O German Mother Dreaming By The Fire,

You Smug-faced Crowds With Kindling Eye Who Cheer When Soldier Lads March By, Sneak Home And Pray You'll Never Know The Hell Where Youth And Laughter Go.

Let My Soul, A Shining Tree, Silver Branches Lift Towards Thee, Where On A Hallowed Winter's Night The Clear-eyed Angels May Alight.

O German Mother Dreaming By The Fire, While You Are Knitting Socks To Send Your Son His Face Is Trodden Deeper In The Mud.

Soldiers Are Dreamers; When The Guns Begin They Think Of Firelit Homes, Clean Beds, And Wives.

For It Is Humanly Certain That Most Of Us Remember Very Little Of What We Have Read. To Open Almost Any Book A Second Time Is To Be Reminded That We Had Forgotten Well-nigh Everything That The Writer Told Us. Parting From The Narrator And His Narrative, We Retain Only A Fading Impression; And He, As It Were, Takes The Book Away From Us And Tucks It Under His Arm.