The harvest has been a success, thanks to the energy of the new
land-workers, the armies behind the army:
All the talent is here--all the great and the lesser,
The proud and the humble, the stout and the slim,
The second form boy and the aged professor,
Grade three and the hero in want of a limb.
Four years of war have brought curious changes to "our village":
Our baker's in the Flying Corps,
Our butcher's in the Buffs,
Our one policeman cares no more
For running in the roughs,
But carves a pathway to the stars
As trooper in the Tenth Hussars.
The Mayor's a Dublin Fusilier,
The clerk's a Royal Scot,
The bellman is a brigadier
And something of a pot;
The barber, though at large, is spurned;
The Blue Boar's waiter is interned.
The postman, now in Egypt, wears
A medal on his coat;
The vet. is breeding Belgian hares,
The vicar keeps a goat;
The schoolma'am knits upon her stool;
The village idiot gathers wool.
[Illustrations: FARMER AND THE FARM LABOURER
First week
Second week
Third week
Fourth week]
The husbandman and his new help have undergone mutual transformation. And
our cadet battalions are making themselves very much at home at Oxford and
Cambridge.
[Illustration: CADET: "Really, from the way these College Authorities make
themselves at home you'd think the place belonged to them.
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