SELECTIONS

TO THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA

Brothers in blood! They who this wrong began

To wreck our commonwealth, will rue the day
When first they challenged freemen to the fray,
And with the Briton dared the American.
Now are we pledged to win the Rights of man;
Labor and Justice now shall have their way,
And in a League of Peace-God grant we may-
Transform the earth, not patch up the old plan.

Sure is our hope since he who led your nation
Spake for mankind, and ye arose in awe
Of that high call to work the world's salvation;
Clearing your minds of all estranging blindness
In the vision of Beauty and the Spirit's law,
Freedom and Honor and sweet Lovingkindness.
-ROBERT BRIDGES, in the London Times.

April 30, 1917.

THE STARS AND STRIPES

We who in the old days-the easy days of pleasuringLoitered in the distant lands-we know the thrill that

came

When in far, foreign places, above the stranger faces, The sight of it, the might of it, would wake us like a

flame.

Our own flag, the one flag, it stirred our blood to claim.

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We who in these new days-these days of all confusion

Look upon it with the eyes of one long blind who sees, We know at last its beauty-its magnitude of dutyDear God! if thus it seems to us, what will it mean to

these

Who stay for it, who pray for it, our kindred overseas?

These who face the red days-the white nights of fury, Where death like some mad reaper hacks down the

living grain

They shall see our flag arise like a glory in the skies— The stars of it, the bars of it, that prove it once again The new flag, the true flag, that does not come in vain! -THEODOSIA GARRISON, in "Drums and Fifes.”

FILE THREE

["General Pershing stopped in his walk, turned sharply, and faced File Three."-London Dispatch.]

File Three stood motionless and pale,

Of nameless pedigree;

One of a hundred on detail

But would I had been he!

In years a youth, but worn and old,

With face of ivory;

Upon his sleeve two strands of gold-
Oh, would I had been he!

The General passed down the line,
And walked right rapidly,

But saw those threads and knew the sign-
Ah, had I been File Three!

"Twice wounded? Tell me where you were,"
The man of stars asked he.
"Givenchy and Lavenze, sir"-
Oh, where was I, File Three!

Then crisply quoth the General:
"You are a man, File Three."
And Tommy's heart held carnival-
God! Would I had been he!

-P. S. W., in Chicago Tribune.

TO THE AMERICAN PEOPLE

Men of America, you that march today

Thro' roaring London, supple and lean of limb,
Glimpsed in the crowd I saw you, and in your eye
Something alert and grim-

As knowing on what stern call you march away
To the wrestle of nations-saw your heads held high,
And, that same moment, far in a flittering beam
High over old and storied Westminster

The Stars and Stripes with England's colors clear
Sisterly twined and proud on the air astream.

I see again the fabulous city arise,

Rock-cradled, white and soaring out of the sea.

Manhattan Queen of thronged and restless bays
And of daring ships is she.

O, lands beyond, that into the sunset gaze,
Limitless, teeming continent of surmise!

I drink again that diamond air, I thrill

To the lure of a wonder more than the wondrous past.

And see before me ages yet more vast

Rising and challenging heart and mind and will.

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*

*

Taps of the Drum! Again you have heard them beat;
And the answer comes, a continent arms! Dread,
Pity, and Grief, there is no escape; the call

Is the call of the risen Dead.

Terrible year of the nation's trampling feet!

An angel had blown his trumpet over all

From the ends of the earth, from East to uttermost West,

Because of the soul of man that shall not fail,
That will not make refusal or turn and quail,
No, nor for all calamity stay its quest.

And here, here too, is the New World, born of pain
In destiny-spelling hours. The old world breaks
Its mold, and life runs fierce and fluid, a stream
That floods, dissolves, remakes.

Each pregnant moment, charged to its extreme,
Quickens unending future; and all's vain

But the onward mind that dares the oncoming years
And takes their storm, a master. Life shall then
Transfigure Time with yet more marvelous men.
Hail to the sunrise! Hail to the Pioneers!

-LAURENCE BINYON.

TO FRANCE

O daughter of the morning! on thy brow
Immortal be the lilies thou hast won!
Eternal be thy station in the sun,

That shines not on a splendor such as thou!
A strength is thine beyond the armored prow,
And past dominion of the lance and gun,
Tho now thou stand, as battle-thunders stun,
Heroic, on the fields that cannon plow.

Triumph be thine, O beautiful and dear!

Whose cause is one with Freedom and her name.
The armies of the night devise thee wrong,
But on thy helm the star of Truth is clear,
And Truth shall conquer, tho thy cities flame,

And morning break, tho now the night is strong! -GEORGE STERLING, in "The Binding of the Beast."

TO THE HUN

Not for the lust of conquest do we blame
Thy monstrous armies, nor the blinded rage
That holds thee traitor to this gentler age,
Nor yet for cities given to the flame;
For changing Europe finds thy heart the same
And as of old thy bestial heritage.

The Light is not for thee. The war we wage
Is less on thee than on thy deathless shame.

Lo! this is thy betrayal-that we know,

Gazing on thee, how far Man's footsteps stray

From the pure heights of love and brotherhood