* * * * *

To the Potsdam pacifist.

  Now for the fourth time since you broke your word,
    And started hacking through, the seasons’ cycle
  Brings Autumn on; the goose, devoted bird,
    Prepares her shrift against the mass of Michael;
          Earth takes the dead leaves’ stain,
  And Peace, that hardy annual, sprouts again.

  Yet why should you support the Papal Chair
    In fostering this recurrent apparition? 
  Never (we gather) were your hopes more fair,
    Your moral in a more superb condition;
          Never did Victory’s goal
  Seem more adjacent to your sanguine soul.

  Hindenburg holds your British foes in baulk
    Prior to trampling them to pulp like vermin;
  Russia is at your mercy—­you can walk
    Through her to-morrow if you so determine;
          There is no France to fight—­
  Your gallant WILLIE’S blade has “bled her white.”

  In England (as exposed by trusty spies)
    We are reduced to starve on dog and thistles;
  London, with all her forts, in ashes lies;
    Through Scarboro’s breached redoubts the sea-wind whistles: 
          And Margate, quite unmanned,
  Would cause no trouble if you cared to land.

  Roumania is your granary, whence you draw
    For loyal turns a constant cornucopia;
  Belgium, quiescent under Culture’s law,
    Serves as a type of Teutonised Utopia;
          And, as for U.S.A.,
  They’re scheduled to arrive behind The Day.

  Why, then, this talk of Peace?  The victor’s meed
    Lies underneath your nose—­why not continue?
  Because humanity makes your bosom bleed;
    So, though you have a giant’s strength within you,
          Your gentle heart would shrink
  To use it like a giant—­I don’t think.

  O.S.

* * * * *

Mistaken charity.

Slip was riding a big chestnut mare down the street and humming an accompaniment to the tune she was playing with her bit.  He pulled up when he saw me and, still humming, sat looking down at me.

“Stables in ten minutes,” I said.  “You’re heading the wrong way.”

“A dispensation, my lad,” he replied.  “I’m taking Miss Spangles up on the hill to get her warm—­’tis a nipping and an eager air.”

A man was coming across the road towards us.  He was incredibly old and stiff and the dirt of many weeks was upon him.  He stood before us and held out a battered yachting cap.  “M’sieur,” he said plaintively.

Miss Spangles cocked an ear and began to derange the surface of the road with a shapely foreleg.  She was bored.

“Tell him,” said Slip, “that I am poorer even than he is; that this beautiful horse which he admires so much is the property of the King of England, and that my clothes are not yet paid for.”