POWDER AND PATRIOTISM
“Dulce et decorum est pro patriâ mori.”
—Horace.
“Is ultra-patriotism a good thing?”
—British citizen of the twentieth century.
I
No doubt it is good and pleasant to find in the whole wide earth
Valour and strength and beauty, virtue and grace and worth:
It is right to be just to a Frenchman or German, an alien birth.
II
Victors in Art and in Science may Russian or Prussian be.
A German may study triumphant the nerves of a gnat or a flea.
Be large-souled, cosmopolitan. It matters nothing to me.
III
Never be insular, narrow. Teach your children at school
Never to fight or be furious—to follow the golden rule.
If a fool should strike at your left cheek, turn your right to the fool.
IV
This is excellent teaching: this is the fashion and mode.
Yet there are articles two, unchanged in my militant code—
That our bayonets refuse to bend and our powder consent to explode.
V
Russians, Germans, Italians, Austrians, Japs and Turks,
All are hearty good fellows, pleasing in ways and works:
Yet they have guns, torpedoes, swords, destroyers and dirks.
VI
Taking account of all things, thinking still in the road
That Nelson and Wellington followed, I cleave and cling to my code—
That British bayonets shall curve not, and British powder explode.
