What are we fighting for, women and men, And the best of us dying for? It was just because we had signed our name, And the Briton’s creed is to honor the same: It was only for that, and our own fair fame We took up the gage of war. THE MAN BEHIND DOUGLAS MALLOCH IN THE AMERICAN LUMBERMAN Permission to reproduce in this book The band is on the quarter-deck, the starry flag unfurled; The air is mad with music and with cheers. The ship is bringing home to us the homage of the world And writing new our name upon the years. Her officer is on the bridge; we greet him with hurrahs; But some one says, “Not he the glory won; Not he alone who wears the braid, deserves the loud applause, Oh, don’t forget the man behind the gun!” ’Tis said that to embattled seas our ship sailed forth at dawn, Unheeding shot, unheeding hidden mine; And through the thunders of the fight went steaming bravely on, The nation’s floating fortress on the brine. And never throbbing engine stopped, nor parted plate or seam In all that bloody day from sun to sun; The good ship sang her battle cry in hissing clouds of steam To cheer anew the man behind the gun. I look upon her shining bore, her engine’s pulsing heart, I look upon her bulwarks shaped of steel; I know there is another art, as great as gunner’s art, That makes the world at arms in homage kneel. This ship, defying shot and shell, defying winds and seas, Is fruit of honest labor, rightly done; The man who built the ship, my lads, remember him, for he’s The man behind the man behind the gun! HERE AT VERDUN CHESTER M. WRIGHT I stand on a peak at Verdun--a scarred, torn peak of hope and death. Far under my feet run the mystic passages of Fort Souville. I strain my eyes to look over a great field where men have swayed in the death lock with eternity. Ahead and to the right and left stretch fifteen kilometres gaping with wounds, each shell hole a pit of death, a hideous mark left by the scourge of despotism. Ahead is that foul stretch from which came and still come the hordes of tyranny, with breath of poison and sting of contamination. Behind is ruin. Never was such ruin. A blight, a torture, a world pain, piercing and cruel. And yet behind is hope. Behind are the legions of liberty, the soldiers of our children’s freedom. Behind are the endless legions, coming, coming, coming. Behind are the veteran legions of France and Britain. Behind are the countless legions of America, coming, coming, coming--a brown ribbon of promise stretching across the sea to the shrine of Liberty!