Nor race nor creed shall difference make,
      Nor bigot mar the zealot’s plan;
    We give our all for Freedom’s sake,
      Each man a king, each king a man. 
    Make us the equal, Lord, we pray
    Of them who die for truth to-day!

    Let us as gladly give our best,
      Let us as bravely pay the price
    As they, who in the bitter test
      Meet the supremest sacrifice. 
    Oh, God!  Wherever we are led,
    Let us be worthy of our dead!

Let us not compromise the truth,
Let us not cringe so much in fear
That foes may whisper to our youth
That we have failed in courage here. 
Lord, strengthen us, that they may know
Our spirits follow where they go!

Why We Fight

This is the thing we fight: 
A cry of terror in the night;
A ship on work of mercy bent—­
A carrier of the sick and maimed—­
Beneath the cruel waters sent,
And those that did it, unashamed.

A woman who had tried to fill
A mother’s place; had nursed the ill
And soothed the troubled brows of pain
And earned the dying’s grateful prayers,
Before a wall by soldiers slain! 
And such a poor pretext was theirs!

    Old women pierced by bayonets grim
    And babies slaughtered for a whim,
    Cathedrals made the sport of shells,
      No mercy, even for a child,
    As though the imps of all the hells
      Were crazed with drink and running wild.

All this we fight—­that some day when
Good sense shall come again to men,
Our children’s children may not read
This age’s history thus defamed
And find we served a selfish creed
And ever be of us ashamed!

America

God has been good to men.  He gave
His Only Son their souls to save,
And then he made a second gift,
Which from their dreary lives should lift
The tyrant’s yoke and set them free
From all who’d throttle liberty. 
He gave America to men—­
Fashioned this land we love, and then
Deep in her forests sowed the seed
Which was to serve man’s earthly need.

    When wisps of smoke first upwards curled
    From pilgrim fires, upon the world
    Unnoticed and unseen, began
    God’s second work of grace for man. 
    Here where the savage roamed and fought,
    God sowed the seed of nobler thought;
    Here to the land we love to claim,
    The pioneers of freedom came;
    Here has been cradled all that’s best
    In every human mind and breast.

    For full four hundred years and more
    Our land has stretched her welcoming shore
    To weary feet from soils afar;
    Soul-shackled serfs of king and czar
    Have journeyed here and toiled and sung
    And talked of freedom to their young,
    And God above has smiled to see
    This precious work of liberty,
    And watched this second gift He gave
    The dreary lives of men to save.