SHOT! TELL HIS MOTHER.

Star (Christchurch), Issue 1125, 19 December 1914, Page 4

SHOT! TELL HIS MOTHER.

(By W. E. P. FRENCH, Captain. U.S. Army, in Washington "Times.")

What have I done to you, Brothers— War-Lord and Landlord . and Priest— That my son should rot on the bloodeme'ared earth where the; raven and buzzard feast? He was my baby, my man-child, that soldier with shell-torn breast, Who was slain for ycur power and profit—aye, murdered at your behest. I bore him, my boy and my manling. • whilo the long mouths ebbed ■> away; We was pari of me, part of my body, •which nourished him day by day. He was min,e when , the birth-pang tore mo, mine when he lay on my heart, When the- sweet mouth mumbled my b.)Som and the milk-teeth made it smart. Babyhood, boyhood, and manhood. and a glad . mother proud of her son*— See the carrion birds, too gorged to fly. Ah 1 Brothers, what have you done?

Yon prate of duty and honour, of a patriot's glorious death. Of love of country, heroic deeds—nay, for shame's 'sake, spare your breath I Pray, what have you done for your country? Whose was the biood that was shed In the li---lli.s.ii warfare that served your ends? My boy was shot in your stead. And for what were our children butchered, men makers of cruel law? . ■ " By the Christ, I am. g 1 ad no woman made the Christle.s cod:- of war! Shirks and schemers, why don't you an wer? Is the foul truth hard to tell ? Then a mother will tell it for you. of a detd that shames fields in hcJl—' , . Our boys were killed that some faction or scoundrel ujight win matt race For goals of ' stained gold, shamed honours, and the sty sell'seeiier'a place; That money's hold on our country plight be tightened and made more That the'rich cruhl inherit earth's full neis and their loot be quite secure; ~ 'Hint l)u wur'dmart bo wider opened to the product mulct from toil; That the tabou. and la::d of our neighbours should become your war-wo:i spoil j , . Tliat the eves of an outraged people might be turned from your graft and greed In the muruled, plundered home-land by the lure of war's ghastly deed; And that priests of the warring nations could pray to the selisame God , , , For his blessing on battle and murder and corp=e-strewn, blood-soaked sod. . Oh, fools 1 if God were a woman, think ' you She would let kin slay For gold-lust and craft of gamesters or cripple that trade might pay? This Quarrel was not the fighters' : the cheated, red pawns in your games:— You stay-at-homes garnered the plunder; but the pawns—wounds, death, and " Fame !" You paid them a beggarly pittance, your substitute prey-of-the-sword. But ye canny beasts of prey, they paid, in life and limb, for your And, behold t you have other victims: a widow sobs by my side. Who clasps to her breast a girl-child. Men, she was my slain son s bride!

I can smell the stench of the shambles, whero the mangled bodies lie; I can hear the moans of the wounded; 1 can see the brave lads die; And across the heaped, red trenches and the tortured bleeding rows I cry out a mother's pity nil mothers of dear, dead " roes." In love and a common sorrow, I weep with them o'er our dead, And invoke my sister woman for a curse on each scheming head. Nay, why should we mothers curse you? Lo! flesh of our flesh are ye j But, by the soul of Mary, who bore the Christ man murdered at Calvary,

Into our own .shall the mothers come, ■, and the glad day speed apace When the l?w of pence shall be the law of the women that bear the race; When a. man shall stand by his mother, • for the world-wide common good, And not bring her tears and' heartbreak nor make .mock of her motherhood.