‘To The Advocates of Militarism’

‘To The Advocates of Militarism’

    Compel them to come in, for there shall be

    A feast well-spread, to suit the taste of all-

    Ruin and pain and untold misery;

    The downward trend, the devastating fall,

    From every higher impulse; robes to wear

    Woven of fraud, hypocrisy and lies.

    Compel them to come in that all may share

    This wolfish feast of bloodstained infamies.

    Not yours the chains of slavery to break;

    You heed no woman’s sorrows, no man’s groans,

    No flag of freedom in the breeze unfurled.

    Your passion is destruction, you would make

    A world-wide graveyard full of dead men’s bones.

    Whence reeks a stench that sickens all the world.

F. J. Webb