The Next War by Robert Graves — Read

You young friskies who today / Jump and fight in Father's hay / With bows and arrows and wooden spears, / Playing at Royal Welch Fusiliers, / Happy though these hours you spend, / Have they warned you how games end? / Boys, from the first time you prod / And thrust with spears of curtain-rod, / From the first time you tear and slash / Your long-bows from the garden ash, / Or fit your shaft with a blue jay feather, / Binding the split tops together, / From that same hour by fate you're bound / As champions of this stony ground, / Loyal and true in everything, / To serve your Army and your King, / Prepared to starve and sweat and die / Under some fierce foreign sky, / If only to keep safe those joys / That belong to British boys, / To keep young Prussians from the soft / Scented hay of father's loft, / And stop young Slavs from cutting bows / And bendy spears from Welsh hedgerows.

Another War soon gets begun, / A dirtier, a more glorious one; / Then, boys, you'll have to play, all in; / It's the cruellest team will win. / So hold your nose against the stink / And never stop too long to think. / Wars don't change except in name; / The next one must go just the same, / And new foul tricks unguessed before / Will win and justify this War. / Kaisers and Czars will strut the stage / Once more with pomp and greed and rage; / Courtly ministers will stop / At home and fight to the last drop; / By the million men will die / In some new horrible agony; / And children here will thrust and poke, / Shoot and die, and laugh at the joke, / With bows and arrows and wooden spears, / Playing at Royal Welch Fusiliers.