Peasant and King

Royal Irish Rifle Troops at the Somme, July 1, 1916

We few, we happy few, we band of brothers;

For he to-day that sheds his blood with me

Shall be my brother; be he ne'er so vile,

This day shall gentle his condition;

And gentlemen in England now a-bed

Shall think themselves accurs'd they were not here,

And hold their manhoods cheap whiles any speaks

That fought with us upon Saint Crispin's day.

                        —Shakespeare’s Henry V

Kings, emperors, industrialists and aristocrats: the wealthy and powerful have always needed the poor to fight in their wars and have promised rewards and honors for that service. In October of 1914,  American poet Christopher Morley wrote of the disparity between rich and poor, starkly contrasting the burdens each were expected to shoulder in the First World War.

Peasant and King

What the Peasants of Europe are Thinking

 

Belgium refugees

You who put faith in your banks and brigades,

      Drank and ate largely, slept easy at night,

Hoarded your lyddite and polished the blades,

      Let down upon us this blistering blight—

         You who played grandly the easiest game,

         Now can you shoulder the weight of the same?

            Say, can you fight?

Here is the tragedy: losing or winning

      Who profits a copper? Who garners the fruit?

From bloodiest ending to futile beginning

      Ours is the blood, and the sorrow to boot.

         Muster your music, flutter your flags,

         Ours are the hunger, the wounds, and the rags.

            Say, can you shoot?

Down in the muck and despair of the trenches

Tsar and Russian troops

      Comes not the moment of bitterest need;

Over the sweat and the groans and the stenches

      There is a joy in the valorous deed—

         But, lying wounded, what one forgets

         You and your ribbons and d——d epaulettes—

            Say do you bleed?

This is your game: it was none of our choosing—

      We are the pawns with whom you have played.

Yours is the winning and ours is the losing,

      But, when the penalties have to be paid,

         We who are left, and our womenfolk, too,

         Rulers of Europe, will settle with you—

            You, and your trade.

                        October, 1914.

                        —Christopher Morley

The poem appeared in Morley’s Songs for a Little House (1917). Similar sentiments are voiced in Siegfried Sassoon’s “They” and Grace Isabel Colbron’s “The Ballad of Bethlehem Steel.”

                       

Christopher Morley

Morley was one of the most prolific writers of the early twentieth-century, author of more than 100 novels, essay collections, and poetry volumes. He was perhaps best known for his 1939 novel Kitty Foyle, which was made into a popular film. When Morley died in 1957, his obituary in the New York Times recalled that he was “Known for his whimsy—a word he loathed to hear in reference to his works” and that he “preferred to regard himself as a poet above all else.”*

Several years before his death, Morley offered this advice: “Read, every day, something no one else is reading. Think, every day, something no one else is thinking. Do, every day, something no one else would be silly enough to do. It is bad for the mind to be always part of unanimity.**

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* “Christopher Morley, Author, 66, Is Dead,” New York Times, 29 March 1957.

** Christopther Morley, “Brief Case; or, Every Man His Own Bartlett,” The Saturday Review of Literature,  6 Nov. 1948, p. 20.