“WHO PAYS?”

Stratford Evening Post, Volume XXV, Issue 280, 24 November 1914, Page 6

“WHO PAYS?”

Drum and trumpet and banner, banner and trumpet and drum I 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. W’ho remembers the death-wrecked bodies motionless under the sun? “Victory stood to our banners, only a handful lost—” (Mothers and wives of the soldiers dead—who better can gunge 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 wo not weigh the price we pay when the payment’s in human life? (Dear Lord, we know by each birththroe the value of human life.)

Counsellors, 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 ?) —By Edna Valentine Tlirapnell,' in “Outlook” (New York).