Austria has been at last goaded into
resuming the offensive on the Italian Front and met with a resounding
defeat. It remains to be seen how Turkey and Bulgaria will respond to the
urgent appeals of their exacting master.
The ordeal of our men on the Western Front is terrible, but they have at
least one grand and heartening stand-by in the knowledge that they have
plenty of guns and no lack of shells behind them. This is the burden of the
"Song of Plenty" from an old soldier to a young one:
The shelling's cruel bad, my son,
But don't you look too black,
For every blessed German one
He gets a dozen back--
But I remember the days
When shells were terrible few
And never the guns could bark and blaze
The same as they do for you.
But they sat in the swamp behind, my boy, and prayed for a tiny shell,
While Fritz, if he had the mind, my boy, could give us a first-class
hell;
And I know that a 5.9 looks bad to a bit of a London kid,
But I tell you you were a lucky lad to come out when you did.
* * * * *
Up in the line again, my son,
And dirty work, no doubt,
But when the dirty work is done
They'll take the Regiment out--
But I remember a day
When men were terrible few
And we hadn't reserves a mile away
The same as there are for you,
But fourteen days at a stretch, my boy, and nothing about relief; Fight and
carry and fetch, my boy, with rests exceeding brief; And rotten as all
things sometimes are, they're not as they used to be, And you ought to
thank your lucky star you didn't come out with me.
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