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WHEN battles were fought / With a chivalrous sense of Should and Ought, / In spirit men said, / "End we quick or dead, / Honour is some reward! / Let us fight fair-for our own best or worst; / So, Gentlemen of the Guard, / Fire first!"
In the open they stood, / Man to man in his knightlihood: / They would not deign / To profit by a stain / On the honourable rules, / Knowing that practise perfidy no man durst / Who in the heroic schools / Was nurst.
But now, behold, what / Is warfare wherein honour is not! / Rama laments / Its dead innocents: / Herod breathes: "Sly slaughter / Shall rule! Let us, by modes once called accurst, / Overhead, under water, / Stab first. "