War Rhymes | Page 2

came the swift cruisers,
And Germans are losers;
Australians
want no Kaiser boss.
From sheep run, pine forest and fern,
The stalwart New Zealanders
turn
To the land of their sires,
For with ancestral fires
Their bosoms in
ardor still burn.
The tall, turbanned, heathen Hindoo
Is proud to be in the game too,
For the joy of his life,
Is to help in the strife
Of the sahibs, and see
the war through.
The Frenchman who made wooden shoes,
While airing his Socialist
views,
Deserted his bench
For the horrible trench,
As soon as he heard the
war news.
The wild, woolly, grinning, Turco,
From where the fierce desert
winds blow,
Will give up his life
In the thick of the strife,
And go where the
good niggers go.
The versatile Jap's in the game,
Because of a treaty he came,

For old Johnnie Bull,
Will have his hands full,
The bellicose
Germans to tame.
The hard riding Cossack and Russ,
At the very first sign of a fuss,
Cried--"Long live the white Czar,
We are off to the war,
No more
Nihilist nonsense for us."
The bold Belgian burgher from Brussels,
Has fought in a hundred
hard tussles,
And is still going strong,
Nor will it be long,
Ere the foe back to
Berlin he hustles.
The hardy cantankerous Serb,
Whom even the Turk couldn't curb,
In having a go
With Emperor Joe,
Will the plans of the Kaiser
disturb.
The fierce mountaineers of King Nick
Got into the ring good and
quick,
They are never afraid,
For to fight is their trade,
While their wives
have the living to pick.
THE MODERN GOOD SAMARITAN
December, 1914
The road that leads to Jericho,
By thieves is still beset,
For Kaiser
Bill, the highwayman,
Is there already yet.
Thrown thick o'er half a Continent,
His blood-stained victims lie;

The priest, in horror, lifts his hands,
The Levite passes by.
The modern Good Samaritan,
Kind-hearted Uncle Sam,
Exclaims,
"This thing gets on my nerves
I'll send a cablegram.

But while the cash is going free,
I'll see what I can get,
And since
these chaps are down and out;
I'll steal their trade, you bet."
SATAN'S SOLILOQUY
November, 1914
Hell hath enlarged its borders,
While Satan sits in state,
And gives
his servants orders
To open wide the gate.
"My most successful
agent,"
Said he, "is Kaiser Bill;
Just watch his daily pageant
Of
souls come down the hill.
His friends who sacked the city;
His slaves who raped the nuns;
His
ghouls devoid of pity--
The bloody, lustful Huns,
The 'scrap of
paper' liars,
The burners of Louvain
Shall feed hell's hottest fires

With Judas and with Cain.
The unfenced city raiders,
The crew of submarine
That sank the
unarmed traders
To vent the Kaiser's spleen.
The wreckage of the
nations,
Ten million dwellings lost,
Murders and mutilations,
The
world's great holocaust.
The workman's scanty wages,
The souls of sunken ships;
The faith
and hope of ages,
The prayers from human lips;
The livelihood of
millions,
The commerce and the trade;
The untold wasted billions

Man's industry had made.
For these I thank the Kaiser;
His efforts please me well;
The world
becomes no wiser;
It's growing time in hell."
THE CANADIAN WAY
January, 1915
When times are good, and labor dear
We coax the British workman
here,
And should he shrink to cross the drink,
We tell him he has

naught to fear.
But when the times are hard and straight,
His is indeed a sorry fate;

We let him die, with starving cry,
Like Lazarus, beside our gate.
When all the battle flags are furled,
And wolf and lamb together
curled,
We loudly sing,--"God Save the King,"
And bid defiance to
the world.
When some must go to bear the brunt,
And check the German
Kaiser's stunt,
We still can brag, and wave the flag,
But send the
British to the front.
When Princess Pats charge down the pike,
And put the Germans on
the hike,
We shout,--"Hooray for Canaday!
The world has never
seen our like."
But when word comes across the waves,
The first contingent
misbehaves,
We cry aloud to all the crowd,
"Them British born are
fools or knaves."
When other men with sword and gun,
Would stop the fierce
destroying Hun,
We count the cost as money lost,
And still look out
for number one.
When other lands attain their goal,
Our name will blacken Heaven's
scroll,
A thing of scorn, all men to warn;
A country that has lost its
soul.
THE ENGLISH WOMAN'S COMPLAINT
March, 1915
We want to ask Canadians
To treat us not as fools;
We cannot learn
to play the game
Until we learn the rules.
We ask them not to try to
take
The mote from our eye,
Nor say, till their own beam's removed,


"No English need apply."
We try to be Canadians,
It's 'ard we must confess,
To drop our
English adjectives
And learn to say "I guess,"
We've chucked the
bread and cheese and beer,
We learning to eat pie,
So please cut out
that nasty slur,
"No English need apply."
We came 'ere for our children's sake,
(At 'ome they 'ad no show)

Though 'tain't just what we thought it was,
This land of frost and
snow;
But we never shrink at 'ardships,
And we've come 'ere to stiy;

So hustle down that bloomin' sign,
"No English need apply."
We aren't no cooking experts,
And couldn't make a blouse,
For, till
our 'usbands married us,
We