I am the God of War--yea, God of Battle am I, And the evil men speak about me has moved me to fierce reply. Does not the surgeon's knife Torture--to save a life? So, for the life of nations, men learn to fight and die-- Even die!
Craven through love or fear do the weak of the earth await me Tensely, with bated breath--yea, teaching their sons to hate me. Lured by my rolling drum, Nevertheless they come Proudly, their youth and manhood offering up to sate me!
You who would grudge me aught but harvest of woe and shame-- Answer me, you who hate me, cursing my very name-- When was a serf made free, Save and alone through me? When was a tyrant vanquished, save through my purging flame?
After an age of peace do your sons wax soft, their weakness Shown in a love of ease, of sensuousness, and sleekness; Then, lest a nation die, Loud rings my battle-cry! Lo, they forsake snug warmth for desolate cold and bleakness!
I am the God of War--yea, God of Battle am I, And the bolts of my savage anger I hurl from a threatening sky. Speak of me as you will, Swift though I be to kill, I have made men of weaklings--I teach men how to die-- Even I!
_In a cablegram to_ THE NEW YORK TIMES, _dated July 17, 1915, it is reported that an article by George Bernard Shaw in The New Statesman begins with a review of Professor Gilbert Murray's book, "The Foreign Policy of Sir Edward Grey," and ends with the following characteristic reference to himself:_
"Like other Socialists, I have been too much preoccupied with the atrocities of peace and the problems they raise to pay due attention to the atrocities of war, but I have not been unconscious of the European question and I have made a few shots at solutions from time to time. None of these have been received with the smallest approval, but at least I may be permitted to point out that they have all come out right.
"I steadily ridiculed anti-armament agitation, and urged that our armaments should be doubled, trebled, quadrupled, as they might have been without costing the country one farthing that we were not wasting in the most mischievous manner.
"I said that the only policy which would secure the peace of Europe was a policy of using powerful armament to guarantee France against Germany and Germany against Russia, aiming finally at a great peace insurance league of the whole northwest of Europe with the United States of America in defense of Western democratic civilization against the menace of the East and possible crusades from primitive black Christians in Africa.