kill, and destroy, with mutual energy; sink each other's shipping, burn each other's arsenals, destroy each other's property at large. We will bombard your towns, and you shall bombard ours, if you can. Let us ruin each other's commerce as much as possible, and that will be a considerable sum. Let our banks break, while we smite and slay one another; let our commercial houses smash right and left in the United States and the United Kingdom. Let us maim and mutilate one another; let us make of each other miserable objects, cripples, halt, and blind, adapted for the town's end, to beg during life. Come, let us render the wives of each other widows, and the mothers childless, and cause them to weep rivers of tears, amounting to an important quantity of water-privilege." The bowl of wrath, the devil's punch-bowl, filled high as possible, share we with one another. This, with shot and bayonets, will be good in your insides and in my inside, in the insides of all of us brethren. Oh, how good it is! oh, how pleasant it is, for brethren to engage in internecine strife! What a glorious spectacle we Christian Anglo-Saxons, engaged in the work of mutual destruction, in the reciprocation of savage outrages, shall present to the despots and the fiends! How many dollars will you spend? How many pounds sterling shall we? How much capital we shall sink on either side, on land as well as in the sea! How much we shall have to show for it in corpses and wooden legs! Never ask what other return we may expect for the investment. So, then, American kinsmen, let us fight; let us murder and ruin each other. Let demagogues come hot from their conclave of evil spirits, "cry havoc, and let slip the dogs of war," and do you be mad enough to be those mad dogs, and permit yourselves to be hounded upon us by them. TO AMERICA On a proposed alliance between two great nations ALFRED AUSTIN WHAT is the voice I hear On the winds of the western sea? Sentinel, listen from out Cape Clear And say what the voice may be. 'Tis a proud free people calling loud to a people proud and free. And it says to them: "Kinsmen, hail; We severed have been too long. Now let us have done with a worn-out tale The tale of ancient wrong And our friendship last long as our love doth last, and be stronger than death is strong." Answer them, sons of the self-same race, Let us speak with each other face to face And loyally love and trust each other as none but free men can. Now fling them out to the breeze, Shamrock, Thistle, and Rose, And the Star-Spangled Banner unfurl with these — Wherever the sails of peace are seen and wherever A message to bond and thrall to wake, The throne of the tyrant shall rock and quake, For you are lords of a strong land and we are lords of the main. Yes, this is the voice of the bluff March gale; We severed have been too long, But now we have done with a worn-out tale The tale of an ancient wrong And our friendship shall last as love doth last and be stronger than death is strong. AMERICA TO ENGLAND GEORGE EDWARD WOODBERRY MOTHER of nations, of them eldest we, Well is it found, and happy for the state, When that which makes men proud first makes them great, And such our fortune is who sprang from thee, And brought to this new land from over sea The faith that can with every household mate, And freedom whereof law is magistrate, And thoughts that make men brave, and leave them free. O Mother of our faith, our law, our lore, What shall we answer thee if thou shouldst ask BRITONS AND GUESTS EDITH M. THOMAS WE fought you once- but that was long ago! We hurled in that old day a force did grow That now shall stead you, level stroke by stroke — So Heaven help us, who but late awoke, The charge upon our common race to know! And we will stand with you, the world to save To make it safe for Freedom (as we free have been). Have you not seen our mutual banners wave As one upon the wind a sight most brave! . . . We once did fight you- ev'n as next of kin May cleave apart, at end to closer win! PRINCETON, MAY, 1917 ALFRED NOYES Here Freedom stood, by slaughtered friend and foe, And, ere the wrath paled or that sunset died, Looked through the ages; then, with eyes aglow, Laid them, to wait that future, side by side. Lines for a monument to the American and British soldiers of the Revolutionary War who fell on the Princeton battlefield and were buried in one grave. Now lamp-lit gardens in the blue dusk shine And round the gray quadrangles, line by line, Where Princeton calls to Magdalen, tower to tower, And those cream-white magnolia boughs embower The dark bronze tigers crouch on either side And round the bird-loved house where Mercer died, By Stony Brook that ran so red of old, But sings of friendship now, To feed the old enemy's harvest fifty-fold |