CHAPLIN’S WAR SONG.

Stratford Evening Post, Volume XXVIV, Issue 30, 11 January 1916, Page 6

CHAPLIN’S WAR SONG.

FATUOUS DITTY THAT IS ALL THE RACE. i 4 The children of London have blessed the Army with a new marching song. It is a masterpiece of infantile inanity, set to the tune of “Red Wing.” Any street \\rchiu will whistle it to you for a penny. Every office hoy has known it for weeks. Now every soldier and sailor sings it. No one, says the Daily News, knows who wrote the words. It appears to have sprung spontaneously out of the youthful adoration of our old friend Charlie Chaplin a few weeks ago. Then, as now, the children’s matinees at the picture theatres were ringing with it. But somehow their elder brothers and fathers in khaki began humming it unconsciously, and it is now fast becoming the favorite marching song with the troops. We hi ay expect it any day on the recruiting hands in Trafalgar Square on Whitehall. With out the music the words are puerile; | without the words the music is nothing but a pretty, lilting air. But the 'combination of the two is irresistibly magnetic, like Charlie Chaplin himgolf. There is only mi? verse; the world ipoulcl not stand a second: When the moon shines bright on ( barlie Chaplin, His hoots are cracking For want of blacking.

And his little baggy trousers they want mending Before we send him To the Dardanelles.

The Hermans don’t know about it yet, ;hut they will before Christmas. Already the new war.song is in France. Its infectious fatuousness is being wafted from one camp to another. It lias penetrated to the officers’ mess. It is the per at the military concerts. Salisbury Plain echoes with it. A ou can hear it in the country lanes round London when the troops come marching. by. It is a song of greeting and ftirewoli.