Anti-War 'Nursery Rhyme' discovered

Transcription:

SING A SONG OF EUROPE

HIGHLY CIVILISED;

FOUR AND TWENTY NATIONS

WHOLLY HYPNOTISED –

WHEN THE BATTLE OPENS

THE BULLETS START TO SING:

ISN’T THAT A SILLY WAY

TO ACT FOR ANY KING?

THE KINGS ARE IN THE BACKGROUND

ISSUING COMMANDS

THE QUEENS ARE IN THE PARLOUR

PER ETIQUETTE’S DEMANDS.

THE BANKERS IN THE COUNTING-HOUSE

ARE BUSY MULTIPLYING;

THE COMMON PEOPLE AT THE FRONT

ARE DOING ALL THE DYING.

Thanks for this (and the satirical ‘If’ parody below), to Alison Ronan, who found it in the papers of a local Manchester Conscientious Objector, Arthur Turtle.

Ali is a feminist historian interested in dissent and resistance. Her current research is about anti-war and pacifist women in Manchester and North-West England, 1914-1918.

Her book 'A Small Vital Flame: anti-war women in NW England 1914-1918’ is published by The Scholars' Press.

(A Pacifist’s Parody on Kipling’s “If”)

If you can talk and not get bread and water,

Or if reported take your pegging like a man;

If you can scrub like any woman’s daughter,

And eat your dinner from a rusty can;

If you can “pick that step up” every morning,

And “swing those arms” as round the ring you crawl;

If you can rise before the daylight’s dawning,

And wash your share of landing in the hall;

If you can take the daily Wormwood rumour,

With little more than just a pinch of salt;

And treat as nought the officer’s ill-humour,

But simply think his liver is at fault;

If you can bear to hear the news you be given,

Change and increase till it’s nowise true;

And though to tell it truly you have striven,

Keep calm when its new version comes to you;

If you can hope and not get tired of hoping,

For the freedom which must come soon or late;

And never let your comrades see you hoping,

But patiently and gladly work and wait;

If you can watch your shadow getting thinner,

And still with smiling face go bravely on;

If you can think of your last decent dinner,

And not complain and think you’re put upon;

Then, my brother, though all the world may scorn you,

And make your name a jest for thoughtless folk;

You’re the saviour of the country that has borne you,

You’ll surely break Conscription’s evil yoke.

Written by William Harrison.

in Wormwood Scrubs, March, [year missing from typescript]

An online search finds inter alia that the nursery rhyme was published anonymously in: THE IRON WORKER Vol.1 No 4 1928, but the 'If'' parody does not appear to have been widely distributed, if at all.(The fact that this page looks as though it was produced on a duplicator, however, suggests an attempt to make it more widely known, at some point.) See comment below with reference to William Harrison.