And for what were our children butchered, men makers of cruel law?
By the Christ, I am glad no woman made the Christless code of war!
Shirks and schemers, why don't you answer? Is the foul truth hard to
tell?
Then a mother will tell it for you, of a deed that shames fiends in
hell:--
Our boys were killed that some faction or scoundrel might win mad race
For goals of stained gold, shamed honors, and the sly self-seeker's
place;
That money's hold on our country might be tightened and made more sure;
That the rich could inherit earth's fullness and their loot be quite
secure;
That the world-mart be wider opened to the product mulct from toil;
That the labor and land of our neighbors should become your war-won
spoil;
That the eyes of an outraged people might be turned from your graft and
greed
In the misruled, plundered home-land by lure of war's ghastly deed;
And that priests of the warring nations could pray to the selfsame God
For His blessing on battle and murder and corpse-strewn, blood-soaked
sod.
Oh, fools! if God were a woman, think you She would let kin slay
For gold-lust and craft of gamesters, or cripple that trade might pay?
This quarrel was not the fighters':--the cheated, red pawns in your
game:--
You stay-at-homes garnered the plunder, but the pawns,--wounds, death,
and "Fame"!
You paid them a beggarly pittance, your substitute prey-of-the-sword,
But, ye canny beasts of prey, they paid, in life and limb, for your
hoard.
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