And if ye seize them, we to slaughter too will go,
And in the breach ourselves will throw;

Upon us, too, the quiver of your hatreds rain!

We mourn the World-Peace slain!

-The Evening Post.

WHO PAYS?

BY EDNA VALENTINE TRAPNELL

Drum and trumpet and banner, banner and trumpet and drum!
Tramp, tramp, through the city streets the new-listed armies come.
Song and laugh on the transports steaming under the stars,
Wet eyes star-blind of those behind who pay for the nations' wars-
(The women who pay and have paid, dear Lord, for immemorial wars.)

Cheers and shouts greet the headlines that tell of the battles won. Who remembers the death-wrecked bodies motionless under the sun? "Victory stood to our banners, only a handful lost—” Only! We bore those bodies, and we know what bodies cost! (Mothers and wives of the soldiers dead-who better can gauge the cost?)

Man is blinded by passion, by glory or gold or power.

Shall we not see more clearly when it comes to the woman's hour? Before we loose hell's lightning that shall prove a cause through strife, Shall we not weigh the price we pay when the payment's in human life? (Dear Lord, we know by each birth-throe the value of human life.)

Counselors, kings, and rulers, ye take what ye cannot give.
Can ye say to the things in the trenches, "Be whole, rise up and live"?
Do ye know-who have killed your thousands by a word from a death-
tipped pen-

One little pang of the cost to those who breed you your fighting men?
(Who pays, dear Lord, for their bodies and souls but the mothers and
wives of men?)

-The Outlook.

DOUBT

BY PERCY MACKAYE

So thin, so frail the opalescent ice
Where yesterday, in lordly pageant, rose
The monumental nations-the repose
Of continents at peace! Realities
Solid as earth they seemed; yet in a trice
Their bastions crumbled in the surging floes
Of unconceivable, inhuman woes,

Gulfed in a mad, unmeaning sacrifice.

We, who survive that world-quake, quail and start,
Searching our hidden souls with dark surmise:

So thin, so frail-is reason? Patient art

Is it all a mockery, and love all lies?

Who sees the lurking Hun in childhood's eyes?

Is hell so near to every human heart?

-Boston Evening Transcript.

DESTINY

BY PERCY MACKAYE

We are what we imagine, and our deeds
Are born of dreaming. Europe acts to-day

Epics that little children in their play

Conjured, and statesmen murmured in their creeds;

In barrack, court and school were sown those seeds,
Like Dragon's teeth, which ripen to affray

Their sowers. Dreams of slaughter rise to slay,
And fate itself is stuff that fancy breeds.

Mock, then, no more at dreaming, lest our own
Create for us a like reality!

Let not imagination's soil be sown

With armed men but justice, so that we

May for a world of tyranny atone

And dream from that despair-democracy.

-Boston Evening Transcript.

RHEIMS

BY PERCY MACKAYE

Apollo mourns another Parthenon

In ruins!-Is the God of Love awake?

And we

must we behold the world's heart break
For peace and beauty ravished, and look on
Dispassionate?—Rheims' gloried fane is gone:
Not by a planet's rupture, nor the quake
Of subterranean titans, but to slake

The

vengeance of a Goth Napoleon.

O Time, let not the anguish numb or pall
Of that remembrance! Let no callous heal
Our world-wound, till our kindled pities call
The parliament of nations, and repeal

The vows of war. Till then, pain keep us thrall!
More bitter than to battle-is to feel.

-Boston Evening Transcript.

IN MEMORIAM

NOTRE DAME DE RHEIMS, SEPTEMBER, 1914

BY LEE WILSON DODD

Men raised thee with loving hands;
Thy stones, more precious than gems,
They wrought for a Light to the Lands;
Now the Light of all Lands condemns

Hun and Vandal and Goth

Who serve the Lords of the Night, Who have turned the coat of their troth And darkened Our Lady of Light.

Men made thee beautiful, yea

Their hearts flowed out as they wrought;

Thou wast builded not for a day,

For an age thou wast builded not:

And they carved thy portals and towers
For peer and burgher and clown,

That the Book of Our Lady's Hours

Might endure tho' the sun burned down.

By the grace of thy ruined Rose,

By the sullied strength of thy Towers,
Thou shalt triumph, Lady! Thy foes
Shall cower as the hunted cowers.
Thou hast not fallen in vain—
Fallen? Thou canst not fall:
They shall crave thy pity in pain,

Who flung thee hate for a pall.

-The New York Tribune.

PEASANT AND KING

(What the peasants of Europe are thinking)
BY CHRISTOPHER MORLEY

You who put faith in your banks and brigades,
Drank and ate largely, slept easy at night,
Hoarded your lyddite and polished the blades,
Let down upon us this blistering blight—
You who played grandly the easiest game,
Now can you shoulder the weight of the same?
Say, can you fight?

Here is the tragedy: losing or winning

Who profits a copper? Who garners the fruit?
From the bloodiest ending to futile beginning
Ours is the blood, and the sorrow to boot.
Muster your music, flutter your flags,

Ours are the hunger, the wounds, and the rags.
Say, can you shoot?

Down in the muck and despair of the trenches
Comes not the moment of bitterest need;
Over the sweat and the groans and the stenches
There is a joy in the valorous deed-

But, lying wounded, what one forgets

You and your ribbons and d- -d epaulettes-
Say, do you bleed?

This is your game: it was none of our choosing-
We are the pawns with whom you have played.
Yours is the winning and ours is the losing,
But, when the penalties have to be paid,
We who are left, and our womenfolk, too,
Rulers of Europe, will settle with you-
Are you afraid?

-The Evening Post.

WHO DIES IF ENGLAND LIVE?

BY MORRIS RYSKIND

LONDON, Sept. 3.-England, ready for a staggering blow on publication of the government casualty list, heaved a sigh of relief when it was found that so few of the noble families had been affected.-The Mail, Sept. 3.

Ten thousand Tommy Atkinses went forth into the fray;

Ten thousand stalwart Tommies who gave Death their lives for pay. But still we sing, "God Save the King," and thank the Fates of War: For Viscount What-the-Who's-This hasn't even got a scar.

Ten thousand Tommy Atkinses, courageous, clear-eyed, brave,
Went boldly into battle-and the battlefield's their grave.

Their souls God rest!-He knows what's best: Good news, bad news shall match:

The Duke of What-You-Call-It hasn't even got a scratch.

Ten thousand Tommy Atkinses that faced the German hordes;
Ten thousand Tommy Atkinses cut down by guns and swords.
In peace they sleep.-Why do ye weep, ye girls they left behind?
Lord So-and-So is safe and sound.-The others, never mind!
-The Columbia Jester.

THE PRICE

By J. H. H.

A costly thing is a War Lord's word
When he bids his subjects draw the sword.

Here's part of the cost the Germans pay
For their Kaiser's plunge into bloody strife:
For a metal check they trade away

A vigorous German soldier's life.

Thousands and thousands of little tags

Have been garnered by British and French, they say,

To send to Berlin in gunny bags.

Dear God! what an awful price to pay;

And scarcely a month has flown away.