Hymn of the warmonger

Submitted by AWL on 16 July, 2013 - 12:35

Gun God, we are nearly ready for the sacrifice.
How many millions it shall be we do not know:
But it shall be considerable.

We shall dig them from the cities
Ere the grime is from their face
Ere the ink is from their fingers
You shall have them
All the strata in a bundle
Slums and all.

They're a holocaust for you, Gun God.
Do they tremble at the ordeal before them? No,
They are preoccupied with trifles. Like young mice
they will nibble at our cheese: delicious, intoxicating
cheese, having nothing at all to do with traps. A
national cheese.
You shall have them from the fields,
Fresh and brown, strong and eager
Ere the chaff is from their hair
Ere the dew is from their boots
Ere the sun is from their faces
You shall have them, Gun God.
What a holocaust for you!

Do they think of profits and wage acquirements?
No, they think of glory. They hear the Voice of Mother
country calling plaintively over press and radio.
We have a gallant crowd of mystic journalists
And a merry band of mystic orators, feeding
well on the heaps of mangled bodies - far-seeing
fellow - in advance
You shall have them from the mountains and the plains
You shall have them from the cities and the towns
You shall have them, bone and blood,
Mangled, twisted, torn asunder
In a heap.
What a holocaust for you, Gun God!

And the women, what think they? Are they pale
and anxious now? With a woman's intuition do
they realise what's coming? Have they seen my shadow
on the hearth - lean and scraggy from much
starvation, curse it?
Oh, the women!
We shall wring the bloody heap
With their hearts.
We shall string them all together
Bruised and bleeding, pierced to rags -
Women's hearts!
What a holocaust for you, Gun God!

Anonymous, from the left Irish Republican paper Republican Congress, 12 October 1935.

Cartoon from the US Trotskyist press

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