Fight, Damn You, Fight!

Pukekohe & Waiuku Times, Volume 4, Issue 90, 1 October 1915, Page 1 (Supplement)

Fight, Damn You, Fight!

By H. DE VERE STACPOOLE, in the "Express."

You strike a German head each time the hammer falls.

I dread to open the paper every morning, not for fear of seeing a German victory, but for fear of seeing an English defeat. For fear of seeing some new form of treason aaginst England at war, exposed by the Press and condoned by the Hardie, it is now Mac Donald, it 16 now Government.

It is now Conybeare, it is now somebody else. There's always something against England or England's conduct of the war being said by somebody somewhere, there's always some drag on in* wheel of our efficiency, some tin can being fastened to the lion's tail, some one ready to give the bucket a tip just as it is filling. You know the whole story as well as I. Well, then, why don't you act? l am talking to the Intellectuals and writing men as well as to the geneial public. Why don't you fight these men as they ought to be fought, these men who are digging their pens into the backs of our soldiers? You, the Intellectuals of England, have not risen to the glory and the splendour of thi6 war for the liberation of the world. You have unfolding before you. the greatest epic of all time, and you sit about, the large majority of you, abusing the Kaiser and calling the Get-man.* Huns, the small minority backing him. You moan over this war as if it was a funeral instead of a fight. Even Kipling moans. If you cannot shout our men on to victory, then, for God's sake, forget your tongues and use your fists. Attack, even with physical violence, those men, those traitors, those slackers among you who have shamed us before the .world. Get into your boots, take off your coats and turn up your sleeves, forsake jour clubs and coteries, and hit out. And don't call the Germans Him* again till you have cleaned the Augean stable of English thought of the stuff that is in it. Clean it with your fists —and excuse my mixture of metaphor. AVe are sick of being told by the newspapers that every man must do his duty. The fighting men are doing their duty, and they alone have the light to preach to us 7 and their sermon is not "Do your duty," but "Fight." No man can fight properly till las Mood is hot. It is like writing poetry, like painting pictures, like creation of any sort. War is creation; it is building by destroying. Get hot. If there is not enough fuel to heat you in this present-day business, then all I have w say is you will be chilly in Hades. You men in the shipyards, the munition factories, the coal mines, every pick and hammer blow js a blow at the enemy. You strike a German head each time the hammer falls: you people who keep your hands and tongues idle before the meetings and works cf the German propagandists, yo : hit England no loss surely i The message of this as preached ll.v our leader* of th ■ :L. is a coniVed message all ■' ; '".".iity, a " about the "necessity oi i rushing 1 russian militarism," all about " M ounce of energy." The soldiers put it shorter Ttv soldiers alone arc our '«-al leaders, and their message. & outed from the trenches, has onlj tour words to it: — •FIGHT, DAMN YOU. FIGH 1 Answer it, and seize the first weapon that comes to your hand, even as I seize my inkpot to hurl it at the head o r the traitors who feed on the land thev would 10.0 to ruin. YOU STRIKE A GERMAN HEAP EACH TIME THE HAMMER F\LLS.