And all around these chubby
children play,
Dirty, but happy,
fed and cared for well,
With ne’er a troubled
thought the live-long day,
For they know
little of adjacent hell.
The hunchback warns us we
are not to tell
About the ‘Allemagne’
whilst they are nigh,
Since all have known him in
the past too well.
’Let them
forget it as we often try.
C’est
la guerre,’ she said, and quickly brushed
her eye.
And then she whispers, as
we loiter near,
The story of their
young lives years ago,
When, snatched from cradles,
with a frenzied fear,
Their mothers
hurried on before the foe;
Their men defend and screen
them as they go,
And fight a rearguard
action with the brute,
Who cares not for their agony
or woe,
But only for the
blood-streams and the loot.
And now she sees
us watching one poor little mute:
‘Ah! this
one?’ and she pointed to the dot
Who sat alone,
and smiled to vacant space,
’Waits for her mother;
very hard her lot;
For years now
has she waited in her place.
“Where is her mother?”
I can never trace
Somewhere beyond
across “the no man’s way.”
Some day, perhaps,’
she cried, with yearning face.
The tiny mite,
tho’ happy, could not play,
Except with little
restless hands all day.
‘Sometimes the shell
come here right by,’ she said.
’The other
day, when I what you call wash,
A big boom quickly pass above
my head,
And fall out in
the field with a big crash.
But, oh, those children, they
so very rash,
They know so little
of the dreadful doom.
I come in time to save a fearful
crash,
And catch them
with the nose-cap in this room—
The nose-cap,
unexhausted, from the boom.’
And then we start, inclined
to say farewell.
We try to brighten
up the little maid
Who sits alone, perhaps in
faerie dell;
For she doth seem
not in the least afraid.
She, smiling, takes the pennies
which we lay
Within her hands,
tho’ distant is her smile;
And for a space she seemed
with them to play,
But drops them
ere we’re scarcely gone, awhile
We wander back,
half dumb, hard, thinking for a mile.
G.P. CUTTRISS and J.W. HOOD.
[Illustration: “She, smiling, takes the pennies which we lay Within her hands....”]
RECREATION BEHIND THE LINES
[Illustration: The Horse Show]
The military authorities have ever recognized the importance and value of recreation in connexion with the training of men. They realize that ‘all work and no play makes Tommy a dull boy’; and the provision that has been made for recreation and amusement for the ‘boys’ commands the deepest appreciation of both rank and file. The Australian is unaccustomed to the rigid restrictions of an inflexible military regime, and a temporary relaxation contributes much towards eliminating that feeling of ‘fed-upness’ to which he is so susceptible under monotonous and trying conditions, and certainly assists in making him a less dissatisfied soldier.