Punch/Volume 147/Issue 3832/Minor War Gains

by C. L. Graves

MINOR WAR GAINS.

The year that is stormily ending
 Has brought us full measure of grief,
And yet we must thank it for sending
 At times unexpected relief;
These boons are not felt in the trenches
 Or make our home burdens less hard;
They're not a bonanza, but merit a stanza
 Or two from the doggerel bard.

The names of musicians and mummers
 No longer are loud on our lips;
By the side of our buglers and drummers
 Caruso endures an eclipse;
And the legions of freaks and of faddists.
 Who hailed him with rapturous awe,
O wonder of wonders, are finding out blunders,
 And worse, in the writings of Shaw!

Good Begbie, no longer upraising
 His plea for the "uplift" of Hodge,
Has ceased for a season from praising
 Lloyd George and Sir Oliver Lodge:
And there hasn't been much in the papers
 About the next novel from Caine
(No doubt he's in Flanders, the guest of commanders
 Who reverence infinite brain).

John Ward has forgiven the Curragh
 (The Curragh 's forgotten John Ward);
No longer he cries "Wurra Wurra!"
 At sight of an officer's sword;
MacDonald, the terror of tigers,
 Sits silent and meek as a mouse,
And the great von Keirhardi is curiously tardy
 In "voicing" his spleen in the House.

The screeds of professors and jurists
 Have quite disappeared from the Press;
'Tis little we hear of Futurists,
 And frankly we care even less;
Why, Trevelyan, the martyr to candour,
 Who lately his office resigned,
Though waters were heaving has sunk
Who lately his office resigned,
Though waters were heaving had sunk without leaving
 The tiniest ripple behind.

In fine, though there fall to our fighters
 Too many hard buffets and bumps,
'Tis a comfort to think that our blighters
 Are down in the deadliest dumps;
And whatever the future may bring us
 In profits or pleasures or pains
The ill wind that's blowing to-day is bestowing
 A number of negative gains.

 

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