If still the selfish creed we preach Of pleasure, ease and strife for gold; Employer, and employee, each Resentful, greedy, uncontrolled; Then poor men still will curse the great, And hellish hordes will rise again With hungry, hardened, Hunnish hate; This war will have been fought in vain. AFTERWARDS When the war shall have ceased with its sorrow, Its hunger, and horror, and hell, In the dawn of a brighter to-morrow, What tale will historians tell? Will the nations get records of glory, Of cowardice, courage or crime, When the sages record the true story, To ring down the decades of time? We believe that some peoples now broken, And crushed by the Turk and the Hun Will arise from their darkness unspoken, And stand in the light of the sun. And it may be that Germans, grown wiser And taught at so fearful a cost, Will have hanged their contemptible Kaiser And regained the fair name they have lost. We believe that the allies now fighting, And lavishing billions untold, Will have found, in the wrong that needs righting, A service far better than gold; That in bearing the load of another, In heeding the cry of the pained, That in staying the feet of a brother, Fresh strength for themselves will have gained. And some lands that now cravenly study The getting of guerdons and gain, May have found their gold blasted and bloody, And tarnished by tears for the slain; And because they dishonoured their stations Were weak when they should have been strong, May be treated with scorn by the nations, A byword and hissing among. So the scribe will set down in his pages The story the centuries tell, That, for sin, death is still the true wages, And broad the road leading to hell. GERMAN SECURITIES FALL The British guns have spoken And Bill may lose his crown, The German line is broken, And saur-kraut is down. The gallant French are storming The Huns with iron hail; They've given Fritz a warning, And limburger is stale. The Russ is westward pushing, Herding the Huns like sheep, Thus ends the big four flushing, And liverwurst is cheap. King Victor's brave Italians Are driving back pell-mell The Austrian battalions And weiners will not sell. The Belgians, too, are holding Their end up with the rest, They hear the Teutons scolding, Bologna's past its best. Roumanians, and others, Who now are standing pat Will call the allies brothers When lager beer goes flat. TROUBLE IN THE TRENCHES The true story of the difficulty on the Russian front. September, 1917 When Slav and Russ had raised a fuss, And sent their Czar a-kiting, Said Givinski to Blatherski, "We've done enough of fighting."