did do, and if our ships had not been all prepared,
The Germans would have landed, and not you or I been spared.
Now all is changed, and very soon, upon the Belgian strand,
I promise you a million men of English breed shall land.
And thanks to good Lord Kitchener, their wants will be supplied
With splendid food and cosy clothes and many things beside;
But he must bring the big siege guns when Antwerp we shall
reach,
Because with these fine weapons we have got to make a breach.
So let us pray that very soon we smash the cruel Hun,
And if, by dreadful luck, we lose--oh, then God's will be done!
We applauded Percy minimus for his sporting attempt, feeling of course,
it was piffle really, but good for a kid. Then the Doctor said he was
going to read Rice.
"Mr. Fortescue," said Dunston, "has evinced the deepest interest in the
achievement of Rice. He tells me that there is now a movement in
art--including the sacred art of poesy--which is known as the Futurist
Movement. Rice's effort reminds Mr. Fortescue of this lamentable
outrage on the Muses, for it appears that the Futurists desire to thrust
all that man has done for art into the flames--to forget the glories of
Greece, to pour scorn on the Renaissance, to begin again with primal
chaos in a world where all shall be without form and void. This is
Nihilism and a crime against culture. For some mysterious reason, the
boy Rice, who we may safely assume has never heard of the Futurists
until this moment, appears to have emulated their methods and shared
their unholy extravagance of epithets, their frenzied anarchy, their
scorn of all that is lovely and of good repute. He even permits himself
expressions that at another time would win something more than a rebuke.
I will now read Rice, not for my pleasure or yours, but that at least
you may learn what is not poetry, and can never be mistaken for poetry
by those who, like ourselves, have drunk at the Pierian spring."